I Quit Teaching & Here's What I Learned

[Music] here's a little introduction for those of you who are new hi i'm michelle i'm currently almost 29 years old and i was born and raised in maryland i've wanted to be a teacher for as long as i can remember but we will come back to that i love to travel eat food work out eat some more food and i am highly competitive i taught second grade for three years on the eastern shore of maryland before moving to the western shore not too far from dc where i taught fourth grade for four years at the end of the 2020-2021 school year i quit my teaching job and moved to austin texas where i currently live with my husband our two cats luna and zora and our australian cattle dog ember for majority of my seven years as a teacher i documented my experience online through social media i created weekly vlogs on youtube where i showed a realistic view of what my life was like behind the scenes shared tips and strategies to help support other teachers and creative resources to make their lives a little bit easier so you might be wondering how does someone so passionate about teaching walk away from the classroom i completely understand how this might be confusing so let me explain my desire to be a teacher started when i was in elementary school myself i actually struggled academically early on reading did not come easy for me and school wasn't really my favorite place until i got into second grade i had the coolest teacher his name was mr peelin and he taught me to not only love school and love learning but he inspired me to become a teacher myself from that moment on i would hold school for all the neighborhood kids on my front porch complete with a whiteboard and worksheets i found online as homework as i grew up my passion for pursuing a career as a teacher never diminished despite having many people in my life try to persuade me otherwise if you've ever been a teacher or even thought about becoming a teacher and told people you know exactly what i'm talking about you're told the pay isn't great and it's hard work and you're almost led to believe that you're capable of more as if teaching isn't an honorable profession but when you are so drawn to something and are so passionate about that choice it doesn't matter what people tell you you're still gonna follow your heart and that's exactly what i did when i was in college earning my bachelor's degree i started to dive deeper and deeper into the realm of education and began dedicating more and more time to it i ran the education club at my college and volunteered my time after classes and my internship to tutor kids at a nearby church and i was happy doing all of those things because they brought me closer to my goal which was to become a great teacher i ended up graduating and getting my first teaching job at the age of 20. so i was young but i also had all the time in the world to dedicate to my job because i was so young i quickly became the teacher who spent every waking moment thinking about teaching and working on things for my classroom and lesson planning and giving all of myself to the profession at some point i was even dreaming about teaching at the time i truly believed being able to pour all of my time and all of my energy into my biggest passion which was teaching was making me happy during the summer before my third year of teaching i started a youtube channel and began sharing my passion and ideas with the online teaching community honestly a lot of my motivation was just giving my friends and family a break from hearing me talk about teaching all the time but youtube became an outlet and allowed me to connect with people that had similar interests which i desperately needed at the time but what i didn't realize was that everything has a cost trying to record videos edit them and post them week after week on top of pouring so much of myself into my job as a teacher was exhausting plus there were all the little tasks behind the scenes that i had no idea about like responding to comments and answering emails and going to the store at 11 pm at night to get an external hard drive because you ran out of space on your computer while editing because that definitely happened more than once i found myself pulling all-nighters and isolating myself from my family and friends in order to get it all done because i felt this immense pressure to continue providing for others i felt obligated to devote all my time and energy to teaching because my students deserved it but i also felt obligated to devote more time and energy to sharing with other teachers because i knew how hard the job was and my ability to make it just a little bit easier for someone else was fulfilling but i began to realize that the more of myself i gave the more i was asked to give and the more i was expected to give now as a competitive person i saw this as a challenge for the longest time i thought if anyone could do it i could and i was determined to prove that i could balance being pulled in so many different directions and i did for a while at the risk of sounding vain i will say i was a great teacher was i the best no but i was constantly learning and growing and improving and i know i made an impact on top of that i managed to build a business on the side and experience so many accomplishments that came with that i surpassed half a million youtube subscribers i started a podcast i was featured on the today show twice i wrote a book i earned a masters of education and from the outside it probably appeared as though i was thriving but underneath all of that i was sacrificing my happiness somewhere along the way i stopped listening to my heart and started listening to all the other voices asking me to give them what they wanted i think deep down i knew i could only sustain that level of selflessness for so long i finally reached my breaking point at the height of the pandemic prior to when school shut down in march of 2020 i had already been sharing technology tips on my