Don’t Leave Teaching! It’s Probably Not Better. Unless You Should…

It’s been a whole calendar year, or to the teacher… one school year, since I left teaching after 19 years.  Over the last few weeks I found myself in a bunch of classrooms partnering with teachers and students to test new STEM prototype products, which provided a reminder of so many positives that had faded into the background of the past.  

I’ve been fortunate to stay well connected with the people of the education world, which means I often get bombarded with a similar thread of inquiries:

• Are you glad you did it?

• Is it better?

• Do you miss it?

• Do you think you’ll come back?

These are the most common questions.  The asks are indicative of today’s state of education.  But they also illustrate an assumption that many in teaching seem to hold… that it's better out than in.

Spend any time in social media groups directed at teachers and there are countless threads of people thinking about leaving, waxing and waning over the pros and cons.  Establish yourself on LinkedIn and there are whole ecosystems of recruiters and their campaigns working to convince teachers that its better on the other side.  Their posts are well aimed, striking at the frustrations they know populate well intentioned educators who “love the kids” but “can’t take _____ for one more day”.  The recruiters worm their way into Facebook groups, claiming to be teachers at one time in the past, and “are so glad they left.”

I get it, they’re doing their job.  They’re taking advantage of a dynamic to help their employers address their needs.

But this dynamic should worry us.  The assumption that is driving this should be addressed.

So now that it's been a year… and a year isn’t enough time to fully answer the questions, it still seems pertinent to put some answers out there.

If you want the short response that I use most often, it’s “The grass isn’t greener, it's just different.”

Are you glad you did it?  

Yes.  But I didn’t leave because I hated teaching, didn’t enjoy it, didn’t like my coworkers, didn’t think the school was good, or “because the kids are just terrible”.  I left because I’m drawn to change like a mosquito to those blue zappy lights.  I find it exciting and invigorating and it is in change that I do best, am happiest, am able to play to my strengths.  After 19 years an opportunity was thrown in my lap that fit the bill for change.  That isn’t a thing to ignore.  And it isn’t a thing that happens often within public school staffing. 

Is it better?  

Nope.  It’s just different; apples to oranges.  That's a whole different article, but here are some highlights.  Yes, I really do enjoy going to the bathroom whenever I want.  I really enjoy the freedom of controlling my time and being the professional who does what it takes to get the work done.  

Now for the reality check, which some education people aren’t going to like, but I’m going to keep it real.  And please, take it all with a grain of salt… this is just me, and I can only speak to my own experiences and thoughts.

• Kids are way more fun than adults.  On a day-to-day basis, my Fun-O-Meter was off the charts when teaching compared to now.  Yeah- I had one of those buttons.

• I Took A Pay Cut:  In Minnesota, we get paid well as teachers.  That's not going to be a popular opinion.  Here is the truth of my situation; I took a large pay cut.  Sure, my salary looks like it's bigger initially, but factor in more expensive health care, the fact that I work more hours total per year, including weekends and having to travel for work (exciting at first, now exhausting), and the biggest… the pension.  For me to match at my new job what the district and state contributed to my retirement, I have to put away a massive share of my pay.  The end result of all these variables is that my take-home pay over 26 pay periods is less now than it was as a teacher of 19 years at the top of the pay matrix.  On the flip side, my potential earning power down the road is possibly much greater than it would ever be as a teacher.  Given my position on the pay schedule, my only real opportunity for pay increase was to transition to administration, which I was in the process of doing.

• Security:  I don’t think teachers truly appreciate the value of tenure.  While I support tenure, I disagree with tenure as a system allowing ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom.  In business, if you aren’t doing your job you are gone.  If you aren’t providing value, you’re gone.  I’ve watched it happen to multiple coworkers.  They showed up in the morning with a job, and by lunch they didn’t have that job anymore.  There’s a lot more to this dynamic, but I do struggle with identifying the balance between security and the complacency that it can result in.  And, I am fortunate to work for a company that is 100% employee owned, which is completely different from many other employment arrangements.

• Time off:  Low hanging fruit here, but it has to be acknowledged.  Summers as a teacher are a gift, one that I cherished as a dad of young children.  And the fact that you get all the holidays off that your kids do is pretty amazing.  Now… I stare at the spreadsheet I made to calculate the rate of earning PTO and how I’m going to use the little time I do get in the best way possible.

