I RESIGNED: WHY I'M LEAVING & NEXT STEPS

hey y'all welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Sarah and I am a fourth year teacher that just moved from first to second grade and if you're seeing this video it means I have officially resigned from my position in second grade this year and today's video is going to talk a little bit about the why first and foremost I just want to share that this was not an easy decision there are so many things I really do like about the school that I'm at now but ultimately just with how many factors played into this decision it just felt like the decision that gave me the most peace personally I do just want to disclaim that I'm not resigning from teaching I'm not leaving the profession I'm just leaving this current job I know that there are so many teachers that are leaving leaving like they are leaving the profession of education and not coming back that is not my intention if I'm being completely transparent right now the day that I'm filming this I don't have a new job lined up I've applied some places I've applied to teach on out School online so I have some things in the works but right now I am blindly just trusting the Lord that whatever is meant to be for me next year will be as I previously just mentioned this decision was like multi-factored so the biggest driving factor to this decision is that me and my husband are listing our house on June 1st and prospectively moving which don't get me wrong I'm very excited about but it makes things challenging because we have to sell our house before we can buy so we don't know where we're going to be living so if you could see a parallel here I am completely just trusting in God right now with my life in his hands as always but basically don't know where are we living next year and don't know where I'm going to be teaching or if I'm going to be teaching so basically we are moving out of the town that we live in now and we're trying to get closer to my husband Bobby's job which is an hour away right now from where we currently live my school is 30 minutes in the opposite direction so if we're trying to move closer to his job unfortunately that would put me probably anywhere between 40 minutes to an hour from my current position and I first worked in first grade at a school that was 15 minutes from my house and it was glorious and then moving up to 30 minutes I realized it was a lot harder for me to work somewhere that far which I know other people have longer commutes but just knowing that we're going to be moving in the opposite direction even if it's only 20 minutes in the opposite direction just like already stresses me out so that was like the biggest Factor knowing that we're going to be moving farther from this job it doesn't make sense for me to hold on to it I was meeting with my principal and I just explained to her how we don't know where we're going to be living yet it's quite possible we could live in the same town if we really can't find anything closer to my husband's job but it's very unlikely and we won't know that until probably like the end of July or August and I know that like I have the right as an employee to um you know keep that information to myself until a decision's been made but it just didn't feel right because despite leaving I do really love my Administration I have a very close relationship with my principal I truly love her as a person outside of being my boss this year and so I would never want to um shorthand them if that makes sense at right before the school year was about to start so I felt like the right thing to do I have not told my students yet while I'm filming this but once it's posted my students will know because I don't want them to see this without hearing from me first because a lot of my kiddos this year watch my YouTube which if you're watching hey 205 but a big decision on why it was so hard is because this is my first time actually being at a school where I would actually get to see my kids next year so I always shop for scrape for the first three years of my teaching career and when they went off to second grade they went to a new school the district I worked in before this like it was a weird setup where like they came to our school for pre-k to one and then went to the next school for like two to six and then middle school so I've never actually had the ability to say goodbye to a class and then still get to see them next year my kids next year will be upstairs on the third floor um so I'm heartbroken because I know that they've already made so many comments about you know we can't wait to come and visit you next year I'm so glad I get to see you still next year it's absolutely heartbreaking when I left my most recent job last year um and I told my kids that I was going to second grade they weren't super sad about it because they weren't going to be with me anyway they weren't going to be down the hall or upstairs or downstairs in second grade um so it's a different kind of sadness this year than I'm experiencing um and I feel really badly about it because I've built some really strong relationship with these kids but um I'm that teacher that will like share my email address and my phone number and my home address with kids if they want to be pen pals or text me at their parents phone or FaceTime like I'm that teacher so I know that it won't be just like a cut and dry um cut off of communication but it's still really sad there are obviously other factors that go into it as well and a lot of it um couldn't be helped unfortunately I bit off I think more than I could chew this year and so when I left my job last year in April or May I really needed to get out of that situation it was not a healthy environment for me but there wasn't a lot posted that really like caught my attention and this was a position where I knew people that worked here and they spoke really highly of the school so it seemed like a good fit for me just because I knew people and that was something I didn't have at my old school was like Community I didn't feel like I had people that were my age that I was friends with that I could like talk to and hang out with outside of work and I I was really excited to have that here and that is a huge blessing of the school that I also am going to miss I told y'all it's like been a really hard decision I've been going back and forth for the last few months um and I unfortunately just tipped one way a little bit more than the other but I have some really great friends here that I came in with before like knowing