👩🏻‍🏫 WHY I QUIT TEACHING … my story

hey everybody Welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is Andrea Michelle and today I am going to be doing a story of something that I've been thinking about making for at least a year if not longer um I am going to be talking about my journey leaving education not being a teacher anymore after studying years for it getting my degree in elementary education and basically just my journey to coming to the conclusion that I needed to exit the profession that I thought I would be doing for quite some time if you've never seen my channel before um hi and welcome like I said before please feel free to subscribe if you can relate to this topic at all or you know somebody who might be going through something similar those who have not seen me and may not know my background I was a teacher for three years so I taught first grade first grade in kindergarten for the three years and I taught at two different schools three different classrooms and I taught at a very large school district one of the largest in my state I think the second largest if I'm correct as I've been thinking about making this video I had these big plans to write very cohesive notes just have like a super comprehensive breakdown of everything that I went through and just kind of list things out but then as I started thinking about it more I thought it would be better if I just speak more from the heart and tell you guys um how I made the decision to leave after only being in the profession for three years and becoming part of that statistic of 50 of teachers who lead within their first five years which is not what I wanted to happen but unfortunately it just did come to a point for me where it was the best option that I had if you are a teacher right now and you're watching this please know that this is not meant to be insulting to the profession at all I had great experiences with so many people during my career I will kind of go through the reasons of why even despite being at a very good school and having amazing Administration just why um I felt the career wasn't worth it for me anymore I'm gonna dive straight into like my background and how I even became an elementary education major in the first place because it's not a typical story I guess um as I was growing up when I was in probably like kindergarten I wanted to be a teacher I of course had no real understanding of the complexities of all that teachers do or I actually have some vague memories of being in elementary school and hearing my teachers say that they stayed till 6 PM after school and of course as a child you just don't understand like why teachers stay that late slash like when you're really young you think they live at the school but which they basically do because there's so much to do so I wanted to be a teacher for a while when I was really really young and then I kind of grew out of it in high school I always had an interest in real estate so I thought that that's what I wanted to do or interior design something like that so I was kind of up in the air on what I was going to do but finally I um was applying for colleges and I decided to become a real estate major so that's how I started my college career I was very unlike a lot of people who you would hear who just constantly said like I've known I've wanted to be a teacher my whole life since I was five years old I never had that experience I wanted to be a teacher for a little bit but it was never something that I like carried with me throughout my whole life I got into my first year of college I didn't do anything major related to real estate I was just doing like my gen Ed classes and one day I decided to go speak to my academic advisor because I remembered like an offhanded comment that he had made during my college orientation that real estate majors are kind of a necessary take what you will from that kind of wish I would have stuck with that but anyways he was saying like it would be better to do something else because you can easily get your real estate license over the period of six weeks or something I was just kind of feeling unsure if I was really making the right choice and at my college orientation I was the only real estate major on those days now I went to a huge institution University so um institution sounds like it's like a mental facility but anyways I went to a huge college University and there were so many orientations but for my particular day I was the only real estate major so I was like also questioning that and seeing if it was iffy if like not many other people were in this major and what I was really getting myself into so I spoke to my academic advisor only spoke to him like twice that first time at orientation and then this day never spoke to him again I was kind of asking him like do you think that this is really a good idea or what would you advise so he said he did not really think that real estate was a smart major to go into because you can get your real estate license without having a four-year degree which you can also do for your teaching license but anyways so he said he advises that I do something else in business so I didn't really want to do anything else in business now I don't know if I regret that decision maybe partially so basically I felt like I kind of just didn't really know what to do or where to go from that point I had the thought prior to meeting with him that I could become an elementary Ed major because that was an idea that I had for a career long ago and to me teaching just felt like something very secure and stable that I could get into quite easily and then maybe move on to something else in a few years or later on in my life out of the blue very like spur of the moment decision I decided to switch my major to Elementary education and right off the bat he was like that's very different from Real Estate like are you sure I switched my major and there I went off on the path to becoming an elementary school teacher now if you've ever known a teacher been a teacher or been trying to become a teacher you probably are very aware of the fact that people have strong opinions so a lot of people told me that it was a mistake that I should switch my major that is some desirable career but it's almost like at that point it's too