Why I Left Teaching
If you follow me on Instagram you probably know I’ve now been out of the classroom for a few years. Since my primary audience is teachers, I don’t talk about it a ton since it’s not relevant to most of you, but I do always want to be honest and up front with you, so it does come up occasionally. Because of this, one of the most common private messages I get is asking how I decided to leave and my opinion as to whether the writer should leave too.
Teaching is an incredibly important profession, and I never, ever want to lightly tell someone they should leave. At the same time, I can’t pretend that leaving teaching hasn’t been incredibly good for my mental health and overall wellbeing. It seems selfish and unfair to insist that others should stay while I left and don’t have any current plans to return.
With that in mind, I want to share my honest story of why I left teaching, and then in a follow-up post I’ll leave you with a few questions to consider if you are facing the same decision.
I now run The Designer Teacher and Teacher Care Crate full time, but unlike what many people assume, that’s not why I left teaching. I left teaching because I had a mental breakdown and my anxiety disorder was completely out of control. I was always stressed out and doing way too much throughout my years teaching, but I reached my breaking point during my fourth year as a special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools. Despite some conditions significantly improving (I had my own resource classroom for the first time, I only had a five minute commute from school, I had a co-teacher I liked and respected), by October of 2016, I was having a full-on crisis. I was crying every day, to the point that I was trying to alternate who I was crying to so as not to overwhelm any one person in my life.
You know how sometimes when people are asked about their weaknesses in an interview and they say they care too much to avoid saying something actually negative? I really, really did care too much. I was working all the time. There was always, always something to be done, and everything felt so urgent. I was almost always the first person on the IEP team to enter my portion, and usually found myself reminding others to get their parts done in time so I could print a draft. I realized I was really off my game when my very understanding case manager asked me if I needed to postpone a pair of IEPs the next day because I had entered nothing in them. I was actually really sick that day, but was determined to finish the IEPs and make it in the next day for the meetings. My friend found me feverishly crying under my desk during our lunch break (so I was out of view of the window in the door) and insisted I go home. I missed the IEP meetings the next day (or perhaps they were postponed, it’s a bit blurry now), and it was a combination of these things that finally made me realize I needed to be in therapy. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and had been on medication for it for years, but never saw a therapist regularly. I found a therapist and at our very first meeting, she told me I needed to leave Chicago Public Schools.
While I took my therapist seriously, it will still early in the school year, and I was determined to stick out the year since special education teachers are very hard to find in Chicago Public Schools, and even more so mid-year. I told myself if I made it through the year, I would take the following school year off to do something else and give myself a break. For the rest of the year, I tried to take better care of myself and set better boundaries. Still, I didn’t think my current school was going to be a sustainable place for me, so I resigned as planned and did not go back to teaching in the fall.
I considered my options and looked into education-related positions that weren’t classroom teaching. My plan was to find something part-time and then work on my Teachers Pay Teachers resources the rest of the time. I honestly thought I might miss teaching so much that I would be looking to take a classroom position within a few months, so I wasn’t searching for something permanent. At the time, my Teachers Pay Teachers earnings were about 1/4 of what I earned as a teacher. The summer after leaving the classroom, I had my first hit product (still my bestseller, three years later!) and my earnings increased. I decided to try TPT full-time for a few months and see what happened. My TPT income ended up matching my teacher income once I was able to dedicate myself to it full-time. I started Teacher Care Crate in January 2018, and that grew steadily as well.
People kept asking if I was going to go back to the classroom, but I honestly just couldn’t imagine it. I thought I might not like working from home, but I loved it. I was, quite frankly, a much happier person than when I was teaching. I wasn’t exhausted all the time. I had time to spend with my husband. We adopted Hippo and Olivia, and I loved getting to hang out with them all day. While I loved teaching in my own way, I found that I loved helping teachers through my business more.
There is a lot of shame and guilt around leaving teaching, so sometimes I am hesitant to talk about it. But teachers are human like everyone else, and we are allowed to make the choices that are best for us. I love helping teachers and hope that I can help make teaching a sustainable career for you, whether it’s through classroom resources or reminders to practice self care, but if you need to leave, it doesn’t make you a bad person.
Alright folks, that’s it, that’s my story! Thanks for reading ❤️
On a related note, if you think you’re ready to make a change, check out Teacher Career Coach. I decided to become an affiliate for their course because I get asked so often for advice about transitioning out of teaching! You can even take a free quiz to see what career outside the classroom might be right for you.