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When teachers talk about leaving the profession, they are commonly described as “burnt out.” But for many, argues Doris Santoro, that’s not the real story. In truth, most teachers enter teaching because they want to pursue moral commitments to the well-being of their students, colleagues, and communities. In-depth interviews with experienced teachers as well as studies of teachers’ resignation letters suggest that moral concerns are what led many of them to quit, as well: They leave not because they’ve become exhausted by the demands of the work but, rather, because school policies are preventing them from doing the good and just work they aspire to do.

This article offers a model of the relationship between three dimensions of integrity in teaching: personal integrity, professional integrity, and the integrity of teaching and illustrates the model through interview excerpts from 13 experienced former teachers. I argue that experienced teachers' decisions to leave work they love can be understood not only as attempts to preserve their personal integrity, but also to preserve the integrity of teaching by withdrawing their corroded professional integrity. Only by looking at all three dimensions of integrity can the actions of teaching's conscientious objectors be viewed as moral commentary on a moral enterprise rather than the private and personal laments of disgruntled individuals. When the role of teacher serves as a significant source of moral identity, protecting the integrity of teaching is deeply connected to protecting one's personal integrity. Diminishment in what counts as teaching results in a diminishment of the self. Rather than viewing teachers who leave for matters of conscience as lacking sufficient commitment or ceasing to care about their work, this analysis views their choices as reflecting deep investment in preserving the practice of teaching.. . . a moral judgment upon an act is also a judgment upon the character or selfhood of the one doing the act.-John Dewey (Dewey & Tufts, 1932, p. 287) The integrity of a practice causally requires the exercise of the virtues by at least some of the individuals who embody it in their activities; and conversely the corruption of institutions is always in part at least an effect of the vices.-Alasdair MacIntyre (1984, p. 194) . . . guilt, shame, anxiety, embarrassment-the emotions of self-assessment-and sometimes fear, sorrow, and even pain. These are moral emotions and they occur also in association with the conscience of craft.-Thomas Green (1999, p. 76) bs_bs_banner

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