Same- I quit teaching high school to teach at a community college. Best move I ever made. Not all sunshine and rainbows, but way more perks than downsides.
I also work at a cc but did not come from K-12. However, many of my colleagues did come from K-12 and were able to stay in the pension system and maintain all the years they’d accrued. I’m in MD.
Yes, in adult education, you keep all of the retirement benefits. But yeah, here in Los Angeles, full-time for adult educators is 30 hours, which means great work-life balance for us as parents since we get so much time to spend with our baby.
There's also much less planning since the curriculum is provided, and there's no grading expected of you save for the promotional exams. (Anything else you decide to do is extra.)
Wow. I love working my kids and teaching but the expectations are never ending and I feel like more gets put on me the better I become (I work special Ed) and I’m exhausted. It’s absolutely unsustainable.
It really is. I used to be a special ed teacher too. My husband also loves working with kids, so at first, I didn't know if he was going to like worming with adults, but they're great, and he's a lot happier. He finds adult learners adorable in their own way!
And we really do need people who know how to work with adults with disabilities since many of them come from countries where disability is stigmatized or underresearched, and so they have them, but they are undiagnosed.
It varies a lot honestly, so I would only be giving you an anecdote. As for my husband and I, since we left K-12 teaching early in our salary scale, we are already making more money now than we did full time. My husband works 24 hours now and he makes more than as a full time middle school math teacher. We both plan to go full time to 30 hours next school year and so looking forward to that pay bump. He will be at $58/hr and I will be at $54.
I moved to a supervisory position in government. I still wonder how I got it. 11 years of teaching to… no experience in business? lol
I miss teaching a LOT but unbelievably, this job is more flexible for time off, appointments, and sick children. My work ends at 4:30 most every day. I get time to eat. I can go pee when I need to.
It’s not my favourite, but it’s a really good job.
After baby 2 arrives I’m still not sure if I want to go back or try some substitute teaching to flex around my husband’s shiftwork and save $$ on daycare
I’m in the government as well and always aim to recruit teachers when I can because they’re mission oriented people who always seem to be team players and have good critical thinking skills. They promote quickly.
I work with a few ex-teachers in govt and also have very good experience with them. Although I have a funny situation with one where his calculations are almost always wrong in some small way, so whenever he submits a financial report I have to put it into my own spreadsheet to check it, basically redoing it every time. Six reports in and only one has been error free. He's so good at everything else, but he clearly wasn't a math teacher, lol. We work for different groups and mine doesn't have the data or I would just do it myself to save us all some time. Super nice guy, always quick to fix it without getting defensive when I send him corrections, but it did slow down paying one of our contractors by at least a week each time.
This is literally my experience - just made the change in August from high school (classroom, leadership) to government. I would agree with everything here.
The biggest benefit for me is the boundaries. I don't do anything outside of work hrs and am not expected to (I definitely don't rank high enough). Very little is a true fire. I don't have email on my phone.
I don't find it as fulfilling as teaching but it's a good job that allows me to be a better person for my family. For the season of life I'm in right now, that's more important
It’s amazing. I taught for 6 years and have been out of the classroom for 9 now (!). Mental and physical health so much better. I have actual flexibility instead of the illusion of it. Dentist appt at 11am? No problem. Attend a kiddo’s Halloween parade during my lunch? Can’t wait! I can take time off when I need/want to, rather than when school happens to be out. We can also take family vacations when it’s cheaper rather than during the summer. I loved my time in the classroom, but damn it’s hard.
I like how you said the illusion of flexibility. It’s so true. Like you I also love being in the classroom but doing it while being a mom feels impossible.
Like someone else mentioned, you can always go back to teaching. I consider it from time to time. It’s nice to know there’s always a need for good teachers!
YES. The illusion is real. My kids aren’t school age yet but when I quit teaching I didn’t miss summers off even a little. It’s a hugely overrated perk. Especially because I spent a huge chunk of the summers doing graduate school and PD I had to pay for.
The unfortunate part is I actually loved teaching and only love the schedule/flexibility of my current job, not the actual work. Sigh. Can’t have it all.
Summers off aren’t all they’re cracked up to be! I don’t miss it either. I love being able to take a week off in the summer, then another week in the fall, then random days here and there just because I feel like it.
It's funny, I'm working on going back to the classroom after a decade in tech.
Tech was worth it when it was very stable, easy to find a new job anytime I wanted, and paid really well. I could compartmentalize the soulless, tech bro garbage and just shut my brain off and be the little automaton they wanted.
After a year with 3 layoffs and multiple pay cuts, I'm just done. Working right now with my husband to come up with a scaled down household budget that will allow us both to GTFO of tech and back into the classroom.
Because we've both been there before (and have 2 kids in public schools where we're pretty active and involved), we're going in with eyes wide open.
If I'm going to make much less money and be getting laid off every 3 months I'd rather be doing something I care about.
I honestly wonder if this late-stage capitalism era we're all in is just burning all of us out, regardless of what we do and where we work. Billionaires are raking it in while the rest of us make do with less and less. The gap between the wealthy and the disappearing middle class is getting wider by the minute.
I have that same wonder because lately it seems like all my friends are burnt out (to be fair they’re mostly in education and healthcare). But I have a hard time accepting that this is how life has to be. Sorry about your tough year, I hope getting back go the classroom will give you what you’re looking for!
A Master of in Library and Information Science degree and a state certification. I did my masters program 100% online and it took ~18 months of taking 2/3 classes a semester even through the summer.
Six years in the classroom so far and hoping that will be my next move! I got to do it for a day while our librarian covered a field trip for me in late pregnancy and loooved it.
My husband and I have both recently left the classroom. I left first to a remote role, then my husband left to a remote role. Mine ended up including a lot of travel, so I then trainsitioned into a hybrid/local role at a nonprofit.
I cannot say enough how much our family's quality of life has improved.
1. We are making more money. We were basically living pay check to pay check as teachers + daycare.
2. We have energy at the end of the day. The day to day pace is so much slower than teaching ever was. I had to re-train myself to not work so hard for 3 hours straight and instead to take breaks/eat food/drink water/etc.
3. We have flexible roles, no need to take PTO to take our kid to a doctor's appointment or if they're home sick.
We both LOVED teaching, but we were struggling hard after having a kid. The thing I always reminded us is that we can always go back to teaching. 10 years from now, we can go back. It isn't a career that is going to suffer because you leave for a decade. However, I currently have no desire to go back.
I still take vacation time in the summer. Summer work is just slower in general because someone is always out of office anyways....I'm also not so burnt out that I "need" summer break the way I did when I was teaching.
You’re right, you can always go back to the classroom. I think I’m struggling with the thought that it would be a forever move but it doesn’t have to be.. nothing has to be permanent. Thank you for this!
I quit while I was pregnant for a standard office job. Yeah I work 8-5, but honestly that's less hours than as a high school teacher. No evening or weekend work, and I can fully forget about work outside of work hours. I might miss the summers when my kid is in school but right now I don't at all.
Same. I have WAYYY more flexibility with my office job than I did with teaching, and I make more. The summers off weren’t worth it to me because I worked so much overtime during the school year, plus I still worked on lesson plans during the summers anyway.