late and people's comments are a little bit unwarranted and not appreciated the more I heard from teachers um through doing Service Learning and other volunteer opportunities the more I kind of started to question everything and just really was feeling unsure of whether or not I had made a good choice I mean at that point I felt kind of stuck I didn't know what else I wanted to do and also a big thing that I want to like note is in my classes all throughout my major there were so many girls in my classes and not to be like stereotypical but it was mostly females in my classes so I just met so many girls that were like I said at the beginning they knew deep within their soul that this is what they wanted they could not wait to have their own classroom and this was like their calling and so they were like my whole life has led up to this moment and I didn't feel that kind of connection to it I felt excited in some ways but I also felt like primarily nervous um about what I was getting myself into and I just did not have that excitement that I felt a lot of people around me were feeling I just started to get more and more nervous and then my last year of college I did Internship so the way that it worked at my school for my state and county is that your first internship was the first semester of your senior year of college so from August to December and you would go in just two days a week so I went in two days a week Monday and Tuesday and then I had classes Wednesday Thursday Friday this wasn't that bad I really liked it um primarily because the teacher who I was or the two teachers who I was shadowing for half of the time each they really didn't make me do that much they had me Teach like my few lessons when I needed to because I was being observed and graded on them basically and they let me leave like right at three o'clock like right with the bell and I just absolutely did not get the full picture of what it meant to be a teacher and I was kind of only doing like the part when the kids were there so I thought it wasn't that bad the teaching part was a little bit intimidating because I was new to it but overall it was okay then I got into my senior internship which was January to May of my final year of college um like right before graduating so this was 2019 and there which I'm thankful for I got much more of a full picture the teacher who I interned for really all of them were amazing but she like really because I was there with her five days a week working full-time unpaid by the way um she gave me like a really clear picture of what she does like all encompassing so she was absolutely one of those people who put her heart and soul into teaching so she would get there at six in the morning stay till six at night just put everything into teaching so although I wouldn't get there until like 8 A.M I would stay with her until like 5 30 6 o'clock every single day which was really really good exposure for me to understand how intensive it is to lesson plan and grade papers and communicate with all the parents and make sure that you're setting up for events properly so that was a very good indicator to me that this was going to be a lot more work than it seems on the surface which Any teacher you've probably ever met or talked to can absolutely attest to that although it was really good and very eye-opening it's still I wasn't the teacher at the end of the day so I didn't do the conferences I would sit in on the conferences or I didn't do the open house I would just be there to watch and so it was like a better picture but it still wasn't a hundred percent of what I was going to have to do I graduate college and I actually like the day of my internship ending so like the I hadn't even graduated at this point I accepted a position because I got to interview for one at the school that I interned at which I think was the best thing I could have done um if you're an internship and they offer you that I would absolutely do it I was a little bit hesitant at first because the school was very far away from my house and the commute was really awful but it was still the best choice because I already knew people there I knew their systems and everything like that July comes around I start prepping for the year it is hectic it is crazy I have never worked so hard in my life been so tired had so many migraines that was another thing that happened to me when I was teaching I got so many stress-related illnesses and it was just insane like the migraines that I would lose my vision which that still happens to me to this day but like nowhere near the frequency that it was happening when I was teaching my body was starting to give out on me from the stress it was insane so anyways I go through that year it's very challenging I have a lot of Behavioral well not a lot but I had a few behavioral issues in my class and conferences you know the parents didn't take me seriously at all because to be fair I really didn't know what I was doing it was a challenging taxing year I got pink eye the second week of school and had to miss three days didn't even know about making sub plans so that was horrible we went on Christmas break and then I came back in January immediately got the flu the next week the week of conferences so that was really horrible I had to teach with the flu do conferences with the flu then so that was January of 2020 then covet happens we go on spring break we never come back and that was like the beginning of all this other stuff so I never had a school year where I taught where there was not covid I had like three-fourths of a normal year and then of course the whole world changed I taught online and it was only like two days a week so it was so much less stress I was still getting my full salary so it was like really nice but at the same time I had never used Zoom before in my life I had never like screen shared or done any of that stuff so it was difficult to like navigate all that stuff and at that point it was mostly just like check in with the kids make sure they're okay make sure they're healthy and safe and mentally well because kids had never learned online in that capacity before this is where things start to get extra tumultuous basically after that first year teaching there was a rezoning at my school so the