Welcome Back : Teachers Who Left the Profession to Seek More Money Are Discovering That Materialism Sometimes Isn’t Enough

Bob Rizzardi was 34--not even middle-aged--when he went to his retirement party from Agoura Hills High School.

After 11 years of teaching history, he thought that he had found a better way to make a living. He was frustrated with the bureaucracy of the school district and the increasing size of the classes, which had grown from an average of 24 to 28 students when he started teaching to 36 when he left. He was burned out.

But after 1 1/2 years as a $50,000-a-year manager for a Westlake Village commercial property firm, Rizzardi in 1985 decided to go back to teaching. In doing so, he became part of a small minority among an already small group of teachers--those who decide that the grass isn’t greener outside the profession.

When Rizzardi told his fellow teachers that he was leaving his $30,000-a-year job, most said they wished that they were going too. But few went.

Leaving teaching for any other career is relatively rare, and re-entering the field is considered highly unusual.

6.6% Turnover Rate

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has no statistics on teachers leaving for another career or returning from a second career, the voluntary turnover rate--which doesn’t include those who are fired--is 6.6%, a decrease from a 1986-87 peak of 7.2%, according to Michael Bordie, director of certificated placement and assignment.

In the Las Virgenes Unified School District, the turnover rate is only 2% to 3% a year, said Gerry Trout, director of personnel. “Teachers enjoy a good pension, good working conditions, and they have a certain bent in life to work with kids. Teaching is just about the only place they can do what they want to do with all these benefits,” he said.

Tom Killeen, administrator of personnel services and research for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that if a teacher leaves teaching, it will most likely be within the first four years. “Once people stay five years, they’ll typically stay for good,” he said.

For teachers who do have the motivation to leave--and then decide to return--it’s both a desire to do something clearly meaningful and the love of the long-vacation life style that brings them back to the chalkboard.

But after the tense nine-day Los Angeles teacher strike in June and the rising incidence of drug use and other crimes on campus, do returning teachers prove the adage that those who can’t, teach? Or is it that they discover teaching offers something other careers lack?

‘Nothing to Lose’

For Rizzardi, all it ultimately took to leave was a phone call. “When I left the profession, the intrinsic rewards of teaching just weren’t enough to keep me,” he said. “So when a friend called and asked me to run his firm--I had my real estate license--I decided I had nothing to lose.”

Rizzardi, who is 41, took a leave of absence from the Las Virgenes district (“I knew if it didn’t work out, I could go back,” he said) and “took a substantial increase in pay.” He found himself sitting behind a desk in a small office, dealing with tenants who were delinquent in their rent or had other problems.

“I just applied what I knew from teaching, developing good rapport with people, and I tried to see and get to know them before a problem came up,” Rizzardi said.

After dealing with rowdy teen-agers, Rizzardi marveled at the incredible quiet of his office. He said that within six months he had cleaned up the problems the previous manager had left and that the job became so easy he “thought such work should be illegal.”

But the easy life didn’t work for him. Although the work wasn’t so demanding, he said he missed all the vacation he had enjoyed as a teacher--summer, winter and spring breaks--and was having trouble accepting just two weeks off a year.

‘Didn’t Like the Work’

The final blow to Rizzardi’s foray into property management came when his boss asked him to file suit against a struggling businessman who needed to break a commercial lease. “I had to put a $20,000 lien on his house. I didn’t enjoy that, and it was at that moment that I realized I didn’t like the work,” he said.

“I missed the feeling I was doing something big, that I was making a difference. And I found out that money isn’t everything. Leaving teaching for awhile gave me perspective. It made me realize that the grass isn’t always greener. I hadn’t realized that there’s a negative side to every job . . . and no job is perfect.”

Marc Berke was drawn away from teaching after 10 years at five different schools. He was teaching math at Agoura High when he began to feel frustrated and burned out. But his motivation to leave was primarily financial. He says that when he saw the students driving BMWs and the teachers were still in old Volkswagens, he figured that there had to be a better way to make a living.

“I felt I was just as capable as those making more money and thought maybe I should go out and see what I could do,” said Berke, 48.