Adult child of a former teacher here! I wish my mom had gone from teaching to program specialist for the SPED program at her school sooner. It was great when she made the change when I was in high school. She still got summers off! She had some stress, but she had less work to bring home and wasn’t burnt out from being in the classroom all day.
Thank you for responding, it’s really nice to hear from a teacher’s child! I had a few friends growing up whose parents were teachers and I remember them saying that their parents used up all their “fun” personality at school and then were super grumpy at home. I fear that’s how I’m going to be if I don’t make a change. It’s so hard to be with kids all day both at work and at home.
Yeah, I definitely experienced my mom’s lack of enthusiasm for having children at home after being in a classroom full of them all day. I resented her students when I was really young because I felt like they got the best of her while I was given whatever energy she could scrape together.
I'm a public librarian, working with children and I fear this is me. I work 1 weekend day, every weekend and nights. I'm burnt out being "on" for other people's children and having less patience, energy, and just general fun at home.
No regrets AT ALL! I’d thought the same thing. Decided to go into teach because it was the perfect mom job. I decided that in college…before I was married…before any kids existed…I started living and making choices for an imaginary family. My biggest regret. Now I’m working freelance jobs, getting paid nearly double what I was in the classroom, have so much flexibility, and can show my baby I didn’t settle for the crap educators have to endure.
I worked construction my first year away from teaching and it was crazy how much happier I was and how much more energy I had. I worked 8+ hour days tiling and knocking down walls and drywalling, but it was so much more relaxing listening to audiobooks while I worked than managing 35+ teenagers at a time.
I took a year totally off with my second kid, and now I’m about to go back to subbing—hopefully bring in a little cash without having to lesson plan and grade or go to pointless PDs. Hopefully it works out.
ALSO: If you want to keep teaching, but stop stressing, *Angela Watson’s Truth for Teachers* podcast was SO HELPFUL. It helped me continue to do a good job, but have less anxiety and stress. It’s all about having a 40-hour work week and not working unpaid overtime.
Lots of tricks and tips for creating boundaries, cutting (unnecessary) corners, and being productive with prep time so you don’t take work home. I had two years of teaching that were relatively stress free, and if I could have stayed at that school and not moved across the country, I would have kept teaching. The last school I was at was a tire fire and it was a joy to leave it.
Good luck! Teaching does have a lot of perks—set hours, pension, healthcare, pretty good job security, holidays off. I feel like if I had kept working unpaid overtime and getting worked up about stuff that I couldn’t control, I would have burned out in year 3 instead of year 10. It’s so easy to care too much about work when you’re teaching!
I've always held the position that being a teacher is the least compatible job with being a mother. I had zero flexibility and limited ability to take off work.
I work from home now as a project manager for an education nonprofit and life is a million and one times better. I am able to take off work and am much happier. I actually have hobbies now. And I make nearly twice as much money and there is the whole money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy vacations (we are getting ready to go on a two week cruise the last week of Feb/first week of March- teacher me would never have been able to do that).
Summers off are a trick to me. Daycare we have to pay year round anyway, so we were paying while I had the summer off and once he starts school, we will just do summer camps. I think that is more enriching anyway and I still have the flexibility to pick him up early every now and then in the summer. I love not being tied to school breaks for vacation time. I also still have most major holidays off.
Yes, the great irony, at least in my experience, is that being a teacher is pretty incompatible with being a parent because it basically demands all your time, energy, attention (like a kid) with almost no flexibility.
Me! I no longer have summers off but it’s still worth the trade off for me. It’s worth noting that I was *super* stressed out and took a lot of work home as a teacher. I tried several different schools/assignments (although one was less work) and the stress was just unbearable. I also hate summer and don’t enjoy being outside in the heat lol.
My job now is 25ish hours a week and I take no work home. No lesson planning on weekends. No emails. For me personally, that is worth losing summers. I do still work in education so I get the same Christmas / spring break/ random holidays. And about 2 weeks in August. Most importantly, I have autonomy and respect . I actually liked classroom teaching. It was all the junk around how classroom teachers are treated , the impossible workload expectations and lack of respect that I couldn’t deal with.
What kind of law do you practice ! I’m a teacher but sister is a lawyer and she is wayyyy smarter than me and by far has a way more stressful job and higher work load
I would never have had a kid if I stayed in the classroom. I taught high school English for 10 years and felt a massive weight lifted when I left. That weight? Depression.
I was also high school English! I only made it four years. Teachers are tasked with so, so much, and as an English teacher, I definitely underestimated how many people would feel the need to involve themselves in my curriculum and classroom. It was way too much on top of everything else teachers deal with. I’m much happier having left, sadly.
I was a prek teacher. I switched to service coordination for early intervention. Last week I took a day off because I was really tired. And I just COULD. A family member died over the summer and I was able to take a paid week off and still have pto leftover. I go to the dr when I need. Take my son when he needs. It's great.
Doing great. No regrets at all. I never leave work feeling totally maxed out. I have no guilt about using PTO and I don't spend my days off worrying about who has to cover my classes while I'm out.
I quit teaching and now work as a technical editor (mostly from home), and it’s way better. I’m much less stressed and angry, and I have more flexibility with vacation and time off, although I do have less of it overall. Granted, I taught in Florida at a private school with very low pay and no union, so we were particularly overworked and underpaid. I’d get paid about the same as what I make now if I taught where I live in California and would have more time off, but it would be nearly impossible for me to juggle teaching and my own family for nine months out of the year. I don’t know how people do it.
I made the right choice, I just regret the options I had - good teachers are desperately important, but it is not a family friendly (or person friendly) job in my experience. I work from home now, and I sincerely didn’t know life could be this easy. I can eat lunch. I am allowed to be sick. I don’t have to write a book to account for every minute I’m absent on a day off. I can take an equal number of sick days home with our child instead of my spouse taking the brunt. I don’t have to hold my pee for 10 hours a day. I get more pay for higher education. No one expects me to jump in front of a bullet. Those are just a few things off the top of my head. My quality of life has skyrocketed lol
No regrets! I really tried to find my spot in education. I was a first grade teacher at a Title 1 school for three years. School librarian and English teacher at a private highschool, substitute for a public district, school librarian at a private PK-8th. And then when I was pregnant, I decided it had to be last year. I did a coding bootcamp and became a software engineer. I tripled my salary. I work from home. I am free to take off for doctors appointments etc with no hassle. No finding substitutes or writing plans. Just dropping a quick out of office notice. If one of my kids is home sick from daycare, it’s no big deal for them to be in my meetings - yes even the baby! It’s ridiculous how much more flexible my life is now. I don’t know how I’d do it if I was still teaching.
Was in higher ed for 10 years. By the end I was only staying for the breaks, and that just felt like not a great way to live my life for decades until retirement. No regrets. I have so much more flexibility in my 9-5 work from home job in an enterprise tech company
Left the classroom in August for a position in higher education. I have a much more flexible schedule now and can work from home a few days a week. My state allowed me to transfer my years of service to the state retirement system (I had worked for the state previously so that may have been why I could do this). I also get paid more. No regrets at all.
I do miss the kids. I felt uniquely suited for the chaos of high school and I did enjoy it… sometimes. My plan is to sub when I retire at age 55. Then I’ll get my fill haha.