  
  

• The Bell is Kinda Nice…  I have found that teaching exchanges ambiguity for concreteness.  In some ways teaching is more akin to working in a manufacturing facility than as a salaried professional (not saying that's a good thing). On the plus side, a teacher can just show up and get through the day without much forethought or planning because there is a system and clear expectations in place.  Just follow the bells.  Although, I’ll say it out loud, the teachers who take that approach tend to not be the best.  In reality, most teachers work really hard to plan and execute effective learning experiences within the predetermined schedule.  That should be valued more than it is, because you often feel  like you’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole that's three times too small.  Alternatively, the daily work flow and load in my new role is 100% ambiguous.  There are no bells, which is great, but sometimes I wish there were!  The mental energy it takes to manage time, tasks, and dozens of projects involving dozens of people all similarly doing ambiguous work is exhausting, and you never really know if you’re doing it right.  There is a satisfaction I felt as a teacher after the last bell rang and students left for the day, especially on the last day of school.  You don’t get that automatic pat on the back out here.  When coworkers walk out of a meeting, or a Zoom call ends… it hits differently.

• Lack of Accountability: Another unpopular opinion in the teacher bubble… I think there is a lack of accountability in the teaching profession.  As long as students and parents aren’t complaining, you don’t send anyone down to the office, and everyone generally likes you… you will be labeled as a good teacher, get tenure, and are set for life- even if your students learn absolutely nothing because you’re not using best practice to build impactful and effective learning experiences.  I will admit that there have been teachers I’ve worked with who fall into this category.  And as the father of two public school students, we’ve had some pretty deep and sad conversations with our kids about how to manage when they find themselves in one of those classrooms.  I don’t have a solution to fix this dynamic.  But I see the impact of it on my children and my past students in the form of ever-increasing apathy.

There’s a lot more to say when it comes to answering the question of “Is it better?”  But so much of it depends on your own reality and lens.

Do I miss it?  

Easiest question to answer.  Yes - of course!  Teaching is such a gift.  It is a privilege to exist in a student’s mind as a trusted source of learning and growth.  There aren’t many roles out there where you get to be that!  And if you do it well, the dividends pay you back over and over in the form of alumni visiting, grad party invites, thank you cards, and the best ever thing of running into a student or their family years later and getting a hug and detailed recount of how impactful you were in their lives.  That is gold and so incredibly special.  I keep a box of 19 years worth of artifacts and reminders, which was important when those inevitably hard days of teaching occurred.  That doesn’t exist out here.  I suppose I’m only a year in, and a community could grow in my workplace, but it will never be to the scale and impact that a teacher can have in the classroom.  And I mentioned that students are fun right?  Teachers are, too… sometimes.

Do you think you’ll come back? 

Maybe.  I didn’t leave because I was done.  I left for a change, and so I’d come back for a change.  It’d have to be in a different capacity or role- I wouldn’t want to step back into the past.  The pension is a financial draw to return.  Doing the math, I’d get a much larger pension if I put a few more years into that. 

So after a year on the other side, what's my message to teachers?  You have to do what's best for you, but don’t expect leaving to be better.  It might be, but there is a really really good chance it won’t be.  Don’t listen to the recruiters or the social media posts and campaigns- they aren’t motivated by doing what's best for you.  

But your calculus depends on your current state.  While I don’t want to encourage teachers leaving the profession, if you’re miserable, and you’re making your co-workers miserable, and students are leaving your class miserable, spending their time disengaged and apathetic, and the administration isn’t supporting you, and tardies and absences are common… do us all a favor and leave.  I mean this in the best way possible- don’t stick around because it’s easy and convenient and a paycheck shows up.  That is a waste of privilege, of opportunity, and a drag on our whole system.  It is straight up a negative choice.  If you want to support public education, maybe the best way to do that is to get out and make space for someone who is ready and able to go big.

Which makes me think about how we are going to find, encourage, and support people who really want to be successful in education.  There are so many people working on this that I’m sure we can find solutions that work.  Maybe the first thing we can do is to unfollow those social media accounts, recruiter profiles, and anyone that is pushing for teachers to leave or disparaging teachers as professionals.

Don’t assume it’ll be better. 

Rather, dig in to what you love about teaching and hold that closely and capitalize on it, focus on it, turn it into your fuel.  Reexamine why you’re thinking about leaving from the lens of “how am I distracted from what matters; what have I forgotten?”  Despite being a teacher that left, I still love teaching and that drives and motivates me in this new role.  But what I do now, it isn’t a replacement for the real deal.  It’s just different.