Episode 10 - Why I Left the Teaching Profession

Why did I leave the teaching profession? On this episode, I share the five main reasons that contributed to me making the decision to leave the teaching profession.

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Here is a transcription of Episode 10:

0:17: Hello and welcome to the Broke PhD Podcast! I'm your host, Dr. G.

0:24: On this episode of Broke PhD Podcast, I share 5 reasons for why I left the teaching profession. I want to preface this episode by sharing that some of the things I will talk about maybe triggering for individuals, so just please keep that in mind. If you need to stop or pause the episode at any point, please feel free to do so and do what makes you feel comfortable. I will be sharing about the reasons for why I left the teaching profession. And I'm not sharing them to scare anyone, but I am sharing them as they are my own experience and my own truths. And I think it is important that everyone's experiences be shared and heard so that hopefully it can aid others as they navigate along their own journey. So with that said, let's begin this episode.

1:11: As I shared in earlier episodes, I started my teaching career being an early childhood educator, primarily teaching two and three-year olds. Then I moved into being a special education teacher where I taught a kindergarten self-contained class. Collectively, I've taught for close to 13 years, and teaching was truly one of my passions. But for the reasons I will share in this episode, I did make the decision to leave the teaching profession.

1:36: The first reason why I left the teaching profession was the physical toll that teaching took on my body. Being an educator, especially an early childhood educator or a kindergarten teacher, one of the things that you can't do that you may take for granted is being able to use the bathroom whenever you want to. I was not able to leave my students out of ratio as an early childhood educator. I was not able to leave my five-year olds or six-year olds on their own in a classroom as a kindergarten teacher. And so, as silly as it may sound, having the freedom to use the bathroom whenever you need to did not exist while being a teacher. And while you may be listening and think that that's something ridiculous for why you wanna leave, that was just one piece of the puzzle that added to my reasoning for wanting to leave teaching. Falling under the physical toll umbrella, being an elementary school teacher in general means that there's a lot of movement, a lot of up and down, a lot of physicality that's required in the job. In my 20s, I was able to handle that and it was a great workout to have throughout the day. As I'm now in my 30s, I recognized that this was not something that would be able to be maintained over a long period of time, and so I had to start thinking, could I handle the physicality of teaching? Or did I want to try to do something else that required less of a physical toll on my body throughout the day?

3:00: The second reason for why I left the teaching profession was the lack of adequate compensation or the lack of money that teachers are paid for the job that they do. When I started as a kindergarten special education teacher in the public school system, while I made a little bit more than general education teachers, I entered with having already earned a master’s degree, but I was not compensated for having a master’s degree at the time. The state and the district and the county that I worked in did not compensate teachers for having a master’s degree or an advanced level degree. And so when I embarked on getting my PhD, again, at the time educators were not being compensated for having an advanced degree, and so I did not find that I would be compensated for the work of doing and completing a PhD. In present day, I believe the county that I did work for has changed and they are compensating educators again for having their masters. It was something they used to do in the past, but then they reinstated it. But at the time that I started teaching, it was not something that occurred, and I was not getting compensated for having already earned a master’s degree, so I knew I was not going to be compensated for earning a PhD as well. Also in general, teachers here in the United States are not adequately compensated. I find it baffling that we do not compensate our teachers like we do celebrities or athletes or models even. And all of their jobs are hard and all of their jobs are very physical and very difficult. So why can't we compensate educators to the same degree? Teachers have been tasked with educating the future leaders, the future doctors, the future engineers of tomorrow. But yet they are seen and thrown into this hero box, so that the work is something that is put on a pedestal but does not need to be compensated. Unfortunately, in the real world, an individual cannot survive on being a hero or doing heroic things. In my own experiences and my own observations, educators at the K through 12 level as well as the higher education level are being required to put in so many hours that lie outside of the standard 40 hour work week. Where they are supposed to be OK with not being compensated for doing all of this work in order to keep ahead of the workload that they have. Again, as teachers we are viewed as being heroes, and with being put in a heroic position, oftentimes individuals are supposed to be OK with just doing the work from the heart and not caring about the money and just being there because it's their passion. So as much as we are passionate about teaching, and as much as we love teaching, passion does not pay the bills.

