Life Update: I Quit My Teaching Job

If you asked me five years ago if I would still be a teacher in five years, my answer would be yes. I always had a passion for teaching. My passion came from poor experiences that I had in elementary and middle school, and I knew that I did not want other students to have the experiences that I had. I wanted to connect with students and help them love school and learning. I especially wanted students to love social studies, and break the stigma that social studies class is nothing but reading a boring text and answering questions.

After I graduated college, I worked tirelessly in my first few years of teaching to bring history to life in my classroom. I would arrive to school at 6:00 am and work before the students arrived, and would work after hours until 6 or 7 at night to redesign, plan, and prepare for the following day. The best part about this was that it didn’t feel like work at all. I absolutely loved designing fun and engaging lessons for my students, and I got so much joy from seeing the excitement on their faces as they used inquiry-based practices to unveil parts of our past. I felt appreciated, loved, and like I truly was making a difference in the lives of my students. Not only was I validated by my students, but I felt appreciated by my administration. During observations, my admin would leave kind notes around my classroom with positives, and gave me valuable feedback on my practices. I was given the time to observe other teachers in my building to learn from them, and had opportunities to choose professional development conferences that I felt would be beneficial to me and my classroom.

It is no surprise that things shifted with the pandemic; I mean, everyone’s lives were flipped upside down. For me, one of the best parts of teaching was the connections that I had with my students. In March of 2020, I wrote every single one of my students (yes, all 176 of them) a handwritten letter and sent it to their home as we navigated the scary time. I reassured them that even though we weren’t in the classroom, I was still there to support them, just an email or Zoom call away. Just as I did in a normal school year, I worked tirelessly to design lessons that students would be able to complete online to help them continue learning. I would make videos of myself teaching and record myself speaking to help with additional support. At the end of the 2020 school year, teachers were heroes. We all deserved a million dollars. We are underappreciated and have the patience of a saint.

I knew that the 2020-2021 school year was going to be different, but I was not prepared for the mental roller coaster that I was about to ride. Although we had to wear masks and social distance, I expected myself to fall into the same routine of connecting with my students, creating engaging lessons, and making social studies exciting for them. Last year was the exact opposite of all of those things. There are many reasons that contributed to my resignation, so to help keep this post organized, I’m going to break them up and discuss a little bit about each reason.

Lack of Support

As I mentioned, at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, teachers were finally recognized for all of the work they have been doing for years. Come the 2020-2021 school year, we were back to being the devil. We are not accommodating enough, we are not understanding, we are too mean, we didn’t teach the topic well enough, and the list goes on. To be frank, I encountered quite a few parents who treated me as though I am not a professional, and they can do this job better than me. I had a handful of parents talk down to me, and say some very nasty things. When those situations occurred, I was not greeted with support from my administration, which made the situations even harder.

Burnout

Teacher burnout is very obvious and has been in the news a lot recently. You truly cannot understand the teacher burnout unless you have experience in education. As I mentioned, I work a lot of extra hours to make learning experiences special for my students. During the school day, teachers always have to be on. We never get a moment to sit at our desk and do work. We are presenting for 8 hours a day! We are speaking all day, we are constantly being called over to a student or facilitating learning. So, what changed from before the pandemic to now? I no longer feel valued. I continue to put in a lot of hours to create unique and engaging learning experiences, communicating with parents, attending professional learning, and students do not appreciate it. They would much rather play games on their phones and computers, which I have been fighting a lot over the past two years. Rather than engaging in the lesson, they are playing computer games, which then leads to not performing well on assessments. When those students don’t perform well on assessments, then I receive angry emails from parents that I am not doing enough to support their child. It seems like a never-ending cycle, and it is exhausting.

Disrespect

I went to school for four years in my undergrad to become a teacher, and I have a Master’s in Education. I think it’s safe to say that I know my stuff when it comes to being an educator. Not to toot my own horn, but there are a lot of areas where I am incredibly skilled, such as curriculum design, classroom management, and assessments. However, my time is often wasted attending professional development sessions that “teach” me strategies or topics that I am already using or I learned in college. I feel as though my time is not respected, and as a teacher who already dedicates so many hours to the profession, this is infuriating. I want to be the best educator that I can be, and in order to do that, I need training in areas that I am not strong in. I want to learn more about standards based grading, interventions and extensions, but I am never given the opportunity to do so. The administration at my previous school did not hear our voices when we asked for this, but rather continued to plan trainings in areas that our staff is already skilled in. We will stay after school to sit in meetings where we are told the same thing over and over and over.

Not only is my time disrespected, but behaviors from students, parents and administration also have me feeling disrespected. To be completely honest, the behaviors I have witnessed in students is scary. I have had students say every swear word in the book to me. I have had numerous physical fights in my classroom that put the other students at risk. Parents tell me I am not doing my job well enough, and when I raise concerns to my administration, I am also told that I am not doing enough. For example, in a team meeting earlier this year, my principal sat our team down to tell us that the reason we have all of these student behaviors is because we are not doing enough, and we need to do more. Which leads me to my next grievance….

Student Behaviors and Lack of Discipline

As mentioned previously, the increase in disrespectful student behavior is very concerning to me. What is more concerning is how schools are handling it, which, in reality, they are not. The perfect example: in 2019, a fight broke out in my classroom while I was in the middle of teaching. Two students were making rude remarks to each other that I couldn’t hear (because, hello, I was trying to teach…), and they ended up in a fight. Long story short, I got a concussion. I was out of school for two weeks. Did the two students who got in a fight have any consequences? No. No detention, no suspension. Did the student who gave me the concussion have any consequences? No. The parents were not even notified that it happened. When I returned to school two weeks later once I was cleared, both of those students were still in my classroom, and I was expected to forgive them and continue teaching like nothing happened.

If you are a teacher, then you know that schools today are focused on numbers rather than supporting teachers. On the outside, when a school has low suspension rates, you would think it’s a great school with few behavior problems! The reality is that schools all over the U.S. today are being told to lower their suspension and discipline numbers. So, the behaviors are still there, but nothing is being done about them. It is frowned upon to assign a student detention, or suspend them for their actions. As mentioned above, I will be called every profane name in the book, and absolutely nothing will happen to that student. When I call home to report the behavior, I am questioned as to what I did to entice that behavior. When there are no disciplinary consequences, students continue those negative behaviors. When their peers notice that they do not get in trouble for their actions, then they start performing those negative behaviors, too. It is a cycle, and it is getting far, far worse.

If you follow along on Instagram, then you know that I have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression this year. I no longer feel like I am making a difference in students lives, because they are not coming to school to learn, but to socialize and play games. I feel exhausted from still giving a 110% effort and being told constantly that I am not doing enough by parents, my administration, and society. I am tired of being disrespected and not treated like a professional. I am worth so much more. I can do great things, and I know that I am an asset to any community that I join. I am aware of my capabilities, and I no longer want to be apart of something that does not value them.

If you are a fellow teacher, I am here for you. I understand every single feeling that you are feeling and every thought that goes through your mind. You are worth more. I see how hard you are working, and I appreciate you for that. I know how hard it will be to walk away, if you believe that is the right decision for you. My last day at work was horrible. I cried and cried and cried. I still question if I made the right decision, but deep down, I know that I did. I know that walking away from the classroom will allow me to heal and give me time to focus on my mental health. Maybe someday I will be able to return to the classroom, but right now, society has to make a lot of changes to the education system that will allow for positive environments for everyone involved.

I feel like I could go on and on, but I have already written a novel! If you have questions or comments, feel free to leave them here or message me on my Instagram account.