“Was I going to be a teacher all my life? I wondered that, and I was jealous when we’d go to a party and the guy would have bought a new motor home or someone would tell me he just got a $20,000 bonus. That was about what I made in a year,” said Berke, who was actually making about $30,000 a year in 1979, when he decided to leave teaching.

‘Potential for More’

When a neighbor offered Berke a sales position at Bowmar-Noble, a textbook publisher then based in Pasadena, he took it. “He offered me about $3,000 more than my current salary, with the potential for more and an expense account. And it was related to education.”

Berke was granted a leave from the district in 1979, but he says that when he left, it was with the intention of leaving teaching forever. “I wasn’t a happy person when I left Agoura High. The decision to start something new, the promise of something better, was exciting,” he said.

As a textbook salesman, Berke met with teachers and explained how materials could be used, even did some sample teaching to demonstrate how the programs could be applied in the classroom. “I never had the mentality that I really had to make the sale, yet I did extremely well,” he said. “I was always in the top five salesmen in the United States, sometimes No. 1 in California.”

Berke switched to another publishing house, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, based in San Francisco, after Bowmar-Noble was sold. By then he was making even better money--”about $6,000 more than when I was teaching,” with a company car and travel benefits.

“But after a year, I realized that at the end of the day, the satisfaction was strictly monetary,” he said. “After you’ve taught school for awhile, it was an empty feeling. You really haven’t left your mark on anything. You know you’re not going to get rich teaching, but it’s satisfying. I wasn’t having as much time with my family as I would have had if I were teaching.”

‘Not That Materialistic’

Berke realized that he enjoyed being in a classroom with students. “I just really found I’m not that materialistic. The third TV doesn’t make up for your feelings. It’d be nice to have a new car, but I’d rather enjoy my work.”

Richard F. Stewart says that if it weren’t for his high-income, 10-year stint practicing law, he wouldn’t be able to have the pleasure of driving his beloved Volvo. And he says that if he hadn’t made the mid-life career switch to law, he wouldn’t have the savings cushion or the little luxuries he now enjoys.

Stewart, 59, taught for 18 years in the San Fernando Valley--at Hughes Junior High (now West Valley Occupational Center in Woodland Hills), Taft High in Woodland Hills and Olive Vista Junior High in Sylmar. His mother was a teacher in the Los Angeles district for 42 years, and an uncle and an aunt were teachers. So he considered teaching a natural choice after working six months as a technical editor for Douglas Aircraft when he was just out of college.

But in addition to wanting to teach, he always had a fascination with the law. He said he almost started law school in 1964, but got married instead. Then he found himself working full time and more, using several night teaching jobs to help support his family, which soon included seven children.

At 40, Stewart enrolled in the University of the San Fernando Valley School of Law. He eventually became a partner in a general law practice in Victorville, specializing in real estate.

‘Working All the Time’

“But after 10 years, I was still working all the time. There was only one time I had more than four days off in a row. And while I represented a lot of fine, honest people, I spent some time representing dishonest people too,” he said. “Once in a while I’d have a case that was really doing a public service, but not often.”

So yearning to return to Los Angeles and tired of the small-town atmosphere of Victorville, Stewart realized that he wanted to go back to teaching. “I also wanted an opportunity to pay my dues. I was one of those San Fernando Valley liberals, so I thought I should do something I believed in and asked for an east-side school,” he said.

He ended up in the humanities program at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, teaching 12th-grade government and economics. Stewart said that when he left the practice of law in 1985, he was making $75,000 to $85,000 a year, plus another $10,000 to $15,000 he put into a retirement fund annually. In 1985, when he returned to teaching, his salary was $37,500. “You really notice that difference,” he said.

He also noticed a change in the way that people reacted to what he did for a living. When Stewart told people he was a lawyer, they were interested in talking to him and seemed to respect him. Now when he says he’s a teacher, it is a conversation stopper. “There’s little prestige in teaching,” he said.

“Sometimes I wish I were back practicing law,” he said. “But every day all of my clients--my students--are glad to see me. That’s nice. I work hard, not nearly as hard as I did as a lawyer, but I think what I do at Lincoln High is more important than what I was doing in law.”