Quit Teaching; What I Should Have Considered Before Becoming a Teacher

• I chose the teaching profession to communicate with children and help them – the work was not what I expected.
• As a teacher, I valued student relationships, but performance evaluation was focused on other metrics.
• After six years I quit. Here’s what I wish I knew before I chose this career.

I had many good reasons why I decided to become a teacher, including job security and set a good example for my son. But after six years of teaching middle and high school English, I leaving the profession forever. This is not because I consider myself a bad teacher, but because it took me a while to accept that teaching was not for me.

Here’s what I wish I knew before choosing this career.

The part of teaching that meant the most to me was not appreciated.

What I enjoyed most about teaching was building relationships with students, especially the difficult ones that other people had given up on. I became a teacher to connect with these kids because I was one of them.

My personal barometer of success was realizing that these difficult students suddenly hugged me or stopped by between classes just to see me. I knew I had reached them and could help them. boost their confidence and see your value in the world.

The problem with me seeing this as success was that it didn’t mean much to my managers. As a teacher, I was assessed on skills such as classroom management, curriculum pacing, and test scores. Although I always prioritized the impact I knew I had on my students’ self-esteem, this was not what I wanted to do. labor productivity was rated at.

Training has proven to have a low return on investment

After a few years, I began to realize that much of what made me want to continue teaching was sunk cost fallacy. I had spent so much time trying to become a teacher and learn how to be a good teacher, and I didn’t want those efforts to be in vain.

Even though teaching took more out of me than it gave me, I didn’t want to give it up because of how much I had spent to become one.

You shouldn’t plan your life around work

Not only did I spend much of my past teaching, but many of my future plans also depended on becoming a teacher.

When my son finally gets to high school, I wanted to be able to teach at his school so I could look after him. High school This is a defining moment for a young man and I wanted to be able to point him in the right direction if I saw him going down the wrong path.

When I left the profession, I was only one school year away from teaching at the same school as my son.

The breaks were nice on paper, but I was too exhausted to enjoy them.

In many ways, I became a teacher because I wanted to have the same schedule as my son. I also didn’t want to have the extra expense and stress of searching childcare during school holidays.

I liked the idea of ​​having free time during the year that I wouldn’t even have to ask for. The problem was that I was so tired from a day of teaching that most days I felt like I was struggling to show up at home in front of my family. And when those breaks finally came, all I wanted was to rest, not travel.

I was sick of work – literally.

Since I began teaching six years ago, I have encountered health problems that I believe were caused by stress this happens with teaching in high school.

The healthiest I’ve felt in the last six years was when we had to close for six months due to the pandemic. At first, I thought I would adapt to teaching, thinking that over time the work would become easier and that I would find ways to cope with stress better. But after throwing my back out one too many times, I’ve come to the conclusion that this job is literally breaking my back. I felt like my body was begging me to take care of myself and make some changes.

I’m looking forward to my future

Bye my next step in career I’m not sure, my health is already improving.

I always wanted to have a job where I could help others, and I knew I was doing that with my students. But the worse I felt about teaching, the more I realized that I couldn’t help myself.

Someone asked me what I would tell my son if he were in my situation, and the answer was obvious. I would tell him to leave. Although helping my students was extremely rewarding, I finally realized that I was not showing up for my family the way I wanted to because work was taking away everything I had to give, including my own well-being.

It wasn’t easy to give up what I thought would be my lifelong career, but my body is already thanking me for it. As scary as it was to have to start my career all over again, I know I made the right decision.