school got basically separated into two like the zones got smaller so of course when the zones get separated tons of the kids go and the enrollment numbers go down which means tons of layoffs so basically I got laid off no fault of my own the way that they lay people off is due to their higher dates so because I was a brand new teacher I was one of the ones who had to get laid off and I was just in shambles after that because I had tried my best to put my heart and soul kept getting sick putting my everything into this career and then basically in some capacity I'm like fired in a way um or I can't continue at that same school so I'm like left to pick up the pieces here luckily the assistant principal at that first school hooked me up with an even better school like a better rated school I guess that was kind of in the area that she knew the principal at so she got me an interview and I got the job so that was really nice it only took me like a week to get hired so I was never like really unemployed in between which was amazing and then that assistant principal actually ended up going to that school as well just like on a weird coincidence so that was amazing so anyways this summer happens it's 2020 life is insane and then I started my second school that was also kind of a mess I got hired to teach kindergarten then like five days before school started they informed me that the numbers were too low and they needed to bump me up to first grade and I was going to be teaching online so I'm gonna try to like just glaze over this stuff kind of quickly because it's there I could go into like meticulous detail but I just feel there's no point to get hired to teach online so I'm getting like all these kids online I have a class of 17 and then in October after that first quarter was over they told me I was going to be going back in person so I had to build my classroom in one day one Uno and I had 12 students but like every single week of the remainder of that school year of 2020 to 2021 I would get a new student and if you never taught before getting new students is hard work like you don't know how they're gonna mesh in with the rest of the class you have to drag them a desk from like somewhere in the school like nobody's gonna move the furniture for you so my friend bless her heart who taught next door to me we're like dragging in desks I'm having to add the parents email them tell them everything they need to know about the school because I mean everybody who was coming new to my class was like out of state pretty much so I had to tell them everything they needed to know about the school it was like meet the teacher every week for me basically in some capacity online I was having to tell them about covid policies how we're doing masks lunch um recess socially distanced PE and just all this stuff it was like so much information so that year was very challenging in that sense and then my friend and I who taught next door to me were planning math together and every single lesson we had to plan the in-person lesson for teachers like ourselves but then we also had to do like a fully online lesson on nearpod and put all the tests on your pod and record the audio for it so that people who were learning online still had like an equitable education it was just a nightmare that year was definitely other than my first year teaching um because by year three I was kind of like over it in a sense but I was having like 10 to 12 hour days most of the time like I would not leave school until five six o'clock because there was just simply no time to get everything done I will say the good thing about that school year is that I had the best class ever they were so sweet I had no behavioral issues and I just loved them so I mean I really did love those guys but it was also like the most hectic year ever with covid really being like in the full throws of everything so anyways then the end of that school year happens this is year two I'm talking about and there's another new school opening so the area that I taught in for both of the schools that I taught at the area was growing so so so fast so there's a chance I'm gonna get let go again and actually I technically did get let go for one day due to enrollment but then my principal was able to hire me back on it's very confusing and it was very stressful for quite a period but basically she like let me go and then hired me back the next day she told me not to worry about it but of course I worried because I'm me I got to stay stay at the same school but then I had to move to kindergarten because they were just doing a lot of reworking of all the grade levels so basically like my team was of nine five of us went to kindergarten and then five of the kindergarten teachers went up to first grade so they did like a little crisscross um which is fine because I actually have always like or had always wanted to teach kindergarten just to see I know it's like a whole another beast but um basically I just wanted to see what it was all about and that's what I technically got hired to do the year before so I did that had to move my classroom again a little run down here of how many times I move my classroom over my three-year career okay I moved into my first school I moved out of that classroom then I moved into a kindergarten classroom at my second school and then had to move to the first grade room when they switched me in one day that I had to move out of the first grade room and into my kindergarten room because I switched grades and then when I resigned I had to move out of my kindergarten room seven moves in three years and each of those moves was like me my boyfriend my brother my mom my dad all working for like eight to twelve hours like eight to twelve hour days so it's a lot and like just laminating stuff for the walls and like getting everything situated like there's just so much stuff when you're teaching that that's like a whole other unpaid like wonderful thing that you have to deal with basically I get hired for kindergarten and that is where I spent my last year um teaching so I have classroom tours of actually my first grade and my uh in my kindergarten classrooms um that you can check out if you want to but so basically um that was the most quote unquote normal year there was obviously