Samira Hardcastle had dreamed of becoming a teacher ever since she was in kindergarten.
By age 31, she’d accomplished her goal and even earned some recognition to boot. Hardcastle’s the reigning teacher of the year at John F. Kennedy Middle School, and she was also one of 25 educators selected as Blue Ribbon Teacher Award winners by the Nashville Public Education Foundation in late 2025.
But now, her dream is over.
Less than a year after earning those recognitions, Hardcastle has left her job as an art teacher with Metro Nashville Public Schools, which she resigned from after the 2025-2026 school year. She wrote in her resignation letter that district leaders asked her to fabricate a grade to pacify an irate parent and that she was concerned about
everything from teacher pay to students’ lack of basic literacy and the related behavioral issues that stem from their learning struggles.
She now says she’ll never teach again.
“It’s heartbreaking, but I just don’t want to deal with it,” Hardcastle said. “I won’t be back to it, at least not in that capacity.”
Thanks in part to high-profile public comments delivered at a recent MNPS Board of Education meeting, Hardcastle’s now embarking on something of a media tour. She said she’s heard from all sorts of people who said her experience resonated with them.
MNPS, for its part, is pushing back on Hardcastle’s claims.
What forced a former teacher of the year out of the education field entirely
There are many reasons why Hardcastle says her dream soured, and not all of them were recent developments.
She actually quit teaching once before, after two years in Murfreesboro before the COVID-19 pandemic, because she was living paycheck to paycheck. But the serving job Hardcastle took on Lower Broadway after that wasn’t making ends meet, either, which led to her six-year stint at John F. Kennedy Middle School.
MNPS has maintained a fairly steady teacher retention rate over the past several years. Braisted said the district doesn't yet have data for the 2025-2026 school year, but in the previous academic year MNPS kept 86.20% of its teaching staff. That's in line with the statewide teacher retention rate of 87.8% for 2024-2025.
Hardcastle's resignation letter opened with several paragraphs of gratitude for her former school building administrators, and she said her concerns are more systemic in nature, like kids who Hardcastle said at a middle school level couldn’t even write their own names.
She does criticize how MNPS handled one parent, who she said harassed her and other teachers.
Hardcastle said that parent's child failed to complete an art assignment or take advantage of her classroom retake policy last fall, and the parent came to the school demanding the grade be changed.
MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted said administrators decided the student should be allowed to complete the art assignment since “there was no written schoolwide policy at the time that prohibited the student from being given an opportunity to complete the work.” Braisted said after it was submitted, the school’s principal, not Hardcastle, reviewed the assignment and gave it a grade.
“The principal did not select a score for the purpose of producing a particular final course grade,” Braisted said. “The resulting course grade was the mathematical result of the score assigned to the completed work. Based on the information available to us, it therefore would not be accurate to characterize this as the district simply changing a student’s grade at a parent’s request.”
But beyond her grading concerns, Hardcastle said that parent also serves as an example of a lack of protection and support for MNPS teachers.
She tied the overarching issue to the January 2025 Antioch High School shooting, when a 17-year-old student shot and killed classmate Josselin Corea Escalante before turning the gun on himself. Hardcastle in her letter said teachers complained about the shooter, who had attended John F. Kennedy Middle School, but nothing was done.
Asked whether MNPS had performed any sort of investigation into those complaints, Braisted said the district is prohibited from disclosing information contained in a student's education records without written parental consent.
Hardcastle also said MNPS teachers are unable to suspend students for certain disruptive behaviors, forcing teachers instead to keep them in class. Braisted said that allegation has not been substantiated at Hardcastle’s former school building or districtwide.
“We encourage our schools to provide positive supports that address the root causes of behavioral challenges while also holding students accountable for their actions,” Braisted said.
What comes next?
While MNPS has responded to media inquiries about Hardcastle’s statements, she said the district has yet to reach out to her directly.
“And I don’t want them to,” Hardcastle said. “I think that sends a bigger message. Their silence is louder than an email.”
From here, Hardcastle said she’s not sure exactly what her goal has become. She’s certainly not diving headfirst into the advocacy space; Hardcastle said that’s a lot to tackle on her own.
She does, however, plan on continuing to attend school board meetings and is circulating a petition calling for reforms that prioritize teacher safety and wellness.
In Hardcastle’s eyes, the ideal outcome here would be that district leaders “change their views on the education system” and put kids first, whether that means being honest about student outcomes or something else.
“I think that alone, just taking accountability, would go a long way because once you admit there’s a problem, people see that there is, we can start doing a solution,” Hardcastle said. “But if you keep saying, ‘No, we’re great, we’re the best district in the world,’ that’s so irritating because people think, you know, they don’t need to do anything.”
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him with questions, tips and story ideas at ahornbostel@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why a teacher of the year says she's quitting education for good