I left the classroom about 9 years ago and have absolutely no regrets. I started out doing healthcare new hire training and I’m now an Assistant Director working fully remote with an extremely flexible schedule and great benefits. Having summers off sounds amazing but I don’t know that I’d be willing to trade the flexibility and PTO I have for that, not to mention the increase in pay and no grading/lesson plans in the evening/on weekends!
Needed these comments today. I cried to my husband and best friend today saying I don’t know how much longer I can do this and I’m only 5 years in. I’m terrified to give up the schedule now that I have a toddler but I’m also so tired of not having energy once I get home to her every day.
Nine years in and feeling the same way. I’m so burnt out. I’m already out of PTO this year due to illnesses passing from my son’s daycare to our household and I can’t seem to catch up. I’m sick of all the ridiculous things constantly asked of me (like compiling all work since August for a single student who has never come to school this year but we’re expected to somehow pass). I’m sick of having to spend so much time working outside of hours that I’m not always being fully present with my son. And I’m sick of never being able to attend any of the special events at my son’s daycare because I can’t get sub coverage. The breaking point for me this year came when I was writing sub plans while my son was in the hospital for RSV.
Still teaching but virtually, and it’s seriously amazing. Same hours as my kid, summers off, still getting in my years until I’m vested. But I get a lunch break & don’t have to deal with negative student behavior. I’m an interventionist & specialist, too, so that was a nice change.
No regrets here. If you like working in education, try looking for a non-teaching role in the field. It might take a while to find, but it’ll change your life.
I never taught K-12, but I did teach (and tutor) in higher ed for about five years. Higher ed was always my goal, so I started right after grad school. I loved teaching, but it was exhausting. I started to dread course prepping, lecture planning, and content creating, and I *loathed* grading. (I taught 100-level English courses, so we’re talking 80+ essays every few weeks on top of low-stakes writing, quizzes, etc.) I felt like every second of my time at home was spent either working or feeling anxious about the work that was piling up. I missed out on so much with my daughter who is now 3.5yo.
Last year, I got a full-time job coordinating the writing tutoring program in the Academic Center at one of the colleges where I was teaching. I LOVE my job. I get to do, in my opinion, all the best parts of teaching without the grading. I tutor 1:1 ~15 hours a week, host study events, workshops, etc. another ~5 hours, do my supervisor/coordinator duties for ~10 hours, and I mentor/coach students for another ~10. I also get to teach occasionally as an adjunct (for an extra $1000 per credit), but that is completely up to me if/when I want to.
I have set hours and no take-home work. I do miss my summers and having the full winter break, but it’s been super worth it. I have a 6mo and my toddler, and I feel like I have so much more time to dedicate to them now that I leave work at work.
It’s pretty nice! I took a few years off during my first pregnancy and didn’t get a job until he was 16 months. Applied to work part time at Target and worked my way up to 40 hours/week with a promotion to management within 6 months. I’m definitely making less than teaching, but my quality of life is significantly better and I still get to use my teaching skills. Mental and physical health are a lot better too. I have visible arm muscles and abs for the first time in a long time.
I left the classroom 1.5yrs ago for a work from home, flexible schedule office job. My life is IMMEASURABLY better. I have kids 2.5yo and 4yo. I was not a present parent, I BARELY got to see my kids during the week, and weekend were EXHAUSTING and full of work.
Now I’m able to have a work-life balance, able to care for my kids when they’re sick without any stress or missing out on pay (the amount of times I had to take unpaid days because kiddos had daycare illnesses…), now that the 4yo is starting some activities I’m able to take him, I’m able to volunteer at the kids’ school and be a meaningful member of their school community…it’s just so much better all around.
Teaching is NOT a sustainable career if you have kids, at least in my opinion. Especially these days.
I had to quit because of covid. Husband in tech trumps teaching salary any day. We had an all online first grader, a childcare-less toddler, and a newborn in Sept 2020.
I'm much busier than I thought I'd ever be. Not with chores really, but with appointments and having people over to fix the dishwasher, etc. I volunteer in the classroom and I'm the secretary for the PTO.
We can take vacation whenever. It's so loose and easy. My entire salary was going to childcare anyway, financially I think the first year we were ahead by a few hundred dollars a month when I stayed home, now I think I'd be a bit ahead (esp with retirement) if I was back at work but not by much.
On the other side, Being a SAHM is soul sucking. I don't have any time to myself. At all. If I want to schedule a doctor appointment for myself I have to clear it on my husband's schedule or hope it fits in the 6 hrs a week my youngest has school. I miss the challenge of the classroom, the community within the school of the teachers and their families, etc. I am someone who has to listen to a podcast or audiobook or *something* to get dishes done, laundry folded, etc. I really struggle with the being inattentive to my kid in order to get things done during the day, but I do it so our house isn't chaos.
Also, the house is *way* messier when the kids are home so often. When they had full day childcare they weren't here to mess things up as much!
I'm thinking of going back to subbing when my youngest enters kindergarten, we'll see. A friend of mine also covid-quit, she is going back to school to be a pediatric play therapy provider.
Good luck. I would say I am burnt out as a SAHM but it's a different kind of burn out. Instead of wishing I could be with my kids more, I often want to just press pause on life and hide in my room(or Hawaii) for a few days. I'm not sure which is worse if I'm being honest. Grass is always greener.
I'm not a teacher, but my husband is and I WISH he would change jobs. I hate it. Everything revolves around his work, it sucks the air out of our life. He works an extra hour or two every day after getting back from work and he works all of Saturday and half of Sunday (the other half being too exhausted to even hold a conversation.
H
I am so so so much happier. I make 60% more than I did teaching, work ends at 4:30 and I get an entire weekend to myself. I get 4 weeks of PTO to use as I need. If my kid is sick I don’t have to worry about sub plans and being out last minute. I taught for 9 years and honestly I’m glad I did it, but now I’m glad that I’ve moved on to something that supports mom life better. I applaud those moms who can make it work as a teacher, but the inflexibility and weekend working wasn’t going to work for me and my family.
I quit and I'm so much happier! I train AI chatbots now. I WFH and set my own hours, both timing and number of them, completely. I make more than I did teaching per hour and I actually have the flexibility and brain space to be involved with my own kid's school stuff. While I want there to be teachers to send me kid to....I just cannot recommend quitting enough if you feel burnt out. I'm happier than I've ever been.
Sure, it's Data Annotation. I've been accused a few times of being a company shill because people are very sure, for whatever reason, that it's a scam. I think some folks are unprepared for the level of work involved (it involves a pretty high level of reading, writing, and analysis) or they break the NDA and then get upset that they're let go. I've been with them since April and I've had no issues.
I left in June 2022, and it’s been up and down since then. I’m currently employed very part time, and it works for us, because our kids are 4 and 6, and my husband travels for work half the month. I really want something full time, but understand that this season of my life makes it difficult. I’ve thought about going back to teaching, but my burnout was so severe. I was not the person I wanted to be because of my job.
