Teachers tend to be passionate about contributing to young people’s education and growth and many may hear the lessons they have learned from their teacher years later. However, even multiple positive character traits and hard work don’t always keep a good teacher at school. The reasons behind teacher attrition vary from burnout, poor job satisfaction, and reduced accomplishment to an unsafe work environment, until reaching a certain point when a person makes a decision to leave.
These people who used to work in schools shared the turning point that made them change their jobs, answering one Redditor’s question: “Teachers who quit, when was the moment you realized it wasn’t for you?”
More info: Reddit
#1
In a meeting with other English teachers, an admin said:
“6th grade will no longer be reading novels. It’s not statistically proven to improve test scores.”
If reading doesn’t improve testing, your testing is wrong.
Image credits: BowmanTheShowman
#2
I had a student, maybe 11 or 12, sitting with me and having pizza. I asked how her life was going and she says “Well, my dad’s a [substance] dealer so he’s always got people coming over to sell or buy [substances] or play cards so I can’t sleep. My mom’s dying because she has a hole in her heart and they can’t fix it. And I have a boyfriend but I’m afraid to tell my mom because she’ll tell my dad and he’ll beat me.” Just normal, like this was everyday stuff.
So, as a mandatory reporter I go to my Dean of Students and tell him all this, and he just gets irritated and goes “Yeah, but that doesn’t excuse her behavior.”
That’s when I knew I was done.
Image credits: Gordon_Gano
#3
Two 16 year old kids were facing each other (I had the classroom seats in a U shape) and were silently challenging each other to fight while I was in the middle of a lesson. They suddenly jumped up from their chairs and came at each other with eight inch knives with me in between them.
I was pretty built, having been a stonemason’s apprentice in college to help pay my way through, but these kids were both bigger than me. Without thinking I grabbed each by their collars and shouted SIT. DOWN.
I didn’t start shaking until that evening. I was done a week later.
Edit: Thank you for all the upvotes and a special thank you for the gold, kind stranger.
Image credits: 12thKnight
#4
When the corporate job offered me three times the salary AND a 12% annual bonus.
Now, my kids can afford to go to the college where dad used to teach.
Image credits: anon
#5
I stopped when my annual review with the new program dean focused on the 10% of student reviews that were negative rather than the 90% that were positive. There are too many aggravations working against teachers. At the least, the administration has to have your back.
Image credits: allbright1111
#6
First I’ll tell you the moments when I nearly quit.
When a kid with serious mental health issues stabbed another kid with a pencil and I was told to just keep a better eye on him.
When a parent complained about me but I wasn’t told the nature of the complaint; just reprimanded, generally.
When 16-year-old boys hit on me and I actually considered going out drinking with them because I had no social life.
But the MOMENT, looking back, was when I was hospitalised with exhaustion, and my amazing boyfriend, who had been coming over, marking tests and proofing papers every evening for months, lay down on the cold hard hospital floor and slept beside me in case I was upset overnight.
I realised that I wanted a life with him, not a dull existence where I poured all of myself into my job and had nothing left for us.
I loved teaching but it wanted all of me. Dawn til midnight, seven days a week prepping, marking, planning.
I quit. I got a better job. I married that amazing guy and we have an amazing daughter. On weekends we go to the park and play.
Image credits: invisiblequiet
#7
I worked in a high needs behavior class. I got hit, punched, scratched and spat on daily, but every day I went back and did my best for those kids. I was so battered and bruised that my husband wouldn’t shop with me anymore because people would stare and sometimes even comment to him about his mistreating me. It was sickening, but I loved my job and every one of those kids.
One day was called to the office to talk. It was Christmas time and things weren’t great at home and as anyone with kids knows the holidays makes children especially high strung so things were also wild in the classroom. My boss said “you seem awfully stressed” and I thought how nice of her to notice so I agreed that yes I was struggling. She said “you have 6 weeks to sort it out or I’ll have to let you go”.
I was crushed. It literally broke me. 6 weeks to get less stressed…how does that even work? I found myself just showing up to show up and I realized that wasn’t fair for me or for the kids.
6 weeks later I get a call back to the office. I am congratulated on the amazing turn around and sent back to class. I was baffled. I was more upset and stressed than ever and they congratulate me??
More and more I showed up to work just for the paycheck. One day I just decided screw it, I wasn’t a teacher anymore I was a robot fearful of showing any negativity . I quit that week. Never went back to teaching.
Image credits: adalab
#8
When it would have taken 43 years to pay off my degree at a teachers salary.
Image credits: label4life67
#9
(taught at a juvenile delinquent school) when the accusations of children required no proof or consistency, and to be exonerated took divine intervention. When a kid with a violent history a mile wrong swings a stapler at you, gashing your forehead (because he was dared to) then as you restrain him, until help arrives, you “hurt his wrist”, then your school believes his story that I dropped the N-bomb to him, which caused the outburst. EVEN THOUGH TWO OTHER STAFF MEMBERS SAW THE ENTIRE THING. And the school called the police and tried to have me charged for assault.
Image credits: label4life67
#10
Late to the party but I was a teacher that taught a class that would be tested on the state level and the result of the test (as well as some others) would dictate our funding.
The principal gave me the exam in advance and asked that I quiz the students directly on the questions in the packet.
I was no longer teaching for knowledge but for memorization and it really deflated me. I walked away that winter.
Image credits: BackJurden
#11
When I realized getting drunk and cooking epic meals was way more enjoyable.
