Why I Quit Teaching
Letting go of my lifelong dream
When I was 11 years old, I decided I wanted to be a teacher. Fifteen years later, I left the profession after only three years in the classroom.
I come from a teaching family. My dad has been a teacher for 29 years, two of my grandparents are retired teachers, and another was a school secretary. My mom volunteered at our school for a decade before she went back to university when I was in grade 12 to get her Bachelor’s of Education, and she now teaches kindergarten.
They didn’t push me to go into teaching. Growing up in a teaching family allowed me to see exactly how challenging and how rewarding a career it was. In most of my childhood memories, the never-ending responsibilities of teaching were always there. I knew my parents barely had any friends. They were too busy. But they loved their work.
I thought I was prepared for the realities of teaching. I had a head-start because I knew how hard it would be, and I still wanted to do this.
Every job I accepted from high school onward was with the goal of better equipping myself to be the best teacher I could be. I struggled with public speaking, so I became a performer in a historical reenactment troupe and participated in public speaking competitions, where I went on to the national finals. During my undergrad, I worked part-time as a museum tour guide and I continued there as an educator after I graduated. I got co-op placements teaching with an IT department, designing eLearning modules and writing educational materials. Everything was to prepare me for my dream.
I moved back home to start my Bachelor’s of Education in spring 2019. To my delight, my plan had worked. My courses were a breeze because I could pull from my years of experience in teaching-adjacent roles. I loved discussing how we could be our best professional selves for our future students.
Then, I started my practicum.
Even though everyone told me I was doing really well, I struggled. This was still a new set of skills I didn’t know how to navigate, even with my experience in similar roles. Problems at home made it worse when I needed to move back in with my parents because of a dangerous roommate. My supervising teacher was great and taught me a lot, but my instinct when overwhelmed was to pour more of myself into my work. Too many times, he had to tell me to go home because it was late, to stop working, to do something fun for myself, or to just take a breather. I wanted to succeed and excel. I couldn’t take a break; I needed to work harder.
A month into my second practicum, the world shut down. The faculty emailed us an online assignment to complete that would replace the seven weeks of in-class practicum experience we’d never get back. Even though we were woefully unprepared, we graduated anyway and it was time to find my first teaching job.
Because I teach a subject that requires special qualifications, I was quickly hired at a local high school for my first year teaching. My contract started out at 50% part-time, but I was given an extra course the day before school started. The 66% schedule was great for starting out. I taught two 75-minute periods per day, had three different classes, and could get all my work done before leaving at 4:30. I was barely making enough money to pay rent on my tiny one bedroom apartment, but I could manage.
A week before second semester, I was promoted to full-time and I rapidly lost control. In early April, the administration asked to talk to me because they could see how I was destroying myself for the job. My entire life was work and I was still falling behind. I couldn’t afford to go back to a lower salary now that I was paying off my student loans and they’d never be able to find someone else to replace me anyway. I dragged myself to the end of June utterly spent and struggled to recover over the summer.
In mid-August, my former supervising teacher from my second practicum texted me that a permanent full-time position had just opened at her school and that she really wanted me to apply. I got the job, but the new workload was even worse. I taught six different courses that year, which meant every night I needed to plan three completely different lessons on top of keeping up with marking assessments. And because I was still a rookie, I was making all new content every day.
I poured so much of myself into my job that I barely noticed how quickly I was losing weight. I didn’t have time to finish breakfast, then I had to work through lunch, then I was too tired to cook supper when I got home at 6pm. I wasn’t eating, I was staying up until 3am to finish my work, and I always felt like I needed to be doing more. It was an impossible life.
In late March, I started having panic attacks on the drive to work. I would throw up in the staff parking lot, wipe the tears off my face, then walk into the building like nothing happened. I couldn’t keep it up. I went home sick at lunch because I could barely stand, three days in a row. On the fourth day, I went into my principal’s office and told him I needed help. He suggested a part-time teacher could cover my morning class for the next three weeks so I could take time off. It would be impossible to find a qualified teacher for my two specialized afternoon classes, but at least I could have three weeks of partial medical leave by using half my yearly allotment of sick days.
Once again, I limped to the end of the school year. On the last day of June, my principal sat me down and told me very seriously that I needed to focus on doing less work next year. “You can’t pour from an empty cup” is a saying I’ve heard a lot. He assured me the quality of my work was fantastic, but that I was suffering more than I needed to get it done. It’s fine to do the bare minimum sometimes if that’s what it takes.
My third year was somehow worse again. I wasn’t alone, though. The keynote speaker at our annual union convention pointed out how we were “April-tired” already in early November. Every day in the staff room, the conversation turned around if early retirement was worth it financially, which co-worker had recently accepted a job outside the school system for a fresh start at the age of 45, and how it was harder to prepare for a day off than just come in to teach when we were sick, exhausted, and overwhelmed.
I had one hope left. During the summer, I decided to apply to grad school. I found a program in Ontario and told my principal I was going to take a year off to move there and do the courses in person. The whole year, I knew: if I could last until June, I could get away from it all for the next entire year.