channel so when suddenly everyone had to pivot and begin teaching virtually i became a resource and during a time when everything felt out of my control it was so confusing being able to support teachers with technology made sense and was a breath of fresh air i felt like i could actually do something to help when i felt helpless otherwise and that was an incredible feeling but it also forced me to stretch myself so thin that i had no choice but to eventually break i was navigating hybrid teaching where i had to teach half my class in person and have my class online at the same time and i was just as confused and overwhelmed as every other teacher but on top of that when i would leave the classroom each day i was bombarded with requests from teachers and would spend several more hours trying to help support them i started to realize that i was creating my own problem by trying to juggle all these responsibilities and just like i was trying to solve everyone else's problem i had to do the same for myself ultimately the universe operates on a system of give and take i had given up my happiness in order to take on all these roles and responsibilities so in order to get it back i would have to give up something else so in the spring of 2021 when my husband and i decided to move to austin i made the choice to let go of teaching at least in the traditional sense i resigned from my teaching job at the end of the school year and said goodbye to my role as a classroom teacher this was by far one of the most difficult decisions i have ever made but i can now say a year later it was the best decision i ever made stepping away from the classrooms somehow taught me more than the seven years i spent teaching inside of it i think the biggest lesson i've learned is that meeting other people's expectations isn't worth sacrificing your own happiness you will never be enough for the wrong person and you will constantly be exposed to the opinions of others but you can't let those outside opinions control your choices when i was in the classroom i never felt like i was doing enough because i would compare myself to other teachers even though i never knew their full story and when i was sharing with the teaching community online i would constantly receive approval and disapproval for what i was doing and i knew that would only amplify once i decided to leave the classroom in the past year i've received praise for leaving and prioritizing my happiness but i've also been scolded by people who think it's selfish and ultimately neither of those opinions matter because those people are not the ones living with the decision i am and i am so happy with my choice i've always heard the sentiment you can't make everyone happy and i knew it was true but that didn't stop me from trying i tried for years to be everything for everyone else and even when it seemed like it was working it wasn't because in order to make everyone else happy i was neglecting myself i've realized that you don't have to fit into this mold that everyone else wants to put you in i'm not in the classroom anymore but i do still consider myself a teacher my title has changed but i can still use my experience and knowledge to help other people and at the end of the day that's what teaching is in fact i feel like my capabilities to help support others are so much higher now because i'm not burning the candle at both ends and i know that not everyone wants to learn from someone who's not currently in the classroom and that's okay because i'm no longer trying to be everything for everyone i just want to be something for someone i know i have the power to help at least one person and that's enough for me that makes me happy honestly i think it's unfair unrealistic and unsustainable to expect teachers who are already performing an incredibly demanding job to also be responsible for providing professional development for the teaching community on top of that that's like asking an athlete to play in a game while simultaneously coaching the rest of the team we wonder why so many teachers are experiencing burnout yet we continue to pile responsibilities and expectations on their plate and we make them feel inferior any time they try to remove something from it so on to the number one question i still get on a daily basis are you going back to the classroom as you might expect the answer is complicated right now i love teaching teachers i love getting to travel and meet new teachers across the country i love getting to present workshops and professional development for them and i love getting to create resources to make their life easier without sacrificing my own happiness and personal well-being to do it but if this transition has taught me anything it's that people change and evolve over time and that's part of life you're not supposed to be the same person at 30 that you were at 20 and your passions are allowed to shift i'm not the same person i was when i started teaching at the age of 20 or even the same person i was last year when i left teaching just like you i'm constantly changing and growing and becoming a better version of myself i don't know exactly where i'll be a year from now or five years from now or ten years from now i don't know what job i'll be doing or if i'll be back in the classroom or if i'll be doing something else entirely and that's what's so exciting about life you get to figure it out along the way your path doesn't have to be set in stone and you're allowed to explore different versions of yourself the only thing i know for sure is that whatever i'm doing i will make sure it's something that makes me happy and i hope the same is true for you wake up [Music] wake up

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 212,537

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher, michelle ferre, michelle emerson, teacher tech tips, i quit teaching, quitting, leaving the classroom, what i learned

Id: b3gzRi1FUo8

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022