Life after teaching
I was a secondary school classroom teacher for about sixteen years. Not anymore. I had the cliché teacher meltdown, and haven’t set foot in a classroom ever since. It’s been nearly two years since leaving the profession, and it makes me sad that I don’t miss it.
I know I’m nothing special in that regard. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, despite so many of the public insisting it’s the cushiest number going and “those who can’t…” etc.
I made the stupid mistake of clicking on the comments underneath one news article about this. Every other post blamed teachers. Probably more than that, actually. They were hateful. Vitriolic. Do these people honestly believe that this is teachers’ fault? And yes, I know there will always be examples of teachers telling kids that “this is going to affect what happens to you at secondary school.” (Sadly, the data is often used to predict a child’s future academic successes–again, no teacher is responsible for that. Have a chat with Michael Gove and his successors for their insistence upon “rigour.” Such bollocks). And there will always be teachers who have been browbeaten by their superiors into believing that EVERYTHING in a kid’s life is riding on this. Teachers have been put under terrific pressure and sometimes they pass that on to the kids. That’s wrong. But they’re not evil. Just anxious, and panicking. Fallible. Like all humans.
They could double the holidays and the pay, and I still wouldn’t go back. When people say, “Yes, but they don’t know how lucky they are getting those holidays”, a little bit of me dies. Here’s an analogy: Imagine that you are going out with the person of your dreams. They treat you like gold. You feel on top of the world when you are with them. You want for nothing. The catch is, they’re only like that for twelve weeks of the year. The rest of the year? They’re abusive, they make you cry, you’re exhausted all the time, you’re horrible to your own family because you take out the way you’re being made to feel on them, your mental and physical health is broken, you drink too much, you comfort eat, you cry (I know I already said that but it bears repeating). But hey! Twelve weeks of the year… it’s great!
(And there are other jobs that make people feel crap, too. I know. It’s not a competition. It’s just that I can only talk about the one I know.)
I wouldn’t dream of going back into a classroom, but we need to hold on to the ones who do keep turning up. Be nice to anyone who works in a school. We’re running out of them, because too many people aren’t.