Image credits: morz-MOR-druh
#12
Nepotism is a major problem in smaller school districts. Yes men, family members, and friends will get hired as the school system is one of the better paying jobs in the county. All of this is done in return for loyalty and not questioning if decisions are best for the kids.
One of the bigger nails in the coffin was when I was pepper sprayed by the school resource officer AFTER myself and another teacher had broken up a fight and were sending students back to class. He sprayed to “disperse the crowd” spraying myself and our female assistant principle in the face and causing three students to have asthma attacks. For as little as I was being paid, I could find a safer place to work where people were less incompetent.
Image credits: ncarolinarunner
#13
When I realized that I was being more micromanaged every year. I expected a lot of oversight when I was a new teacher. I actually had more people watching my every move & every word after a Master’s Degree & fifteen years experience. I never had a single complaint. Parents & students loved me (even requested me). Administrators needing to justify their jobs were constantly in my classroom or calling pointless meetings to discuss pointless things. I spent less & less time teaching and more & more time filing out meaningless forms, responding to emails, and sitting through meetings.
Image credits: good_sandlapper
#14
Not a teacher, but my buddy was a teacher in the South. He was teaching at a Catholic school in a small, but not tiny, town. His students were primarily poor with parents not terribly involved in their lives. There were a lot of behavioral issues – constant fights, yelling, disruptions, etc. The academics were predictably weak because the students largely didn’t care about school at all. Kids were found with weapons of some kind (knives, shanks) with some frequency, but it wasn’t a daily occurrence.
The final straw came when a particularly problematic student was causing a huge disruption in his classroom by screaming and flipping over desks, which alone wasn’t **that** big of an incident. He escorted this student down to the principal’s office, as he had many times before. Except this time the student insulted my buddy the whole time. He explained the situation to the administrators and returned to his class. A few minutes later an announcement came over the PA system inside the school and the principal mocked and insulted my buddy for what he did. The principal made a snarky comment about not being able to control your class. The troublemaker then returned to class, without facing any kind of discipline, and tried to provoke a fight with my buddy. My buddy noped right out of his classroom, walked out the door, and joined the military.
Image credits: dopkick
#15
My decision to quit was a two-step process: First, I taught high school English in rural Illinois. When I wasn’t debating students after class because they didn’t like the B+ I gave them I was frequently given implicit instructions by the administration to pass my failing students. Then I moved to Washington DC and taught in the DC public school system and realized that I was merely a babysitter. Barely any of my students could read, but the goal of my school was containment. Priority was keeping the students in the classroom and not in the hallways. I was told I couldn’t assign homework because the students wouldn’t do it anyway. I couldn’t give my students any text books because the students just dumped them in the trash after school. (If kids are seen with books in their neighborhoods they were often ridiculed and sometimes beaten by their peers.) Parent/teacher conferences often meant meeting with Grandma whose parenting style was “Jesus will take care of it.” When I was in college I had dreams of teaching Julius Caesar to young people. Teaching turned out to be quite different. I have huge respect for the teachers who can do it. I could not.
Image credits: jaybor
#16
No me but my wife. She was an engineer at a good company on the east coast. Left because she wanted more rewarding work. Soon after she is doing clinicals at a school on the rough side of our home town. She was the kind of student teacher who showed up early, ate lunch with the kids, stayed late, and followed up with parents. Anyway….
Some months in she has repeatedly had trouble with some students (they came from troubled homes and brought a lot with them into the class each day). She tried working with them one on one, working with the administration, and the parents. More than one set of parents said “Stop calling.” And the administration told her to send them to the principal’s office (where they could sit all day) and focus on the “good” kids.
Eventually, the futility set in…. She was the only one who cared. Not the kids, administration, other teachers, or even their parents. She finally wore herself out after a couple years with no support at work and no one appreciating her efforts (except me of course!).
She’s back in aerospace now.
Image credits: Taco_Pie
#17
Where I realized that I couldn’t even escape teaching in my dreams; my life was so focused on teaching that every night I had nightmares about it.
Followed by the pain I feel in my chest from heart palpitations; my heart would constantly race and then stop all together.
Finally, when on the last day of Thanksgiving break, I realized I had cried every single day because I didn’t want to go back to school. I was so low that I had planned my own suicide to get out of teaching, but I figured life had to improve if I just quit teaching, even if I’d be another unemployed millennial statistic.
I lasted 15 months. The only thing that makes me feel a little better about the situation is that the retired cop who replaced me only lasted 3 (he had been an officer in the same city I was teaching).
Image credits: twistedsapphire
#18
Currently teaching- just the sheer amount of lesson planning during the evenings and weekends definitely encroaches on your free time. Man I wish I had just stayed at the corporate gig.
Image credits: jslegacy85
#19
My aunt used to teach, planned a whole years worth of lessons over the summer and then two weeks before term started said she was actually teaching completely different classes.
She told them to do one and quit.
Image credits: Carta_Blanca
#20
So a while back I was a permanent sub for a German teacher in the area I lived (she went on maternity leave). And in this German class I’d also talk about geography and what not. So anyway, near the end of the school year, I was talking about how Berlin…
“Wait wait wait… Berlin’s in *Germany*?! I thought it was in Europe!”
It was at that moment, that I realized I failed as a teacher.
Image credits: 6FootDwarf
#21
When I tried to have a conversation about literature with the head of my department and got a blank stare in return.
I taught English.
Doing my PhD now and am surrounded by faculty and students who are significantly more engaged.
Image credits: anon
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