Nine Reasons Why I’m glad I left The Classroom
Working nine to five is so different to being a teacher
The most common comment I used to get when I told people I was a teacher was someone saying, “Wow, you must have such great holidays.”
And it was true. The holidays were amazing — around thirteen weeks of holiday a year if you’re a teacher in the UK.
That’s sixty-five days of Monday-Fridays. In my current office job, I get twenty-five, plus eight bank holidays, so thirty-three in total.
I left a job where I got paid more and had double the number of holiday days.
And I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Here’s why:
1. Time
Right now, I’m typing this story before I start work. I would never have had the chance to do that when I was a teacher. I left the house at seven am, arrived at school by seven twenty, and I usually worked until five pm, sometimes later. Around nine hours a day, sometimes ten. Now I work seven and a half.
2. Lunch Breaks
I actually take my lunch break these days. I cook a proper meal in the middle of the day, and when the weather is nice, I even go for a walk in the park. When I was a teacher, I ate lunch at my desk as I tried desperately to mark some of the kid’s books from the morning, or I raced around the school trying to find resources for the afternoon lessons.
3. Freedom to go to the toilet!
In my current job, I can go to the toilet when I want to. This sounds ridiculous, but it isn’t. When I was teaching, I was with children from eight forty-five in the morning until eleven thirty without a break, and then from one pm until three-thirty in the afternoon. Well over two hours. I’m a woman and I drink a lot of water. I usually need to go to the toilet around once an hour. This meant that I was constantly denying my urge to go when I was in the classroom and ended up with a lot of UTIs. Plus there were only two toilets for women in my school (despite ninety percent of the teachers being women), which meant that there was always a queue at break time.
4. Flexibilty
When I was a teacher, I had to be in the classroom every day at the same time. There was no flexibility about when or where I worked. I can work hybrid in my current job, so I can choose to go into the office when I want, or work from home. I can work wherever there is an internet connection, so I sometimes go and visit family in different parts of the country and work from their places for a few days for a bit of a change. I can even work abroad if I want to (although for limited amounts of time).
5. Guilt free appointments
This leads to the next point. When I was a teacher, I had to book any doctor/dentist/optician/physiotherapy or whatever other appointment I needed for the holidays, as trying to get someone to cover me at school was an absolute nightmare and massively frowned upon. That meant I regularly postponed important appointments to fit in with holiday time, rather than what I needed for my health. Now, I can schedule appointments around meetings, and I just let my boss know. I can catch up with the work time that I miss at a time that suits me, or, if I get myself together, I can even finish everything that I need to do AND go to the appointment all within the working day.
6. Sick Days
Being a teacher is the only job I’ve experienced where it is more work to call in sick than it is to go to work feeling like shit. Even when I was sick, I was still responsible for sending in the planning for my class for that day (or a few days). It took me far longer to explain to someone else what the kids were supposed to be doing than it did for me to plan things for myself. Nowadays, no one needs to cover for me if I’m sick. I just set an out-of-office message and things pile up until I return. Although, since I’m no longer around snotty children for days at a time, I am far less likely to get sick. Plus I can work from the comfort of my bed on those days when I don’t feel great.
7. Less enegry consuming
Being a teacher is an incredibly energy-demanding job. Think about if you ever have to give a presentation at work and how much effort that is. Teaching is like that, but for six and a half hours a day. I used to get home from work feeling exhausted and with little energy for cooking, socialising or generally enjoying my life. Now I like going out for a drink with my colleagues after work, I like going to the gym and playing sports and I have time to write. Ok, I have less holiday time, but I need it less because I’m not as wrecked.
8. Work during the holidays
The holidays weren’t really as long as you thought. Usually, I needed to work at least one or two days in the half-term holidays to get my planning sorted for the next term, and for up to a week in the summer holiday to get everything ready for the next year. So that sixty-five days of freedom usually shrank to around fifty-five days. Still good, but not as good as everyone else thinks.
9. The pressure
There was constant pressure from all sides — parents, the headteacher, and the kids themselves. I wanted to do my best for the kids, and I wanted to do well in the school, but sometimes it was difficult to satisfy everyone’s needs and meet all of the expectations. Now my role is much clearer and I have time to do the things that I need to do. I have control over my own calendar and can schedule fewer meetings during the times when things get really busy.
I do miss the fun of being in the classroom at times, and the performative aspect of teaching. I miss the connection that I used to have with my classes and the rapport that you would build up over the year.
But I don’t miss the monotony of marking or planning learning objectives and success criteria and having to do so many tick-box exercises.
Maybe I’m lucky in the role that I have compared to others, or maybe my attitude is different now that I’m out of the classroom.