before I started to work here and then also some people that I've now I'm going to be leaving and I consider great friends as well I trusted that you know if people I knew liked it that it would automatically mean it's a good fit for me and I've learned that that's not true um but a lot of it is just a bit off more than I could chew I was switching districts switching grade levels from first to second a completely new set of curriculum in math reading and science and social studies and on top of that I was teaching a classroom of entirely English language Learners it was just a home run out of the park like everything that was my Norm was now different and while I'm somebody that's been trying to embrace change I think my advice for somebody that's going to switch schools or needs to switch schools or is questioning it is one don't bite off more than you can chew but two like find like a baby step like maybe theoretically I should have switched schools but not grade levels or maybe I should have switched schools and grade levels but try and find somewhere that I already was familiar with the curriculum or maybe switch schools grade levels and curriculums but maybe you know advocate for teaching a class of just general ed students it was way too much for me and I'm not somebody that like likes to admit that I'm struggling and so I had a hard year I had a really hard year I'm not sure if that maybe was conveyed on social media or not I can never tell like how transparent I'm being with like my posts and the things I share but it was a hard year I had a really great class it wasn't them necessarily it was just all of the factors and all of the different elements that were just really making it challenging here so yeah between it just maybe not feeling like the best fit for me um us moving and then also all the change at once it was just too much and I can recognize when I'm not being myself and I was very honest with the principal I just I just don't feel like I can be me here and that's also a couple elements so one thing is that I love responsive classroom and I love SEL uh this is my first year being at a school where SEL is actually a special like in the specials rotation so I wasn't doing a ton of SEO in my classroom because there was a specialist teacher that was doing that with them once a week-ish for 45 minutes but I feel like I personally loved teaching like second step and social thinking curriculum and the fact that I didn't have like time scheduled into my blog to do that with me and my kids I felt like that was really hard for me um and I'm sure I could have advocated for that and found some time in the schedule but it's hard when you're a new teacher and you're trying to learn the routines the expectations um the procedures and then on top of that like being like hey I need this because the kids were already getting it but I wasn't getting it with them and that was hard for me same thing with responsive classroom I am a like 30 minute morning meeting gal and here I like to usually go until like 9 15 for morning meeting because the kids get here by 8 45 the announcements go off and then I usually let them finish up their breakfast so we don't start till usually like 8 50 8 55 um because some kids come late we have to bring down the attendance we have to bring down the home lunches like it's a whole ordeal um and so I usually was going till 9 15 and I was told in my first observation that I had lost 15 minutes of time on learning because I didn't start math till 10 9 15. and right there that just kind of like put a bad taste in my mouth because I understand time on learning is essential and important and completely a valid point but it almost made me feel like I couldn't be myself here because like a longer morning meeting especially it was like within the first few months of school I thought was very developmentally appropriate and following responsive classroom which I was trained on this summer and feel very passionately about so it was hard for me to feel like I could be myself in responsive classroom and in SEL when I didn't feel like I had the normal setup of what I usually would do in my last two years of teaching um another thing that was hard for me was adapting the whole group teaching I think in the last three years of teaching before this I don't think I was ever observed for a whole group lesson I think every single time I was observed by my administrator she was watching me Teach small groups which is like my jam um but like I also understand that's part of second grade is whole group teaching I ready math is very whole group based and wonders seem to be structured like very whole group based and that was hard for me to adapt to because I just don't feel like I'm a whole group teacher I feel like small groups is where I'm most comfortable it's what I have the most experience and practice with and so the fact that I had to do a lot of my teaching this year a whole group and the fact that most of my observations or whole group was extremely challenging for me my first two observations that I had I was teaching small group and so I felt like I did better on those evaluations and those observations personally and then as they started to come in later in the year and observe me I was teaching more whole group because um I came in doing what I know best which is small groups but unfortunately nobody else on my team was teaching math in small groups so I had nobody to collaborate with and this is kind of my tri-fold um take on small groups like one you have taught people to collaborate with like whether it's a mentor or a teammate or somebody else to collaborate with an instructional coach you need to have somebody to collaborate with to help you create these groups because it's really hard to do that one as a teacher that's brand new to the school just in general all like to not have anybody else to like you know lean on in that is hard and two you really need time to do that um something that just didn't help me be successful here was the amount of meetings that I had as a brand new teacher to the school I was a part of the mentor program so I had Mentor meetings monthly we had weekly staff meetings I also had one-on-one coaching with the instructional coach I had Mentor meetings with my mentors like whole group Mentor meetings with like everybody in the mentor program every month and then like weekly Mentor meetings with my personal Mentor we had team meetings on Tuesdays and team meetings on Thursdays so just like between all those meetings