5:54: The third reason for why I left the teaching profession was a fear of getting hit or a fear of something worse happening in the school setting. So as an educator, I had students who had delays with their emotional and behavioral development, especially since I was working with such young students. One of my first experiences during my first year of teaching in my self-contained kindergarten classroom, one of my students took my glasses off of my face and snapped them in half. Again, I was a new teacher. This is my first time having my own classroom. It was an incidence that I knew could occur but I had not encountered quite yet. That incidence became very eye opening for me in recognizing that there was a potential that I could be physically harmed being in this position. Working as an early childhood educator, especially with two and three-year olds, I got hit a decent amount of time. Toddlers are very strong, I will say that, and so toys definitely have been thrown my way. Definitely had the toddler running at me. They get upset. So before the glass incident, I had encountered being hit as an educator. Again moving into a kindergarten setting the students are bigger. Sometimes the students were taller than some of my assistant teachers. So I started to have the realization that this wasn't something that was just going to disappear and never happen again in the teacher setting. But it was something that would occur over and over again, and it did. In a separate incident, I was hit in the face by another student. In other classrooms, I heard about students flipping over chairs and desks. And so when I was thinking about why I wanted to leave the teaching profession, the fear of getting hit or a student harming me was a real reason for why I wanted to leave. Tied to this, here in the United States, there has been an astronomical increase in the number of school shootings over the years and it's something that I can't just turn a blind eye to. In my school we would practice drills of what to do in the event of a school shooter and that was an elementary school. And for me, I know saying it out loud seems bizarre and wild, but this is the reality of education today and it saddens me because it should not be the case that five and six-year olds are practicing a school shooter drill. They should be able just to go to school and have fun and live their lives and worry about what color crayon they want to use on their picture. But the fear of not just me being harmed, but of my students being harmed was something that I had to realize was this something I could handle long term? And I couldn't! I did not want to encounter an experience of someone coming in and me having to shield my students. And I know that sounds probably very triggering and very graphic, but that was the reality that I had to reckon with, that if I stayed in this profession, here in the United States, the possibilities of it becoming a possible occurrence would increase. And it's really sad because, again, no students should have to experience this or have to go through these shooter drills, but it has become a normalized part of education here in the United States, and there's something really wrong with that.

9:17: The fourth reason for why I left the teaching profession was the bureaucratic side of education. I'm sure you might hear other teachers say this, and I've said this many times, that it's not the students that are the problem in education, but it comes down to everything around the students primarily being the policies and the paperwork. Educators already barely have enough time to ensure that their lessons for the next day are covered. And now, on top of everything else, they have to go through an observation and fill out a survey and complete this form and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. While a lot of the policies are there so that the standardization of education can exist, so that all students can get a quality educational experience, sometimes some of the policies are just fluff and some of the policies may not exist for the direct benefit of the students, but rather may have been created with ulterior motives behind them.

10:10: The fifth and final reason why I left the teaching profession was burnout. As an educator, I was experiencing more and more burnout as each school year went on. My burnout hit a maximum high when I started my PhD program because at the time I was teaching full time and I was also being a student full time in a doctorate program. And so this was one of the few times that I recognized that unfortunately I am not superwoman and that I could not handle everything all at one time. And that kick started the initial trend of me starting to walk away from the teaching profession when I went down to just being a substitute teacher and my eyes started to open a little bit more throughout my PhD as I witnessed more and more of the injustices that existed in the education field specifically for teachers. I started to have the realization that I needed to walk away from this profession so that the quality of my life would not be decreased. Now again, this is my own experience and my own perspective. There are several teachers out there that are thriving and I love it. If you are one of those thriving teachers, I am wishing you all the best and keep doing what you're doing because you're doing an amazing job and we need educators. But I was on the flip side where I was not thriving. I was floundering. You only get one life to live and for me, I didn't wanna constantly be in a state of burnout. And being a teacher for me, I was constantly in a state of burnout.

11:41: So in summary, the five main reasons for why I left the teaching profession were: one –the physical toll that teaching had took on my body, two – the lack of adequate compensation or the lack of pay that teachers receive, three – a fear of getting hit or something worse happening, four – the bureaucratic side of education, and five – burnout. Now that you've heard my 5 reasons for leaving the teaching profession, I'm curious to hear other reasons why individuals have left the teaching profession. If you are an educator yourself and you've left the teaching profession, or you know an educator who has left the teaching profession, please feel free to reach out and share those reasons via the podcast website at – brokephdpodcast.com –

or via any of the social media outlets. So that concludes this episode, but I'm so excited to have you on this journey with me. So please hit that subscribe button or that follow button and check out the website – brokephdpodcast.com – to continue to follow along. Again, I'm your host Dr. G, and I hope you have a wonderful day!