still covid we still wore masks for like the first half of the year and then it became optional that year was the most normal but by this point my career had done me so dirty and I was so burnt out and like the pay was not it so I was just already feeling very done like I'd say I started really considering the move out of Education about Midway through that second year so by the start of my third year I was like kind of at my Wit's End final year of teaching was challenging for many reasons mostly like I just had I won't go into detail because I don't want to like hear anybody's information out but I did have some students who needed like severe accommodations for you know to have an accessible education I just was not getting that support that I needed at all like my students were really not getting the help that they needed and because nothing was diagnosed or documented I had to do all the documentation and it was like a daily battle fighting to get these kids the support that they needed overall the kids did really well but Kindergarten is just exhausting like it's so much the beginning of the year they don't know what's going on by the end of the year they do make great gains but then you have to like send them away so my kids did do very well academically very very well um by the end of the year almost every child was like on grade level of course I had those um friends who needed special accommodations that they were not receiving so they of course like needed extra help in order to be on grade level but for the most part I would say like 85 of my class was like right where they needed to be which was good that was not the case the year before during covid um where all my kids were like at a kindergarten level or at a Pre-K level when they were in first grade so I was happy that I did the full year in person for the first time like my third year teaching was the only year that I ever spent teaching entirely in person that was fine but honestly I just started looking into other options so I'll rewind a little bit and talk about like how I even got into what I'm doing now and how that even happened I was sick of having to devote so much unpaid time I was tired of basically having to follow a kid's schedule 25 minute lunch not being able to use the bathroom in a lot of capacities being treated like a child um so I started to look into the teacher career coach podcast this is like a little plug for that because that's what truly like sparked this whole thing so anyways I watched this episode about a girl who became a software engineer now I knew nothing about software engineering or coding I heard her story and she said that basically you don't really need to have a math and science background as long as you can like solve things logically so I started looking into that I actually contacted her spoke to her on the phone and that was kind of like the Catalyst of me realizing that there was something better out there ended up speaking to her looking more into like coding boot camps and then I met through Instagram actually who became my next boss I messaged her and she was a teacher for six years and then had actually gone to a coding boot camp and opened her own web design agency so over the summer in between I know the timeline's getting a little confusing here but over the summer between years two and three she had me do contract work with her just in like a very light capacity just like very easy stuff and I just fell in love with web design and just like all things websites basically I was just so lost that I just needed something so basically like over the course of that year my third year teaching I was like doing some courses online to get certified and discovered UI and ux design so that's what I'm doing now by the way but basically um I've always had an affinity for like designing lessons or just like fonts and texts and I actually told my boss that I played The Sims and that is kind of like what had her thinking that I might be into design well that happened and I'll go like super quickly over it of course the full story is much longer but um basically she had me design some websites for her in figma and I just fell in love with it after that third year I knew I was done I wanted to make more money I wanted to have more work life balance although that again is nothing against like my Administration they were very kind and tried to be helpful but I feel like it was at the district level where most of the problems were so there was kind of like nothing I could do and nothing they could do for me so anyways I resigned from t teaching I saw through the full like end of my contract after year three and I ended up becoming a UI new X designer permanently so that is what I'm doing now I really love it I work from home honestly all I can say is that teaching is extremely taxing you do a lot a lot a lot of work for very very very little pay and I just think unless it's truly your calling I it's just so like emotionally draining and so easy to get burnt out that I just I understand why most people quit within the first five years mental health was not in a good place so it's like as soon as I switched careers I immediately just started feeling so much stress relief I had time in my life to do other things that I cared about like spending time with my loved ones and exercising and eating better and drinking water because that's another like crazy thing I was like chronically dehydrated because I didn't want to drink water and then have to go to the bathroom because like calling the office to go to the bathroom is such an ordeal I wanted to be able to take a sick day without having to spend four hours writing substitute plans I just knew that I needed to be freed from it and so I resigned and my principal and my assistant principal were actually extremely happy for me and they said I'm so glad that you're going to explore what else is out there in the world and they basically said like if I ever wanted to come back the door was open for me but they completely understood why I would want to leave and why I was sleeping which felt really good and helped me to feel more like reassured because I was actually so nervous to tell them that I was gonna leave because I thought that I've heard so many stories of people