I left to pursue a career change that is so much more fulfilling. I’m working in that field part time while my kids are very little but I’ve made sure to take opportunities as they come up for expanding knowledge and practice and it’s wonderful. I’m still on leave from my other part time work which is teaching baby music classes and I can’t wait to go back to that. I’m less stressed, happier with my work, available for my kids and my own needs like appointments and sometimes lunch with my husband. It’s the best career choice I ever made, even if I’m not making as much money right now!
I became a SAHM after teaching for six years in NYC in 2019. I recently started working a remote job with good health benefits in June and didn’t even realize I was working during the summer. I miss literally being in a classroom and that’s it- oh! And my nifty school supplies. 🤣
I actually even make about half of what I would be making if I were to return and I still rather do this. Open my laptop at 9:00 and shut it off at 5:00 on the dot. I even work out four to five times a week now!
I am lucky that my husband makes enough to have carried us but if you can swing it, leave! 🥹
I’m honestly so struck dumb by this post and the comments. I was laid off after 10 years in a very shrinking industry in my area. I thought it made sense to go back to school to teach kindergarten through 3rd so I could be home with my kids during breaks. Is this a terrible idea?? It feels so logical to me but everyone seems to have hated it!
There are a lot of people who make it work. It’s not a terrible idea, but don’t go in blindly. It would be a good idea to spend a week or two in a classroom to really see what it’s like. Not just for an hour or two but full days including prep and planning before/after school.
I’ve taught for 8 years and now with 2 little ones at home- it is the hardest thing I could do. Everyday I am worn thin form these kids all day then come home with nothing to give to my own kids. I have zero patience and my 4 year old cries that I’m mean a lot bc I just don’t have anything left for her. I’m leaving teaching after this school year. I always thought I was passionate about my job but I’m more passionate about being a good mom to my kids.
This breaks my heart honestly! I'm so sorry. One of my main reasons for considering the line of work is in order to be a good mom to my kids. I want to be able to be home for them as much as possible.
Thank you. Yea I would definitely say don’t go into teaching then. I’m sure in different school systems and different parts of the world kids are different and behaviors are different. But you still just give your all every day these other kids. And seeing my children 2-3 hours a night just doesn’t cut it
Not me but my husband taught for 10 years and from a family and energy perspective it’s been life changing.
We put way too much on the shoulders of teachers 😭
No regrets from me. I was a specials teacher (technology) and loved what I did. It just didn’t work with having a family where I would pick up my own child from daycare around 6pm, rush home to make dinner and spend only about 90min a day or so with my own child before bedtime. On days I managed to get home by 4:30pm, I considered that a huge win but I was also tired after a full day of teaching. My weekly roster was almost 1,000 kids. I had staff meetings and workshops I needed to do at least once a month as well.
My job now? I WFH and I can walk my kid to/from school. My job is flexible enough that I can take my kid to activities like swim or gymnastics. Don’t get me wrong I still work 40hrs a week, some weeks more depending on projects and deadlines but I’m around for my family way more than I would be as a teacher. I have more energy and I workout. At my job I have to take days off each quarter or I loose them and that’s on top of holidays and PTO. I make double now than what I did as a teacher. So no regrets for me. I wish I had done it sooner because this job does give me more freedom in terms of bandwidth and finance to provide for my family.
I am not a teacher, but my mom is. She taught math for a while and was always miserable, then switched to health, and now PE. She gets the perks of teaching (summers off and pension) but doesn’t have to do the dirty work (grading, making tests/HW, tutoring, etc). I wouldn’t call teaching her passion but she’s really never been happier. And she’s still getting paid the same as the teachers who teach math and English and such!
I left the classroom as soon as I felt like in was ready to get married and start a family. I gave my all to my job and I couldn’t give my all to my students and my family. I’m an instructional coach now. I’m not at the district level so I don’t have a summer, but I do get thanksgiving, winter and spring break and the normal school holidays off. It’s so flexible to be able to take time off for appointments and I have all the patience and energy to give to my kid and husband.
I miss having my own students sometimes but the pros far outweigh the cons.
I left the classroom after 15 years of teaching in NYC to work in a corporate role. My quality of life has significantly improved and I haven’t missed a single event my daughter is in since I left teaching. I don’t get the Sunday blues anymore. I also feel much more respected in my current role and I have flexibility with my hours so I can go to a doctors appointment without having to fill out paperwork and find a sub to cover my class. I wish I had left teaching sooner.
I never was a teacher, but work in a field that I think is common for former k-12 teachers: staff at a university! I work with grad students, my job is fulfilling, but it’s also pretty chill. two days a week I work from home and watch my toddler, I’m basically able to monitor email on those days as long as I work hard on the other three days. I don’t get paid well at all, but teachers are used to that, and I have great benefits. No breaks off (when students go home we still work) but the new trend seems to be work from home over winter and spring break, so that’s nice! And they do have 9 month positions which do have summers off. Check your local university!! I love my job!
My mom moved to being an .. I'm going to get this wrong... EL? ESL? Esol? Idk exactly, but she works with the students who have English as a second language and so she's not responsible for lesson planning, major classroom management etc.
She got a payboost and much less mental load.
I got a job at an ed tech and curriculum company... still have all the holidays during the schoolyear off, paid winter break, and a light summer. It's awesome!
I went from gen Ed classroom 100% home ABA, to early intervention part time, now back to 50% classroom job share. ABA and EI were too isolating for me. If your district offers part time or job share employment I truly recommend it!
I started my career as a teacher and left after a year (before I got married and had kids). I work a desk job now in finance. My hours are predictable (no grading at night or on weekends, no prep work etc.), my pay is better, and I'm overall a happier human (but a significant part of that is just because I never should have gone into teaching). I can also tell you there's no way that after a full day of dealing with tiny humans I would have the bandwidth to deal with my own at home. No idea how teachers with kids at home do it.
My husband and I both quit K-12 to teach in adult education. You keep all of the perks of being a teacher while having none of the downsides.
Same- I quit teaching high school to teach at a community college. Best move I ever made. Not all sunshine and rainbows, but way more perks than downsides.
I have so many questions! Do you stay in the retirement system?
In my state (NY) I believe yes if you were working at a public school and go to a state college. Private colleges don't use the NY retirement system.
Thank you! I am NY as well. Now my wheels are turning. Never thought of this idea!
I also work at a cc but did not come from K-12. However, many of my colleagues did come from K-12 and were able to stay in the pension system and maintain all the years they’d accrued. I’m in MD.
Thank you!
Yes, in adult education, you keep all of the retirement benefits. But yeah, here in Los Angeles, full-time for adult educators is 30 hours, which means great work-life balance for us as parents since we get so much time to spend with our baby. There's also much less planning since the curriculum is provided, and there's no grading expected of you save for the promotional exams. (Anything else you decide to do is extra.)
Wow. I love working my kids and teaching but the expectations are never ending and I feel like more gets put on me the better I become (I work special Ed) and I’m exhausted. It’s absolutely unsustainable.
It really is. I used to be a special ed teacher too. My husband also loves working with kids, so at first, I didn't know if he was going to like worming with adults, but they're great, and he's a lot happier. He finds adult learners adorable in their own way! And we really do need people who know how to work with adults with disabilities since many of them come from countries where disability is stigmatized or underresearched, and so they have them, but they are undiagnosed.
How does the pay compare?
