Why I Quit Teaching

I was a teacher for seven years. I taught art for both middle and high school. Not anymore. I packed up my teacher knick-knacks: lesson plans, pictures, office supplies, etc.; packed them in a cardboard box, and parked the sad relics of my former career on the kitchen table.

I used to wear a lanyard with my seven keys merrily jingling on the end. I wore business casual attire with practical sneakers for the unmerciful linoleum floors. I synchronized restroom breaks for my planning period. I lunched in twenty minutes. I trained my body not to cringe at the cinderblock décor. Now I’ve shed tears, hugged my co-workers, and watched my fledglings leave the nest at graduation. I’ve walked away from a system where I was a fish in water since I was a teacher’s child helping my mother and aunts set up their classrooms.  

I’ll miss finding interesting things and thinking, “Hmm, this would be good to share with my students.”  And I’ll miss inviting people to speak to my class. I’ll miss those easy days right before the students arrive, when teachers freely visited each other’s classrooms, left campus for lunch, laughed, and traded saucy stories.  We were filled with hope for the new school year. We believed our teacher fung shui - crisp bulletin boards, waxed floors, potted plants, and meticulously arranged desks – would usher in good fortune. If we were really blessed, a former student might return to help us.

This hope dissipated by the first two weeks of school. Schedules are wrong. Taking attendance is futile. Shiny food wrappers dull the floor’s gleam. The first faculty meeting confirmed that we didn’t work hard enough last year. Students were unruly or indifferent. The especially rude one has a dreadful parent. The first lesson plan didn’t turn out as expected. There’s no budget for supplies. Mental notes are made stop by the store to pick up things for class on the way home. If you ever get there. Papers that need grades are piling up. If you can afford it. Furlough days were taken off the last paycheck. That poster you hung with care decided that it also hated cinderblock and leaped to its demise. The parents want to do something big this year, and you shall plan it. The principal needs student artwork to showcase by week’s end. Matted and framed. Call that parent with the kid who’s been absent for three days.

There was always something to be done. No two days were alike. A “classroom disturbance” could alter the course of everything like a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo. I learned to prioritize and multitask. I learned to create systems to make my classroom move like a Ford assembly line. I learned to diffuse volatile situations like a hostage negotiator. I learned to sit near my department in faculty meetings so we could exchange the side eye when more ridiculous orders were issued from someone who’d never visited my classroom, much less my school. 

Teaching is a profession where those who are not in the profession make major decisions about it - from the president to school boards to parents. Bad school? Blame the teachers. Who cares if little Johnny came to school dropped off by his mother’s new boyfriend; unfed, unwashed, and unprepared? Who decided I have thirty-eight students in my class this year? No, I don’t know how to handle a student with a serious behavior disorder; can they be removed from my class? Can I choose which classes I want to teach?  Can we choose which curriculum our school will follow?  Is there any way I can make the parents more accountable for learning?

I’d begun to feel like a widget. An interchangeable part that is expected to just work and perform with little maintenance and visibility. As teachers, we are impotent and subject to the forces over which we have little control. We are sometimes treated like children ourselves, and we acquiesce because we just want to get the job done. We just want to teach. Those students that get it; we want to make sure that they really get it and keep it.

I left. My passion was waning fast. I was tired of complaining. And tired of the wide-eyed stares as I tried to explain what really happens in schools. I felt stifled by the public school structure. I felt like more of a babysitter than a professional. It wasn’t my former schools nor students, it was just time.

As the new school year starts, I have no regrets. I feel like Ben Hur as he looks below deck and sees the captives rowing the boat as he once did.  Relieved that I’m not below deck anymore, yet without a hint of smugness because I know what it’s like.  I’ll miss my former colleagues, my students, parents, and the routine. 

Goodbye, teaching.

(reposted from previous blog)

Brina HargroComment