I made it, with great difficulty. I’m in Ontario and I started my M.Ed. courses two months ago. The problem is that now, I don’t want to go back.
A brief list of reasons why I’m not going back to classroom teaching
1. I ruined my health
I barely ate, I barely slept. I channeled all my energy into keeping on a face for the students and getting my work done. Friday nights, I would fall asleep on the couch at 7:30. I spent the weekend in a daze, staying in bed until noon, struggling through our weekly family dinner. Work was the priority above all and it destroyed me.
2. I had no life
By my third year, I realized I needed to schedule regular social time to keep myself sane. Wednesday, I ate supper with my grandparents. Saturday was family dinner. Sunday, I called my best friend and played a TTRPG campaign online with friends on a biweekly basis.
I allotted myself one social timeslot per week to either see my one friend from high school (who’s also a teacher) or to go on dates. At age 26, I lived for my students and had nothing leftover. I don’t want to live like that anymore. I want a job to support my life, not give my life to my job.
3. Covid tripled my workload
Even after we were back in school, the demands on our time continued. During my second year, any student who was a close contact of a confirmed case needed to be isolated at home for two weeks. Students would miss two weeks as a close contact, then catch it themselves and be out for two weeks, then their parents would take them to Florida for two weeks because “it’s so wonderful we can finally travel again! The kids really need it.” And I had to keep everyone on track with the curriculum. I was simultaneously teaching to the kids who were caught up, the kids who’d fallen behind, and the kids who were out that day and doing the lesson online. It was impossible, even after we’d lowered our expectations substantially for what the students could accomplish.
4. I was harassed
There are too many examples I could give. Like when my students created a class-wide Snapchat group to talk shit about me during class, and then laughed at me when I realized what was happening. Or when I had the same group a year later, and they were so horrible the vice principal needed to take over for the last five minutes every day just so I could have a few moments to pull myself together enough to teach my next class. The VP said he’d never seen anything like it in his thirty years teaching. Or the parents who berated me during parent-teacher conferences, who went over my head to the school board, who took every chance to demean me. Or when students vandalized my car during exam season.
I’m not a fragile person. I can take a metaphorical punch and keep going. I know I’m good at my job and that I care. Many of my former students have told me how much they loved being in my class. What wore me down was months and years of harassment. And knowing it was never going to change.
5. We had no support
I appreciated everything my principals and vice principals did for me. This isn’t about them. This is about the school board, the Department of Education, and the teacher’s union. I could list dozens of examples, but the biggest moment when I lost faith in their ability to have our backs was when a teacher at our school was falsely accused of inappropriate conduct. Rather than correcting the media by clarifying the situation with the official report of the internal investigation done months earlier, they stayed silent. Students and parents organized protests. The media, the government, and the opposition cried crocodile tears for the poor children in danger as if we were a den of predators. The school board — our employer — did nothing to protect us. The union told us the only solution was to vote for a different government in two years. Our school hemorrhaged staff in the following months because we couldn’t keep doing our jobs while being hung out to dry by the people who were supposed to support us.
This is not a decision I’ve taken lightly. I’ve dreamed of working as a teacher for most of my life. I’ve seen other teachers all around me succeed and love their jobs. But I’ve also seen those same people burned out and destroyed by their work.
When I first confided in a few co-workers in April that I suspected I wouldn’t be coming back after my year away, I was met with overwhelming support. My mentors told me they wished they could quit too, but figured they should stay since they were less than five years away from retirement. My younger co-workers shared how they’d been looking for other jobs too. Several people from my B.Ed. cohort have already quit teaching after three years.
On the very first day of teacher’s college, the dean told us 50% of new teachers leave the profession in the first five years. He told us this to dissuade anyone who’d come thinking this would be an easy job with summers and holidays off. The reality is that even passionate, creative, experienced teachers can’t last under the enormous pressure. I hate that I’ve become part of that statistic. It’s terrifying to rethink my life again and try to find a new direction.
It’s easy to feel guilty about my choice. “Teaching is a calling,” everyone says. “It’s all about the kids,” we repeat all day long. There’s a culture of martyrdom within schools that says that the people who sacrifice the most are the best teachers. We always need to do more and be more, or else the kids lose out on their futures. Every minute I don’t put towards work means a child I didn’t save.
I can’t do that to myself anymore. I don’t want to brag about how little sleep I got last night, or how many meals I’ve skipped because I was working. By the end, I felt like I was crying out in desperation asking: “Am I the only one who ruins myself like this? How does everyone else keep going like this is normal? Why do they tell me I need to work less one day and assign me more responsibilities the next?”
In the end, it comes down to two things: peace and joy. I still loved teaching and I loved most of my students, but the toll it took on me outweighed any remaining joy. I know it sounds selfish. But while the kids need someone, they don’t need me. The school can replace me, but I can’t replace me.
I don’t want to sacrifice my existence as an individual for my career anymore. I want to live my life.
