Everything changed the last month of school when I finally decided to leave teaching at the end of the year.
I chose to finish out my contract term, but then I’d be done– with no real plans to return to the classroom.
Navigating through the final humid, hectic, and happy days of that school year came flooding back to me as this May approached in its summer-signaling sweetness. There’s so much going on the last few weeks of school, and a decision not to return can add a layer to the busyness. But it can also sweeten the workload in a way. We’ll start with the benefits:
Pros of planning to leave teaching
1. You can better relax and enjoy the job. Knowing exactly where the finish line lay greatly impacted my ability to keep up my stride. (Otherwise, I’d be limping, if not completely collapsing dramatically on the race route.)
There’s so much piled into the last month of school– preparations for the next year, celebrations and ceremonies, grading, testing and report cards– it’s a wonder each and every time we get through it all. But when I had my little secret– that this was the last May— I better handled the chaos thrown at me. I appreciated the little things. I savored moments with my class, times we shared all together that wouldn’t again be replicated. Our read alouds and projects and morning meetings became less about activities to fill the day and more like quickly vanishing opportunities for connection.
Equipped with the knowledge that this would all pass, I was able to view even the other job-related annoyances like extraneous emails and multiple meetings as merely quickly changing scenery on my road to liberty.
2. You’ll feel more free. Deciding not to renew my contract allowed me to break from my people-pleasing default position. I wasn’t going to cower in fear over the metrics used by higher-ups to gauge my teaching success. I knew what I had done for these kids, and that wonderful fact was mine alone to hold onto. It felt unabashedly free.
I cared less about ticking boxes and meeting every single requirement in the curriculum. I cared more about letting my own passions and my students drive the direction and tempo of instruction. It truly was a grand experiment in what student-and-teacher-led instruction would look like. And we had so much fun. I developed an economics unit for my fourth graders in which we created a small business. In a risky move that included a Zoom interview with small business owners for my last formal observation, I wound up actually comfortably shining and showcasing some of my true, quirky teacher self for the first time in my history of observations.
Cons of planning to leave teaching
1. You’ll have to figure out what to do instead. Here’s one of the most important pieces to deciding if making the career move is right for you. I have a post detailing how to calculate if leaving teaching is financially feasible. You can also plan to shift to another job. (There are so many transferable skills teachers possess that are valuable in other roles!) Or, do what I did: I planned to stay home to nurture a pregnancy and my eventual child. We made this possible through reducing some of our expenses and increasing my husband’s income.
With this part figured out, you’ll have the biggest obstacle cleared. It’s a tough to wrestle with what to do instead of teaching, but countless former teachers have left the classroom for entirely different fields, and you can, too.
2. You will no longer have access to rad teacher discounts. Are there that many great teacher discounts still out there any way?
3. You may feel that people disapprove. A definite perk of teaching is the automatic hero status that comes with it. After quitting, you may get the feeling that people disapprove of your choice. I have no data on this, and it could totally be made up in my overthinking mind, but I felt like people I talked to kind of died inside at the thought of another teacher leaving. Maybe they really didn’t care and it was my imagination doing somersaults. Regardless, you’ll have to try your best to push back the thoughts of other people and focus on the deep reasons why you left.
There will be pros and cons to any major decision– but especially saying goodbye to a special career like teaching. I did it, and so many others have as well. I’m rooting for you.