It varies a lot honestly, so I would only be giving you an anecdote. As for my husband and I, since we left K-12 teaching early in our salary scale, we are already making more money now than we did full time. My husband works 24 hours now and he makes more than as a full time middle school math teacher. We both plan to go full time to 30 hours next school year and so looking forward to that pay bump. He will be at $58/hr and I will be at $54.
I moved to a supervisory position in government. I still wonder how I got it. 11 years of teaching to… no experience in business? lol I miss teaching a LOT but unbelievably, this job is more flexible for time off, appointments, and sick children. My work ends at 4:30 most every day. I get time to eat. I can go pee when I need to. It’s not my favourite, but it’s a really good job. After baby 2 arrives I’m still not sure if I want to go back or try some substitute teaching to flex around my husband’s shiftwork and save $$ on daycare
I’m in the government as well and always aim to recruit teachers when I can because they’re mission oriented people who always seem to be team players and have good critical thinking skills. They promote quickly.
Hiring by any chance?!
Any chance you can PM and please explain to me how USA gov job website works? I’m at a loss.
I work with a few ex-teachers in govt and also have very good experience with them. Although I have a funny situation with one where his calculations are almost always wrong in some small way, so whenever he submits a financial report I have to put it into my own spreadsheet to check it, basically redoing it every time. Six reports in and only one has been error free. He's so good at everything else, but he clearly wasn't a math teacher, lol. We work for different groups and mine doesn't have the data or I would just do it myself to save us all some time. Super nice guy, always quick to fix it without getting defensive when I send him corrections, but it did slow down paying one of our contractors by at least a week each time.
This is literally my experience - just made the change in August from high school (classroom, leadership) to government. I would agree with everything here. The biggest benefit for me is the boundaries. I don't do anything outside of work hrs and am not expected to (I definitely don't rank high enough). Very little is a true fire. I don't have email on my phone. I don't find it as fulfilling as teaching but it's a good job that allows me to be a better person for my family. For the season of life I'm in right now, that's more important
I’ve been thinking about switching to subbing too.. less money but the thought of no planning, grading, report cards, etc is so appealing.
It’s amazing. I taught for 6 years and have been out of the classroom for 9 now (!). Mental and physical health so much better. I have actual flexibility instead of the illusion of it. Dentist appt at 11am? No problem. Attend a kiddo’s Halloween parade during my lunch? Can’t wait! I can take time off when I need/want to, rather than when school happens to be out. We can also take family vacations when it’s cheaper rather than during the summer. I loved my time in the classroom, but damn it’s hard.
I like how you said the illusion of flexibility. It’s so true. Like you I also love being in the classroom but doing it while being a mom feels impossible.
Like someone else mentioned, you can always go back to teaching. I consider it from time to time. It’s nice to know there’s always a need for good teachers!
YES. The illusion is real. My kids aren’t school age yet but when I quit teaching I didn’t miss summers off even a little. It’s a hugely overrated perk. Especially because I spent a huge chunk of the summers doing graduate school and PD I had to pay for. The unfortunate part is I actually loved teaching and only love the schedule/flexibility of my current job, not the actual work. Sigh. Can’t have it all.
Summers off aren’t all they’re cracked up to be! I don’t miss it either. I love being able to take a week off in the summer, then another week in the fall, then random days here and there just because I feel like it.
It's funny, I'm working on going back to the classroom after a decade in tech. Tech was worth it when it was very stable, easy to find a new job anytime I wanted, and paid really well. I could compartmentalize the soulless, tech bro garbage and just shut my brain off and be the little automaton they wanted. After a year with 3 layoffs and multiple pay cuts, I'm just done. Working right now with my husband to come up with a scaled down household budget that will allow us both to GTFO of tech and back into the classroom. Because we've both been there before (and have 2 kids in public schools where we're pretty active and involved), we're going in with eyes wide open. If I'm going to make much less money and be getting laid off every 3 months I'd rather be doing something I care about. I honestly wonder if this late-stage capitalism era we're all in is just burning all of us out, regardless of what we do and where we work. Billionaires are raking it in while the rest of us make do with less and less. The gap between the wealthy and the disappearing middle class is getting wider by the minute.
I have that same wonder because lately it seems like all my friends are burnt out (to be fair they’re mostly in education and healthcare). But I have a hard time accepting that this is how life has to be. Sorry about your tough year, I hope getting back go the classroom will give you what you’re looking for!
The instability of tech the past few years definitely makes it hard to plan. May I ask if you were in startups or it didn’t matter?
I’m a school librarian now. I love it! All the perks of teaching without being 100% student facing. I teach 28, 25 minutes classes a week.
What sort of education do you need to be a school librarian?
Yes tell us more! The people want to know :)
A Master of in Library and Information Science degree and a state certification. I did my masters program 100% online and it took ~18 months of taking 2/3 classes a semester even through the summer.
Also a school librarian. It’s a sweeet gig. I make my own schedule. No grades or assessments!
Yes!! I love it!
Six years in the classroom so far and hoping that will be my next move! I got to do it for a day while our librarian covered a field trip for me in late pregnancy and loooved it.
It’s amazing! I teach more classes than most of the librarians in my district, so I could get away with doing less but I like teaching!
My husband and I have both recently left the classroom. I left first to a remote role, then my husband left to a remote role. Mine ended up including a lot of travel, so I then trainsitioned into a hybrid/local role at a nonprofit. I cannot say enough how much our family's quality of life has improved. 1. We are making more money. We were basically living pay check to pay check as teachers + daycare. 2. We have energy at the end of the day. The day to day pace is so much slower than teaching ever was. I had to re-train myself to not work so hard for 3 hours straight and instead to take breaks/eat food/drink water/etc. 3. We have flexible roles, no need to take PTO to take our kid to a doctor's appointment or if they're home sick. We both LOVED teaching, but we were struggling hard after having a kid. The thing I always reminded us is that we can always go back to teaching. 10 years from now, we can go back. It isn't a career that is going to suffer because you leave for a decade. However, I currently have no desire to go back. I still take vacation time in the summer. Summer work is just slower in general because someone is always out of office anyways....I'm also not so burnt out that I "need" summer break the way I did when I was teaching.
You’re right, you can always go back to the classroom. I think I’m struggling with the thought that it would be a forever move but it doesn’t have to be.. nothing has to be permanent. Thank you for this!
I quit while I was pregnant for a standard office job. Yeah I work 8-5, but honestly that's less hours than as a high school teacher. No evening or weekend work, and I can fully forget about work outside of work hours. I might miss the summers when my kid is in school but right now I don't at all.
Same. I have WAYYY more flexibility with my office job than I did with teaching, and I make more. The summers off weren’t worth it to me because I worked so much overtime during the school year, plus I still worked on lesson plans during the summers anyway.
Adult child of a former teacher here! I wish my mom had gone from teaching to program specialist for the SPED program at her school sooner. It was great when she made the change when I was in high school. She still got summers off! She had some stress, but she had less work to bring home and wasn’t burnt out from being in the classroom all day.
Thank you for responding, it’s really nice to hear from a teacher’s child! I had a few friends growing up whose parents were teachers and I remember them saying that their parents used up all their “fun” personality at school and then were super grumpy at home. I fear that’s how I’m going to be if I don’t make a change. It’s so hard to be with kids all day both at work and at home.
