It's a haaaaard profession anymore. DH was a special ed teacher - taught 4th & 5th SLD & EH kids, then later Autistic kids when we moved to GA, and that was the end of it.

The politics is ridiculous, the paperwork insane, the pressure from the school to do well for the testing is horrible, and the parents are something else entirely. At least at the school in FL, Dave felt some of the teachers there had his back, even if the principal or vice didn't. He worked so hard to mainstream as many of the kids as he could every year - you know the kids suffer with these labels - and it seemed a lot of the teachers were encouraged to do what they could to shove the child back into Dave's classroom, because the school needed the money.

Here, he ran into something else entirely. The teacher he was hired to co-teach with was accostomed to being the only teacher in the county for Autism, and she was jealous and angry that this man could come in and share her little self-shrine. She was so deliberately nasty to him, that was the end of teaching as far as he was concerned.

He lasted 7 years. Most special-ed teachers make it all of 3.

He was very clear- the kids were fine. It was the admin, the paperwork, and the politics.