By Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute
May 27, 2025
After 32 years in the classroom, I’m officially retiring from teaching high school math. It’s a bittersweet goodbye to a profession I have loved since the day I first picked up a piece of chalk in 1991 to teach Algebra 1.
Back then, the biggest classroom distractions were passing notes or staring out the window. We had calculators—fancy stuff at the time—but no internet, no smartphones, and certainly no TikTok. When students got bored, they daydreamed. Now, they scroll.
A lot has changed in education over the past three decades. These days, teaching feels like a blend of educator, counselor, tech support, and sometimes even referee. The goal is still the same—help students learn and grow—but the road to get there has many more detours. Students face more distractions, and attention spans are shorter than ever. Ask any teacher today and they’ll tell you: the smartphone is our toughest competitor.
In my first two decades of teaching, field trips were the norm, pep sessions were frequent, and group projects encouraged collaboration and creativity. Then came the era of testing. “Time on task” became the mantra, and standardized tests became the measure of student—and teacher—success. The General Assembly rolled out a series of reforms that often felt more like experiments than improvements. We were told to teach to the test. And when students didn’t meet some arbitrary benchmark, the blame too often landed on the teacher.
Then came another shift. Over the last ten years, public education in Indiana has been forced to do much more with less. Budget constraints, coupled with a growing agenda to divert public dollars away from public schools and instead to private education, have left our public schools stretched far too thin. Class sizes have ballooned. Field trips and enrichment opportunities have shrunk. Resources for struggling students have dried up. And perhaps most troubling of all—our teacher pipeline is running dangerously dry.
It’s no surprise. We ask more of our educators than ever before, yet we offer them less support, stagnant salaries, dwindling respect, and often overt hostility. And let me say this plainly: Everyone thinks they can teach—until they try to do it. There is no app for patience, no shortcut for relationship-building, and no substitute for a caring, experienced educator standing in front of a room of students who need so much more than just a lesson plan.
Despite all this, I wouldn’t trade my time in the classroom for anything. I got to witness those “lightbulb moments” when a student finally grasped a tough concept. I got to cheer them on through their successes, help them through heartbreaks, and remind them they were capable of more than they knew. We laughed, we struggled, and yes—we learned.
As I step away from teaching, I remain committed to public education and to public service. I’ll continue my work in the Indiana General Assembly as a state representative, where I’ve been proud to serve as one of only two active educators—and the only Democrat still teaching. That perspective matters.
I’ve lived the policies we debate. I’ve seen their impact in real time. And I will keep fighting for practical, student-first solutions that support teachers, strengthen our schools, and help working Hoosier families get ahead.
Indiana needs to invest in its educators—because our kids deserve the best. That means funding classrooms, supporting teachers, and inspiring the next generation to step up and lead. The future of our state depends on the learners we’re teaching today.
And while I may be trading the chalkboard for legislative white papers, I’ll always be a teacher at heart. Once a teacher, always a teacher.
Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, was first election to the Indiana General Assembly in November 2018. She is the ranking minority member on the House Agriculture and Rural Development Committee and she serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Education Committee. She was inspired to become a teacher by her mother, Nancy, who was her elementary school teacher at St. Ann School. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
