How I Knew It Was Time For Me to Quit Teaching

Today’s post is a little bit vulnerable. I am going to share how I knew it was time for me to quit teaching. If you have been wrestling with whether it is time for a career change, I hope that you find some encouragement here.

The world needs compassionate and committed teachers and I thank you for everything that you do if you are a teacher or someone who supports a teacher! ❤️

But I also believe that we have a duty to not only our students, but also to ourselves and our families. Today I will be sharing ways that I knew it was time for me to quit teaching, even though I didn’t foresee it being my last year of teaching. You may have different reasons for considering a new career path.

Thinking about leaving teaching for a different career path?

I feel like this question feels much weightier for those in the teaching profession due to all of the kids involved. We know we are making a difference and earnestly want to make the world a better place. We truly do have a heart for our students and their families.

But what about the kids?

There are still many ways to love and care about children without being a classroom teacher.

You can’t quit something that you started!

Actually yes, you can and sometimes should.

Sometimes the toll of wearing so many different hats, the often unrealistic demands and lack of resources starts weighing so heavily that you start to lose yourself outside of the classroom.

This is what happened to me.

I want to be very clear that I do not believe that it is the right choice for every person who is feeling frustrated to just quit teaching and leave the classroom.

All jobs have ups and downs. We all have different circumstances in our districts, buildings and in our own personal lives. Some of us may have felt called to work in education, as I did. But even then, that calling is sometimes only for a time, even if initially teaching was your dream job.

Read another post about New Beginnings here:

A New Beginning | Saying “Yes” to a Calling

Some questions to ask yourself when thinking about leaving teaching:

Is your life outside of work being significantly impacted by the demands of your job?
Do you have time and energy to pursue hobbies and interests outside of the classroom?
Do you feel refreshed after weekends or breaks, or are you living from break to break?
How many more years do you have in the education system until retirement?
Can you afford to take a pay cut if needed? (Although this is not always necessary)
Do you travel extensively or care for little ones over the summer?
Would a change to a new school or district help you to enjoy your job again?
Do you live near school districts where it would be relatively easy to get hired into a new teaching position?

The Teacher Career Coach Resources

Daphne Gomez at The Teacher Career Coach offers valuable resources to help you decide if quitting teaching is the right move for you. I used them during my career transition and I encourage you to check them out! You can also find her on LinkedIn here.

Some resources she offers include:

Things to consider before resigning
How your skills can transfer to a different job path, including the corporate world
Common fields and positions that an experienced teacher can transition into
How to update your resume to show that many of your teaching skills are transferable to a new field

A Valuable Realization about Changing Careers

I am in my forties and was raised by parents from a generation that often believes that you pick a job as a young adult, work that job for your entire career, contribute to a retirement or pension plan and then retire from that company or career. For many of them, there really wasn’t a lot of moving around or switching to a new career.

People used to stay in their jobs longer and also in their hometowns and houses longer. But the world has really changed.

A valuable realization that I made once I starting looking for new career opportunities and building my community on LinkedIn was that outside of education, people seem to move companies every few years. That does not seem to be keeping people in other industries from finding new work. In many cases it is advantageous for them to take their skills and experience and move up, but at a different company, rather than waiting for years for promotion at their current one.

But in education, we are made to feel as if we are to spend our entire careers doing the same thing, even if the expectations continue to grow while the resources and supports do not.

Many teachers now find the demands of their positions vastly different from their first year of teaching.

How I Knew it was Time to Quit Teaching

In my last teaching position, I was working in an urban district in special education. All of my 9 years of teaching experience were either in urban districts, special education or both. I do not regret any of the time that I spent in the classroom and have grown in important ways professionally and as an individual. And most importantly, I believe that I made a positive impact in the lives of my students and their families.

But, my last position was very challenging and physically demanding in ways that I was not comfortable with. I was driving from 10-14 sites around the city to provide services for up to 40 students per week and at the end of the day, I was just exhausted. I understand that it was a privilege that I had an option to choose to move out of that situation and that not everybody does.

Covid and the Classroom

On top of an already challenging position, Covid hit public schools and it hit hard. Over those couple of years, the district where I was working went fully remote for a lot longer than neighboring districts. This put me at home, trying to deliver teletherapy sessions via computer to very young children with special needs. Like all teachers at that time, we were building the airplane as we were flying it.

My husband worked from home, I was now working from home and my own children were on a hybrid model, at home a couple of days a week and at school, wearing masks and social distancing, the other days.

When we finally went back to in-person teaching, the toll of these young students having been out of the classroom for so long, many not receiving the supports that they needed, had made the needs even greater. This made our already limited resources feel even more limited. Students who struggled with mental health before struggled even more after returning. My fellow teachers were stressed as the toll that remote learning had taken became more apparent each day.

It was hard to find my joy outside of work and my personal care was suffering.

This lack of work-life balance really started to take a toll on me. I wasn’t eating right, wasn’t getting the exercise I needed. My stress levels were at an all-time high and I was experiencing teacher burnout. I would come home and just want to lay on the couch. I never felt refreshed after the weekend going into the next week.

The way I was able to show up as a wife, mother and friend was really being impacted in a way that I was not comfortable with. I began struggling with anxiety, which had long been kept at bay.

The people who I worked with in my program were truly remarkable, wonderful people and friends who are good teachers committed to student success. I wish I could have stayed based on that alone, but it just wasn’t enough to offset the exhaustion I was feeling on a daily basis. It was not easy to leave my teaching career, but I felt my personal life was suffering too greatly to stay. There was no easy way to bridge the gap between the lack of resources and unrealistic expectations upon returning to the classroom after Covid.

What was my next move?

I would not recommend this, but I resigned from my teaching job without having another job lined up. This was a real risk and not one that I would recommend, but it ended up being the right decision for me and my family. I needed to have income, but with our circumstances, my husband and I made the choice for me to take off the end of the school year and summer while we transitioned our oldest child to college.

This gave me enough time to complete some training courses, including the Teacher Career Coach course. I worked on building a network on LinkedIn and updated my resume. I did some interviews.

Ultimately, I didn’t end up transitioning into EdTech or SaaS sales like I thought I would. I took a temporary remote job at a university and a few months later was hired into a permanent remote position.

Benefits of My New Position

In my current situation, I get to work from home, which has allowed me to take better care for my physical health, and transition out of constant state of fight or flight. Sometimes I take my dogs for a walk at lunch and I am making healthier meals. Two other benefits are that when I am done with work, I don’t think about it until the next day. This has freed up so much of my energy to pursue other things that I enjoy. Although I did not get higher pay, I get the added benefit of a scholarship to offset my daughter’s tuition.

My current position wasn’t necessarily what I thought I wanted initially, but it ended up being what I needed.

On a recent walk, I was listening to a podcast and the speaker was talking about how we have to be willing to leave one thing before we can move on to the next.

In the Bible, the Israelites had to leave Egypt before they could get to the promised land. When God called them out of Egypt, they didn’t know where the promised land was or when they would get there. And ultimately their lack of trust had them wandering in the desert for 40 years.

My point here is that there is a time to stay and there is a time to go. It is ultimately up to you which it will be. But I encourage you to pray about it and ask for discernment.

If you need help getting going with prayer, check out this post:

CHAT- A Prayer Template for When You Don’t Know What to Pray

One of the best things that has come from my choice to quit teaching has been writing blog posts like this, which is a seed that has been planted in my spirit for many years. There was no way that I would have been able to pursue this dream without having been willing to step out of “Egypt.”