I thought about how to leave the teaching profession for a long time before I did it. When the administration treated me more like a cog than a professional, I thought about quitting teaching and not looking back. I even went to get a job outside of education one summer to test it out. Unfortunately, a terrible boss scared me back to teaching.

So many teachers feel that way. They want to leave, yet they feel like they can’t. Yet, the system in place keeps them locked in a system that doesn’t afford them chances to grow or look for a new path.

Here’s why it took me so long to leave the teaching profession.

Stability

Many would think that teachers stay for the students. The parental-like love of students keeps so many teachers stuck doing things they don’t want to do, like staying in a profession that doesn’t treat you well. For me, though, the stability kept me in my classroom.

For the longest time, I never felt like I could leave the teaching profession until I found the next thing that would bring in a paycheck and give structure to my life. I don’t recommend anyone jumping into the abyss of the unknown without some support.

I stayed because I needed money. As my family grew, I stayed to help provide a good life for them. I’m lucky to have a loving wife who wants more for me and makes enough money to support us while I look for something else. Not every teacher has that.

Of course, teachers could try to save enough money to think about quitting teaching, but most teachers’ lack of quality pay keeps them locked into those yearly contracts. It isn’t easy to save enough money to take a leap when you already have to get extra jobs to provide enough to survive.

Teaching offers stability. Trying to change your career after years in the classroom can rock that stability. Still, many find the working conditions and professional respect vanishing quickly. It became apparent things wouldn’t be changing anytime soon and that my heart had moved on to something else.

I Thought I Lacked the Skills to Leave

I went to college, got my degree, and did all the teacher training to help make me a teacher. I never thought more schooling would benefit me much since having a master’s or doctorate only offered a thousand-dollar increase in salary per year. I didn’t see the reward for getting more education.

As I began to think about looking into other avenues, getting more education in another field became next to impossible. Once again, the pay I brought home barely covered the bills at home. How could I spend thousands of dollars on more education that wouldn’t bring me but tens of dollars each paycheck? My district did offer an incentive to get your master’s or more, but they only offered to cover one thousand dollars a semester. Last time I checked, college cost a little more than that.

I couldn’t afford to take more courses to further my education and still be there for my family. Of course, I would be investing in my future, but going into debt didn’t feel like an option.

I didn’t believe that my teaching skills gave me marketable skills and that I couldn’t do anything but teach.

But that’s not true at all.

While most of my skills are tailored to working with students, those skills can transfer into the workforce. Teachers have skills. They have just been conditioned not to recognize or value them.

Teachers Have No Time

Also, I didn’t have the time in the day to add more education, job hunt, or interview. When school started, I would work more than sixty hours a week. What time I had left, I used to spend with family and friends or recover from the week.

That left me in a tight spot when I wanted to go. I felt like I didn’t have the skills to succeed in a profession outside of education.

I would leave my house by 6:15 a.m. on a typical day. I would be lucky to get home by 5 p.m. I would be so drained from dealing with kids and admin that I only wanted to watch trash TV. On days when my tennis team had competitions, I left the house by 5:15 AM to get a bus. I would travel and compete all day, lucky to get home by 7 PM.

There was no time for me to get in classes, much less look for another job.

I knew I needed to be home more when I discovered we would have another child. My plan was to get out of coaching so I could get more time back with my family and get more training in freelance writing. Unfortunately, that’s not how it went down, but it did lead me to quit teaching.

Let’s say I managed to get an interview. There wouldn’t be a great time to go to the interview without taking a day off from teaching.

When a teacher misses a day, there is much more to it than just calling in. We still have to come up with plans for the day. We have to distill what we had planned for the day into something a substitute could do with the limited access to the school’s technology. Not to mention, maybe the substitute didn’t have much background in the subject matter. They couldn’t offer much help.

Also, teachers are on such a tight schedule. If we miss a day, we often would have to make up that teaching time down the road, leading into the test. So, naturally, we avoid taking our days off if we can help it.

Getting time to look, apply, and even interview for a position outside of education is difficult for many reasons.

The Kids

Finally, the kids made it tough to leave.

Many kids in the classroom today aren’t what they were like when I started teaching. I felt like I developed a better relationship with many of the kids in my classroom at the beginning of my tenure versus the end. That might come down to the larger gap in our age, me getting fed up with everything, or that kids today are more distracted by social media and smartphones than ever before, but I didn’t form a bond with these students like I used to.

That said, I did have some great students. Students who interacted with me like a human and not just a robot who told them to put their distractions away and get some practice in.

But I stayed because I knew that I could help them.

I will never forget when students wrote me a note or told me they learned more from my English class than any other. I will never forget the excitement and emotions that ran out of them when I got to tell students that they finally passed the state exam. I’ve had students come back and tell me, in jest, that they hate me because I taught them story structure. Now, they can’t watch a movie without figuring out what will come next.

Those moments kept me going, even when things got tough.

Being a coach complicates leaving even more. Not many teachers on campus get to work with the same student for four years in a row, but coaches do. As I got closer to the end of my career, I’d have freshmen or sophomore players telling me that I had to stay until they graduated. But every year, you get new freshmen that feel the same way.

I wanted to see all my players finish their careers. I wanted to take them as far as I could in the sport. But I got stuck because I would get twenty new students I wanted to help every year.

Things had to get bad enough for me to say, finally, I need to do this for me, my sanity, and my family.

But seeing these kids progress, learn, and change makes it hard to leave the profession.

The sad thing is the people in power know this and use it to their advantage. They know that teachers will keep the students in mind, so they force them into things like low wages or going back to school when they don’t have a grasp of the current pandemic.

Teachers will do anything for the kids.

But like they tell you on an airplane, you must put your mask on before putting on your kid’s mask. Teachers need to take care of themselves before they take care of others. Otherwise, they will burn out.

How I’ll Leave the Teaching Profession

I’m so lucky to have a partner who can help support me. I don’t have all the answers on the journey yet. Hell, I don’t even have a job at the moment, but I will figure it out.

I can say as the teachers all went back to school and the tennis teams started competing, I didn’t miss it at all. I feel less stressed and more free than in the last thirteen years.

I can plan something on a Friday night for once since I don’t have tennis or a mountain of grading or planning to do.

I am worried about money and what’s next, but I’m confident I will figure it out. It might take me a while, but I will.

If you want to leave teaching but don’t have a good partner, I encourage you to start looking for another job or training and try to fit it in where you can. Let you take priority over your classroom for once.

I think that teachers can do anything.

Leaving

The deck is stacked against a teacher leaving. The system doesn’t want you to go, and they don’t want you to take care of yourself. They want you to be a cog in the system. To keep turning.

Look, I don’t hate education. I think it is the most crucial thing in the world. I spent most of my life teaching; even before entering the public education system, I taught tennis lessons. I love teaching. But I have been so burned out by the experience. Looking back, I see how much the deck has been stacked against teachers. Plus, there are many ways that I want to improve education.

So, if you feel stuck or want out of teaching but can’t figure out how I want to assure you that you can. The machine will continue to function without you. You need to take care of yourself. You are a talented angel and deserve more than you’re getting now.

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