Friday I got an e-mail from one of my readers that read:
"Hi there! I came across your blog while searching for advice on whether or not I should stay in teaching. When I read your posts about leaving teaching, I felt a lot of your same sentiments... but the sad thing is that I have only been teaching for 2 months!! lol! That's terrible. I am in a spot where I am going back and forth about whether I should stay in my current position, seek a different teaching job (e.g., subject area, school, grade level, location, demographic), seek a different job outside of teaching but still in education... or just leaving education altogether. I was curious what pros and cons you considered when you decided to leave once and for all. Any advice or suggestions for a completely, utterly confused first-year teacher in a high-needs urban school?"
Yes. Yes, honey. So much advice.
. . .
I imagine my blog comes up for a lot of people who Google "I want to leave my teaching job" or "is teaching right for me?" because a lot of my content the past two years has been about that.
I must say the e-mail struck right to my core. I understood every single word of it, even the underlying bunch of things I know she didn't say. She spoke to the 'me' from two years ago, the one who was a month and a half into her first year as a special education classroom teacher, and hating every minute of it. This post is for her, and for any others who might visit here wanting some advice on the matter.
Here's what I got...
First of all, it's not terrible that you've only been teaching for 2 months and know something isn't right. I felt the exact same thing. Right from the first day of school, the stress started effecting my mental and emotional state. Yes, it was my first year, and Yes, one could expect the first year of anything to be anxiety-driven and challenging...but teaching for me was fundamentally different. The job became antagonizing to my spirit. All the enthusiasm and passion I started with burnt out quicker than I ever could have expected. By December, a mere three months into my first year as a classroom teacher, no passion was left, I felt hollow and confused, and that's when I wrote about the shift: the shift inside of me from cannonballing whole-heartedly into the education profession - thinking it was going to be 'it' - to not wanting to associate myself with the job title at all.
It was scary to say the least.
That shift, back in fall/winter 2011, is what kickstarted my journey toward resigning from my teaching job this past June (2013), but it was a long, hard tough journey.
About a month after posting about the shift, and countless bathtub prayer sessions asking God, "What am I going to do?! What am I going to do?!" my prayers were answered when I opened an old Oprah magazine and read about 'the man who knows what works at work', the man who would later become my 'career guru', Mr. Marcus Buckingham. ♥ ♥ ♥
If you are here, and you are reading, then consider this your answered prayer. You must set aside a couple of hours and watch his Career Intervention Course. It is what reframed my thinking and gave me a voice and a language and an answer to why teaching was going wrong for me, and why I would eventually leave it. I cannot stress enough how crucial these 8 silly little internet videos were in getting me to where I happily am today - pursing something that actually IS IT. (I'm 12 days in, and I can tell already.)
After watching, I spent a whole Monday through Friday paying close attention to when I felt 'strong' during my work day and when I felt 'weak'. (This will make more sense once you watch the videos). The results of that week-long exercise allowed me to see that the actual activities that made up teaching - the actual tasks that were filling my day - were not fulfilling to me. They were causing me to cry almost everyday on my commute to work, dread Sunday nights, and absolutely fear Monday mornings. I knew this was no way to live...and I knew no change of venue, classroom, location, demographic would help me at that time.
And now here's where I have to digress a bit. Here's where I must tell you some things so you don't get the wrong idea about me. I played school as a kid. I had my mom paint chalkboard walls in our basement way before Pinterest made it trendy. I created class rosters with the word processor on those old 90s boxy PCs and took attendance of my fake classroom's children. All my paying jobs since 16 were working with children. I absolutely love kids. I was a gym/swim teacher at the YMCA for years, I was a summer camp counsellor, surrounded by children, the oldest grandchild on my dad's side, a natural born leader and speaker, and babysitter extraordinare. I was a substitute teacher in about 25 different public schools before landing my teaching job in the one school I wanted to be at, and all the while attending Grad school for my Masters in Education. If anyone (including myself) would pin me as anything in the whole world, it would as an educator, a molder of the minds of youngins. And guess what, readers? I was realllllly good at it. On paper, it all made sense. However, it was complete rubbish in practice.
Even though I was really good at it, and even though I loved my students and my para and my fellow teachers were awesome, I was struggling. I didn't want to be a teacher anymore.
I blamed the teaching profession in New York City and what it had become for a long time, but I'm not sure anymore if that's it. To put it simply: the job played to a lot of my weaknesses, and not to many of my strengths. When I started getting specific with myself (like Marcus Buckingham challenges you to do) I realized I love interacting with children, but not teaching them so much. I do have a passion for teaching, but instead to an audience who's more ready to learn, and on a subject I know a lot about. As a teacher, I never knew what to teach ever. For that I do continue to blame the Department of Education in New York City. The curriculum here is absolutely shot to shit (excuse my language), and that's coming from every single teacher I've ever met in the system, not just me.
I suppose this is all I have for you at this moment. If you look back through my collection of teacher posts, you will see how up and down I really was during my two years as a classroom teacher. The posts go from frustrated and sad, to a happy one about one of my kids, and back to something that made me feel miserable again. The kids were the shining moments, and pretty much any time I wrote or talked about them, I was happy. For me, however, the kids became such a small percent of the job. All the crazy requirements and lack of material comsumed me (day and night, inside and outside the school walls). It's comsuming a lot of teachers I know.
So, listen to your heart, and let it run its course. I knew, and the ones closest to me knew when enough was enough.
I hope this helped in some way. I could talk for days on the subject, and if there are any other questions or inquiries, shoot me an e-mail. I'll be happy to continue the conversation.
Thanks for letting me share a bit of my story.
Best of luck!
