I finally quit teaching. And I am so much happier.
It wasn’t the kids. It wasn’t the act of teaching. It was the politics of teaching that made me quit after 10 years.
I resigned from my full-time teaching job at the end of the 2018 school year to start a writing business (read: to make way less money and be totally insecure financially).
Even though I’m living off spaghetti and toast, my days are so much more fulfilling.
I apologize in advance to the teachers who may read this and think that I am an entitled adult who doesn’t want to put the time in for our youth. I really did try. And I was good. I was an excellent teacher. Teaching can be very rewarding, and the world needs good teachers who really enjoy going to school every day. But teaching is HARD and I started to really hate going to work every day. I lost my drive - and it sucked for me, and it sucked for my students.
My writing business isn’t paying all my bills quite yet (but it will someday, oh yes, it will). So this year, I am going to be a teacher’s sub so that I can focus on writing.
And substitute teaching is such a better gig than full-time teaching. Here’s why:
Right now: I’m writing this article with complete enjoyment. What I am not doing is spending all day in a hot classroom creating charts, creating a new grade-book, labeling file folders, emailing parents, and setting up overnight learning opportunities for my students and their parents. For the last 10 years, mid-August marked the end of fun, the end of lake time (I live near a group of lakes), and the end of doing anything but focusing on my classroom.
I won’t work on the weekends (unless I choose to). I won’t bring work home to be completed after my daughter goes to bed. I won’t stress about my classroom/students/parents/administration at night when I’m trying to sleep. I won’t work for free over the summer either. Full-time teachers do. They may not work every day — but they work. Perusing the thrift store for classroom items is work. Shopping for new science lessons on teacherspayteachers.com, and finding new supplies, is work. Thinking about how next year will be better. This is all work.
I will pick and choose when I work, where I work, and for which grade I work. And there is plenty of it. I can work every day, or I can take the week off.
What a shame though. My lofty dreams of making a difference in today’s youth was squashed by meetings with difficult parents, weekly staff meetings, grading assessments, analyzing said assessments to plan my next lessons, differentiating these lessons to accommodate my English language learners, my SPED kids, and my kids with different learning personalities. THEN — I had to make sure those lessons were aligned with my state’s standards and Common Core.
Which is fine; that is the job of a teacher. But I wasn’t being paid enough to cover the cost my student loans, my rent, and other financial obligations. So I had to work a second job as a bartender. And even with these two jobs, I would never be able to afford a house in the community whose children I serve.
I tried tutoring after school as another income stream until parents balked at me for charging too much. (I cost less than a private yoga lesson.) Why is it that our culture values Yoga over a child’s education?
I was fed up.
Then my daughter was born, and when she was 8 months old, I kicked out my alcoholic husband. I was now a single mother, working two jobs, and I was utterly overwhelmed.
So I quit teaching last year to be totally insecure financially and start a writing business.
It’s scary AF, but the thing that really keeps me going is that there are so many writers out there who are inspirational and I can’t help thinking that I can do that too. They aren’t smarter than me or better than me. They may be better writers than me, at least at this point, because I am just beginning my writer’s journey — but I know I can succeed too.
And guess what — if you’re a new writer, like me, nobody is better than you either. We just need to keep on writing.