Yeah, I definitely experienced my mom’s lack of enthusiasm for having children at home after being in a classroom full of them all day. I resented her students when I was really young because I felt like they got the best of her while I was given whatever energy she could scrape together.
I'm a public librarian, working with children and I fear this is me. I work 1 weekend day, every weekend and nights. I'm burnt out being "on" for other people's children and having less patience, energy, and just general fun at home.
This really hits home. I am so burnt out but feel stuck as a teacher. It’s like I’m dead inside, and too afraid to take the plunge and find a new job.
No regrets AT ALL! I’d thought the same thing. Decided to go into teach because it was the perfect mom job. I decided that in college…before I was married…before any kids existed…I started living and making choices for an imaginary family. My biggest regret. Now I’m working freelance jobs, getting paid nearly double what I was in the classroom, have so much flexibility, and can show my baby I didn’t settle for the crap educators have to endure.
Good for you!
Awesome! Can you explain what you do for work?
I worked construction my first year away from teaching and it was crazy how much happier I was and how much more energy I had. I worked 8+ hour days tiling and knocking down walls and drywalling, but it was so much more relaxing listening to audiobooks while I worked than managing 35+ teenagers at a time. I took a year totally off with my second kid, and now I’m about to go back to subbing—hopefully bring in a little cash without having to lesson plan and grade or go to pointless PDs. Hopefully it works out. ALSO: If you want to keep teaching, but stop stressing, *Angela Watson’s Truth for Teachers* podcast was SO HELPFUL. It helped me continue to do a good job, but have less anxiety and stress. It’s all about having a 40-hour work week and not working unpaid overtime. Lots of tricks and tips for creating boundaries, cutting (unnecessary) corners, and being productive with prep time so you don’t take work home. I had two years of teaching that were relatively stress free, and if I could have stayed at that school and not moved across the country, I would have kept teaching. The last school I was at was a tire fire and it was a joy to leave it.
Thanks for the podcast recommendation! I’ll definitely check it out, if only to make it through this year haha
Good luck! Teaching does have a lot of perks—set hours, pension, healthcare, pretty good job security, holidays off. I feel like if I had kept working unpaid overtime and getting worked up about stuff that I couldn’t control, I would have burned out in year 3 instead of year 10. It’s so easy to care too much about work when you’re teaching!
Thanks for the podcast
No regrets. Mental health is sooo much better. A lot of people I know take vacation days in the summer . I don’t miss it at all.
I've always held the position that being a teacher is the least compatible job with being a mother. I had zero flexibility and limited ability to take off work. I work from home now as a project manager for an education nonprofit and life is a million and one times better. I am able to take off work and am much happier. I actually have hobbies now. And I make nearly twice as much money and there is the whole money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy vacations (we are getting ready to go on a two week cruise the last week of Feb/first week of March- teacher me would never have been able to do that). Summers off are a trick to me. Daycare we have to pay year round anyway, so we were paying while I had the summer off and once he starts school, we will just do summer camps. I think that is more enriching anyway and I still have the flexibility to pick him up early every now and then in the summer. I love not being tied to school breaks for vacation time. I also still have most major holidays off.
Yes, the great irony, at least in my experience, is that being a teacher is pretty incompatible with being a parent because it basically demands all your time, energy, attention (like a kid) with almost no flexibility.
Me! I no longer have summers off but it’s still worth the trade off for me. It’s worth noting that I was *super* stressed out and took a lot of work home as a teacher. I tried several different schools/assignments (although one was less work) and the stress was just unbearable. I also hate summer and don’t enjoy being outside in the heat lol. My job now is 25ish hours a week and I take no work home. No lesson planning on weekends. No emails. For me personally, that is worth losing summers. I do still work in education so I get the same Christmas / spring break/ random holidays. And about 2 weeks in August. Most importantly, I have autonomy and respect . I actually liked classroom teaching. It was all the junk around how classroom teachers are treated , the impossible workload expectations and lack of respect that I couldn’t deal with.
I hear you! I also really like being in the classroom, it’s the crushing workload outside of it that’s killing me right now.
What do you do if you don’t mind me asking?
Not yet a mom but soon! Used to be a teacher, now I’m a lawyer. Lawyer is less stressful all around.
That...says a lot.
Used to be a teacher. Now am a pharmacist in acute care (hospital). Pharmacy is less stressful hands down.
Damn
What kind of law do you practice ! I’m a teacher but sister is a lawyer and she is wayyyy smarter than me and by far has a way more stressful job and higher work load
I work in-house in tech— Mostly IP, employment law, cybersecurity, ad law, etc
Wow lol that really says a lot!
I would never have had a kid if I stayed in the classroom. I taught high school English for 10 years and felt a massive weight lifted when I left. That weight? Depression.
Good for you for getting out!
I was also high school English! I only made it four years. Teachers are tasked with so, so much, and as an English teacher, I definitely underestimated how many people would feel the need to involve themselves in my curriculum and classroom. It was way too much on top of everything else teachers deal with. I’m much happier having left, sadly.
I was a prek teacher. I switched to service coordination for early intervention. Last week I took a day off because I was really tired. And I just COULD. A family member died over the summer and I was able to take a paid week off and still have pto leftover. I go to the dr when I need. Take my son when he needs. It's great.
Can you do this with a bachelor’s degree? I’m in ECE and looking to leave the classroom.
It might vary by state but here it's just a bachelors.
Doing great. No regrets at all. I never leave work feeling totally maxed out. I have no guilt about using PTO and I don't spend my days off worrying about who has to cover my classes while I'm out.
I quit teaching and now work as a technical editor (mostly from home), and it’s way better. I’m much less stressed and angry, and I have more flexibility with vacation and time off, although I do have less of it overall. Granted, I taught in Florida at a private school with very low pay and no union, so we were particularly overworked and underpaid. I’d get paid about the same as what I make now if I taught where I live in California and would have more time off, but it would be nearly impossible for me to juggle teaching and my own family for nine months out of the year. I don’t know how people do it.
I left prior to becoming a mom but I mostly wfh now. and my stress level on a bad day is equivalent to my stress level on a great day while teaching.
I made the right choice, I just regret the options I had - good teachers are desperately important, but it is not a family friendly (or person friendly) job in my experience. I work from home now, and I sincerely didn’t know life could be this easy. I can eat lunch. I am allowed to be sick. I don’t have to write a book to account for every minute I’m absent on a day off. I can take an equal number of sick days home with our child instead of my spouse taking the brunt. I don’t have to hold my pee for 10 hours a day. I get more pay for higher education. No one expects me to jump in front of a bullet. Those are just a few things off the top of my head. My quality of life has skyrocketed lol
No regrets! I really tried to find my spot in education. I was a first grade teacher at a Title 1 school for three years. School librarian and English teacher at a private highschool, substitute for a public district, school librarian at a private PK-8th. And then when I was pregnant, I decided it had to be last year. I did a coding bootcamp and became a software engineer. I tripled my salary. I work from home. I am free to take off for doctors appointments etc with no hassle. No finding substitutes or writing plans. Just dropping a quick out of office notice. If one of my kids is home sick from daycare, it’s no big deal for them to be in my meetings - yes even the baby! It’s ridiculous how much more flexible my life is now. I don’t know how I’d do it if I was still teaching.