telling people that they're gonna quit teaching and then there's tons of backlash of people saying things about how they must not really care about the kids and whatnot but I just want to like really hammer in that point that the kids were the hardest part about leaving and I that's why I'm glad I saw through the end of the year but I understand that for people in really rough situations that may not always be the case that was the hardest part that's why I stayed in it for so long um like a year and a half passed when I had kind of recognized that my health was not where it needed to be for me to be happy I stayed in it for the kids for like that extra year and a half part of me just wanted to quit like in December of my second year but I stayed through to the end of my third year and I did meet so many amazing co-workers administrators like I said and the students and their families were like 90 very accommodating and amazing of course I had a few that didn't trust me or didn't like the way I did things but that's kind of how it is in anything I guess to me the reason why I left is just it was not not stainable I was so burnt out after only three years that I was just really concerned for my mental health my physical health and just my emotional well-being now I didn't get like too into the nitty-gritty of it but when I was teaching I would have like Sunday scaries constantly I would just bawl my eyes out because I didn't want to go back and I was just like experiencing that dread a lot of anxiety a lot of panic when you're a teacher you never know what the day will bring taking care of people's children is very difficult and children are so precious you see them more than they see their parents during the course of a weekday and so of course you're gonna care deeply about them and of course you're going to love them and like constantly I would be checking my emails all throughout the night like I could never shut my brain off as especially at the beginning of the school years I would seriously like be up at night just like replaying all the things that the kids said to me or anything concerning or it truly is a job that can absolutely take over your life if you let it when I mean the emotions of the kids are at hand like and their well-being and you know how they're going to perform and how their whole life like you're setting the tone for their life in some ways with like helping them to be successful it is super emotional and it's super challenging to like compartmentalize that that's a job but you also need to have like your own personal time for your own family or if you have your own kids so um for me it was just so arduous to like try to find the balance for me I was unable to find the balance unfortunately because honestly it's really sad to say but I was hard-pressed to find like a teacher who had been teaching for a long time who was just fulfilled with the position like everybody would either say they wish they would have quit a long time ago or it used to be fun but they feel stuck now they just felt like there was nothing else that they could do I admire teachers so greatly to kind of wrap this up I was one of them for three years but I don't know how much longer I could have done it maybe if the educational system gets a huge reform I may go back one day but at this point with the current state of how everything is I just don't foresee that happening the pay is so low for the amount of work time and emotion that you put into it and it really is something that takes up your whole heart and mind and soul teachers should absolutely be paid more I know that they don't work over the summer but they also don't get paid over the summer so you can like weigh the pros and pros and cons of that but um yeah that's why I left teaching ultimately it just was not sustainable for me and that's basically my story of how I got to where I am now I love my job now um would not trade this career for anything at least at the moment um you know things can always change and maybe one day I'll find some new passion but I just feel like this is much more suited to me and the lifestyle that I desire and the amount I want to get paid and I just feel like had I stayed in teaching for much longer I would have become bitter and burnt out and I just never ever wanted to be the teacher who was so burnt out that it started to be taken out on the kids it's tough you can be going through something personally that's very challenging but you can't really show that in a full way to the kids like it's okay to tell them that like you have emotions obviously because they do too and I think social emotional learning was my favorite part of teaching like talking about feelings how we deal with feelings why we may feel things in certain ways but um to some extent you do have to kind of like keep your personal life and your personal feelings out of it because you want to be this like role model who is happy positive and upbeat for the kids this is a huge thank you to Any teacher who is out there putting in their heart and soul whether they're burnt out or not and just really doing the best that they can for the kids because I know that it is a challenge while I loved many aspects of it there were a lot of things that were just so challenging so I admire anybody who can stick with it long term I never wanted to be part of that statistic of the 50 who leave but ultimately I knew that that is what was going to be best for me so that's my story thank you so much for listening to it like I said if you can relate to any of this career transition education being unsure of what to do with your life please subscribe to my channel um I am going to try to post videos more frequently hopefully once a week is my goal um but yeah thank you so much for watching and I will see you guys very soon bye

Channel: Andrea Michelle

Views: 11,964

Keywords: andrea michelle, why i quit teaching, teaching, teaching vlog, teacher vlog, teacher life, quitting job, elementary education, i quit my job, quit teaching, other jobs for teachers, ux designer, ui designer, why i quit my job, teacher, kindergarten teacher, first grade teacher, jobs for teachers, career transitions

Id: MXt9hdA6Q5A

Length: 32min 56sec (1976 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022