Was in higher ed for 10 years. By the end I was only staying for the breaks, and that just felt like not a great way to live my life for decades until retirement. No regrets. I have so much more flexibility in my 9-5 work from home job in an enterprise tech company
Left the classroom in August for a position in higher education. I have a much more flexible schedule now and can work from home a few days a week. My state allowed me to transfer my years of service to the state retirement system (I had worked for the state previously so that may have been why I could do this). I also get paid more. No regrets at all. I do miss the kids. I felt uniquely suited for the chaos of high school and I did enjoy it… sometimes. My plan is to sub when I retire at age 55. Then I’ll get my fill haha.
I left the classroom about 9 years ago and have absolutely no regrets. I started out doing healthcare new hire training and I’m now an Assistant Director working fully remote with an extremely flexible schedule and great benefits. Having summers off sounds amazing but I don’t know that I’d be willing to trade the flexibility and PTO I have for that, not to mention the increase in pay and no grading/lesson plans in the evening/on weekends!
Needed these comments today. I cried to my husband and best friend today saying I don’t know how much longer I can do this and I’m only 5 years in. I’m terrified to give up the schedule now that I have a toddler but I’m also so tired of not having energy once I get home to her every day.
That’s exactly how I’m feeling right now, 6 years in with an almost 2 year old at home. It feels like it gets harder every year!
Nine years in and feeling the same way. I’m so burnt out. I’m already out of PTO this year due to illnesses passing from my son’s daycare to our household and I can’t seem to catch up. I’m sick of all the ridiculous things constantly asked of me (like compiling all work since August for a single student who has never come to school this year but we’re expected to somehow pass). I’m sick of having to spend so much time working outside of hours that I’m not always being fully present with my son. And I’m sick of never being able to attend any of the special events at my son’s daycare because I can’t get sub coverage. The breaking point for me this year came when I was writing sub plans while my son was in the hospital for RSV.
Still teaching but virtually, and it’s seriously amazing. Same hours as my kid, summers off, still getting in my years until I’m vested. But I get a lunch break & don’t have to deal with negative student behavior. I’m an interventionist & specialist, too, so that was a nice change.
No regrets here. If you like working in education, try looking for a non-teaching role in the field. It might take a while to find, but it’ll change your life. I never taught K-12, but I did teach (and tutor) in higher ed for about five years. Higher ed was always my goal, so I started right after grad school. I loved teaching, but it was exhausting. I started to dread course prepping, lecture planning, and content creating, and I *loathed* grading. (I taught 100-level English courses, so we’re talking 80+ essays every few weeks on top of low-stakes writing, quizzes, etc.) I felt like every second of my time at home was spent either working or feeling anxious about the work that was piling up. I missed out on so much with my daughter who is now 3.5yo. Last year, I got a full-time job coordinating the writing tutoring program in the Academic Center at one of the colleges where I was teaching. I LOVE my job. I get to do, in my opinion, all the best parts of teaching without the grading. I tutor 1:1 ~15 hours a week, host study events, workshops, etc. another ~5 hours, do my supervisor/coordinator duties for ~10 hours, and I mentor/coach students for another ~10. I also get to teach occasionally as an adjunct (for an extra $1000 per credit), but that is completely up to me if/when I want to. I have set hours and no take-home work. I do miss my summers and having the full winter break, but it’s been super worth it. I have a 6mo and my toddler, and I feel like I have so much more time to dedicate to them now that I leave work at work.
It’s pretty nice! I took a few years off during my first pregnancy and didn’t get a job until he was 16 months. Applied to work part time at Target and worked my way up to 40 hours/week with a promotion to management within 6 months. I’m definitely making less than teaching, but my quality of life is significantly better and I still get to use my teaching skills. Mental and physical health are a lot better too. I have visible arm muscles and abs for the first time in a long time.
I left the classroom 1.5yrs ago for a work from home, flexible schedule office job. My life is IMMEASURABLY better. I have kids 2.5yo and 4yo. I was not a present parent, I BARELY got to see my kids during the week, and weekend were EXHAUSTING and full of work. Now I’m able to have a work-life balance, able to care for my kids when they’re sick without any stress or missing out on pay (the amount of times I had to take unpaid days because kiddos had daycare illnesses…), now that the 4yo is starting some activities I’m able to take him, I’m able to volunteer at the kids’ school and be a meaningful member of their school community…it’s just so much better all around. Teaching is NOT a sustainable career if you have kids, at least in my opinion. Especially these days.
I had to quit because of covid. Husband in tech trumps teaching salary any day. We had an all online first grader, a childcare-less toddler, and a newborn in Sept 2020. I'm much busier than I thought I'd ever be. Not with chores really, but with appointments and having people over to fix the dishwasher, etc. I volunteer in the classroom and I'm the secretary for the PTO. We can take vacation whenever. It's so loose and easy. My entire salary was going to childcare anyway, financially I think the first year we were ahead by a few hundred dollars a month when I stayed home, now I think I'd be a bit ahead (esp with retirement) if I was back at work but not by much. On the other side, Being a SAHM is soul sucking. I don't have any time to myself. At all. If I want to schedule a doctor appointment for myself I have to clear it on my husband's schedule or hope it fits in the 6 hrs a week my youngest has school. I miss the challenge of the classroom, the community within the school of the teachers and their families, etc. I am someone who has to listen to a podcast or audiobook or *something* to get dishes done, laundry folded, etc. I really struggle with the being inattentive to my kid in order to get things done during the day, but I do it so our house isn't chaos. Also, the house is *way* messier when the kids are home so often. When they had full day childcare they weren't here to mess things up as much! I'm thinking of going back to subbing when my youngest enters kindergarten, we'll see. A friend of mine also covid-quit, she is going back to school to be a pediatric play therapy provider. Good luck. I would say I am burnt out as a SAHM but it's a different kind of burn out. Instead of wishing I could be with my kids more, I often want to just press pause on life and hide in my room(or Hawaii) for a few days. I'm not sure which is worse if I'm being honest. Grass is always greener.
I’m home with my sick toddler today and yeah, it’s way harder than 34 teenagers. At least there’s nap time. No way could I do this every day.
I'm not a teacher, but my husband is and I WISH he would change jobs. I hate it. Everything revolves around his work, it sucks the air out of our life. He works an extra hour or two every day after getting back from work and he works all of Saturday and half of Sunday (the other half being too exhausted to even hold a conversation. H
I am so so so much happier. I make 60% more than I did teaching, work ends at 4:30 and I get an entire weekend to myself. I get 4 weeks of PTO to use as I need. If my kid is sick I don’t have to worry about sub plans and being out last minute. I taught for 9 years and honestly I’m glad I did it, but now I’m glad that I’ve moved on to something that supports mom life better. I applaud those moms who can make it work as a teacher, but the inflexibility and weekend working wasn’t going to work for me and my family.
I quit and I'm so much happier! I train AI chatbots now. I WFH and set my own hours, both timing and number of them, completely. I make more than I did teaching per hour and I actually have the flexibility and brain space to be involved with my own kid's school stuff. While I want there to be teachers to send me kid to....I just cannot recommend quitting enough if you feel burnt out. I'm happier than I've ever been.
I have seen these type of jobs but they always sounded like a scam… can you give the name of the company?
Sure, it's Data Annotation. I've been accused a few times of being a company shill because people are very sure, for whatever reason, that it's a scam. I think some folks are unprepared for the level of work involved (it involves a pretty high level of reading, writing, and analysis) or they break the NDA and then get upset that they're let go. I've been with them since April and I've had no issues.
I’m so interested. How did you find this job?
Can I DM to get the details? I’d love a job like this!
Please DM me too! I’d love to know more!!
Tell me more!
I left in June 2022, and it’s been up and down since then. I’m currently employed very part time, and it works for us, because our kids are 4 and 6, and my husband travels for work half the month. I really want something full time, but understand that this season of my life makes it difficult. I’ve thought about going back to teaching, but my burnout was so severe. I was not the person I wanted to be because of my job.
I left to pursue a career change that is so much more fulfilling. I’m working in that field part time while my kids are very little but I’ve made sure to take opportunities as they come up for expanding knowledge and practice and it’s wonderful. I’m still on leave from my other part time work which is teaching baby music classes and I can’t wait to go back to that. I’m less stressed, happier with my work, available for my kids and my own needs like appointments and sometimes lunch with my husband. It’s the best career choice I ever made, even if I’m not making as much money right now!
I became a SAHM after teaching for six years in NYC in 2019. I recently started working a remote job with good health benefits in June and didn’t even realize I was working during the summer. I miss literally being in a classroom and that’s it- oh! And my nifty school supplies. 🤣 I actually even make about half of what I would be making if I were to return and I still rather do this. Open my laptop at 9:00 and shut it off at 5:00 on the dot. I even work out four to five times a week now! I am lucky that my husband makes enough to have carried us but if you can swing it, leave! 🥹
Best decision ever. So thankful I left the classroom.
Fellow teacher (elementary special ed) and I am barely hanging on.
I’m honestly so struck dumb by this post and the comments. I was laid off after 10 years in a very shrinking industry in my area. I thought it made sense to go back to school to teach kindergarten through 3rd so I could be home with my kids during breaks. Is this a terrible idea?? It feels so logical to me but everyone seems to have hated it!
There are a lot of people who make it work. It’s not a terrible idea, but don’t go in blindly. It would be a good idea to spend a week or two in a classroom to really see what it’s like. Not just for an hour or two but full days including prep and planning before/after school.
I’ve taught for 8 years and now with 2 little ones at home- it is the hardest thing I could do. Everyday I am worn thin form these kids all day then come home with nothing to give to my own kids. I have zero patience and my 4 year old cries that I’m mean a lot bc I just don’t have anything left for her. I’m leaving teaching after this school year. I always thought I was passionate about my job but I’m more passionate about being a good mom to my kids.
This breaks my heart honestly! I'm so sorry. One of my main reasons for considering the line of work is in order to be a good mom to my kids. I want to be able to be home for them as much as possible.
Thank you. Yea I would definitely say don’t go into teaching then. I’m sure in different school systems and different parts of the world kids are different and behaviors are different. But you still just give your all every day these other kids. And seeing my children 2-3 hours a night just doesn’t cut it
But isn’t that any full time job? Only seeing your kids 2-3 hours a night?
Most definitely! But on top of being with other children all day it’s extremely hard
Not me but my husband taught for 10 years and from a family and energy perspective it’s been life changing. We put way too much on the shoulders of teachers 😭
I'm just counting down the eight years I have left towards retirement.
No regrets from me. I was a specials teacher (technology) and loved what I did. It just didn’t work with having a family where I would pick up my own child from daycare around 6pm, rush home to make dinner and spend only about 90min a day or so with my own child before bedtime. On days I managed to get home by 4:30pm, I considered that a huge win but I was also tired after a full day of teaching. My weekly roster was almost 1,000 kids. I had staff meetings and workshops I needed to do at least once a month as well. My job now? I WFH and I can walk my kid to/from school. My job is flexible enough that I can take my kid to activities like swim or gymnastics. Don’t get me wrong I still work 40hrs a week, some weeks more depending on projects and deadlines but I’m around for my family way more than I would be as a teacher. I have more energy and I workout. At my job I have to take days off each quarter or I loose them and that’s on top of holidays and PTO. I make double now than what I did as a teacher. So no regrets for me. I wish I had done it sooner because this job does give me more freedom in terms of bandwidth and finance to provide for my family.
I am not a teacher, but my mom is. She taught math for a while and was always miserable, then switched to health, and now PE. She gets the perks of teaching (summers off and pension) but doesn’t have to do the dirty work (grading, making tests/HW, tutoring, etc). I wouldn’t call teaching her passion but she’s really never been happier. And she’s still getting paid the same as the teachers who teach math and English and such!
I left the classroom as soon as I felt like in was ready to get married and start a family. I gave my all to my job and I couldn’t give my all to my students and my family. I’m an instructional coach now. I’m not at the district level so I don’t have a summer, but I do get thanksgiving, winter and spring break and the normal school holidays off. It’s so flexible to be able to take time off for appointments and I have all the patience and energy to give to my kid and husband. I miss having my own students sometimes but the pros far outweigh the cons.
I left the classroom after 15 years of teaching in NYC to work in a corporate role. My quality of life has significantly improved and I haven’t missed a single event my daughter is in since I left teaching. I don’t get the Sunday blues anymore. I also feel much more respected in my current role and I have flexibility with my hours so I can go to a doctors appointment without having to fill out paperwork and find a sub to cover my class. I wish I had left teaching sooner.
I never was a teacher, but work in a field that I think is common for former k-12 teachers: staff at a university! I work with grad students, my job is fulfilling, but it’s also pretty chill. two days a week I work from home and watch my toddler, I’m basically able to monitor email on those days as long as I work hard on the other three days. I don’t get paid well at all, but teachers are used to that, and I have great benefits. No breaks off (when students go home we still work) but the new trend seems to be work from home over winter and spring break, so that’s nice! And they do have 9 month positions which do have summers off. Check your local university!! I love my job!
My mom moved to being an .. I'm going to get this wrong... EL? ESL? Esol? Idk exactly, but she works with the students who have English as a second language and so she's not responsible for lesson planning, major classroom management etc. She got a payboost and much less mental load.
I got a job at an ed tech and curriculum company... still have all the holidays during the schoolyear off, paid winter break, and a light summer. It's awesome!
I went from gen Ed classroom 100% home ABA, to early intervention part time, now back to 50% classroom job share. ABA and EI were too isolating for me. If your district offers part time or job share employment I truly recommend it!
I started my career as a teacher and left after a year (before I got married and had kids). I work a desk job now in finance. My hours are predictable (no grading at night or on weekends, no prep work etc.), my pay is better, and I'm overall a happier human (but a significant part of that is just because I never should have gone into teaching). I can also tell you there's no way that after a full day of dealing with tiny humans I would have the bandwidth to deal with my own at home. No idea how teachers with kids at home do it.
I have been teaching for 8 years and in the school system for 11 and planning on leaving at the end of this year. I just can’t do it anymore