I was getting very little prep time um because I was at a charter school you're not required to like like there's no Union so you can have meetings during your prep time which as a pub a previously public school teacher you were not allowed to have teachers do meetings in their prep time I always had to be like before after school which like obviously nobody likes that either but like it is a little bit better because that halfway point in my day when I have my prep is super essential so I had a really hard time formulating small groups because one I didn't have anybody to really feel like I could collaborate with because you know I tried small group math teaching and nobody else was doing it so I felt very like isolated in that situation and I tried small group um Ela but it was just really hard to figure out a brand new curriculum like wonders but also incorporating small groups because most of the stuff that's in the Wonders manual was like whole group based and again not a lot of people were doing it in like Center rotations and even though I did incorporate centers and rotations into wonders there was like still a good hour chunk of it that was whole group so like that was just such a learning curve for me um I did feel like I had the adequate time to plan it and actually create intentional differentiated well-structured small groups because I told the principal I said whole group is really easy to plan for because it takes very little time to prep and it takes very little like intentional like differentiated planning whereas like small groups those take a lot of time I used to spend in my first grade classroom I used to spend one whole prep period a week dedicated to planning out my Ela small groups for the next week I just could not fit that into my schedule this year so therefore I didn't really get to give it my all and the third thing I would say is that I didn't feel encouraged at the beginning of this year to incorporate small group um the first observation that I got in math um I felt like the feedback was kind of you know oh like you're teaching this twice to two different groups one high one low um how is that like a good use of your time and I was like well it might not be a good use of my time but I feel like I can get more done in the time that I get with those kids than I do when I teach at whole group so I just kind of felt like the feedback I was getting from my evaluators when I was teaching the small group they had no concerns about like my actual teaching or class management at those times because obviously it's easier to manage and teach in a small group but they were just really worried about time on learning is this effective use of your time is it like the best way to run your teaching and so I kind of felt like almost hindered by that like oh maybe I shouldn't be doing this and then obviously when you tie it into the first thing which is nobody else was doing it I felt super alone about that so um I just don't know if the way that teachers teach here is the way that I love to teach and it's hard to be like an outsider in that so that was another reason why I felt like maybe this isn't the best fit school for me I would say the last factor to my decision to leave this specific school not education as a whole but this specific school is that I'm not sure that I am built to be a second grade teacher um I found the curriculum really hard to teach because I was so used to kindergarten in first that it was a very rigorous year for us academically and I just kind of felt like I didn't do enough academically for these kids because I was so used to first grade that I was like okay awesome I know what these kids need to learn in second grade I know the base the foundation that they already have but when my students came in a lot a lot of them were still testing at the kindergarten level so trying to find a way to meet them and accommodate for where they were when they came in but also give them the skills necessary to get ready for third grade was really challenging for me and obviously the higher you get in grade level the more gaps there are so when I taught first grade for three years there were a lot fewer gaps because all these kids had done was Kindergarten going to second grade this year now I'm like wow there are even bigger gaps and granted I was also teaching a classroom that all of my students spoke a different first language at home than English so that's another element that adds to that as well so I'm just not sure after this year as second grade is the best fit for me maybe it would be at a different school maybe I should try and go back to kindergarten or first grade um I feel like I don't think I could do that at this school per se because I don't think there were any kindergarten or first grade openings so it kind of made the choice obvious for me if I don't feel confident about this grade level if I know I'm going to be moving if I don't feel like I'm a whole group teacher and that's what's kind of pushed here then what is God trying to tell me right now what is he trying to say that leads us to part two of this video which is what is next what is next for miss pocat this upcoming fall I don't know I'm going to give you guys my rough plan okay here we go step one sell the house I feel like as much as my job is important to me I'm not going to be a teacher forever and I cannot prioritize a job over where me and my husband are going to be living and you know creating and growing our future family so I need to focus on selling our house and finding a place to live this summer after we sell our house assuming that we list our house in June and it gets sold in July or August we will be moving in with Bobby's parents so my in-laws because they have a little apartment that we can stay in until we are able to find our just right home like our just right fit home so we are going to be doing that after we find the house then I will feel really confident in finding a job now that's not to say I haven't applied for positions around here because there are surprisingly less positions open right now than I expected because I'm on teacher social media I'm seeing the huge Title Wave of teachers that are exiting teaching as a profession so I was like I'm gonna have no problem finding a job when I go back into a classroom after we've found and secured our new home however right now there is not a lot out there I use the website School spring and what I do is I just put in my ZIP code and I put in the like mile radius and then I just see like what's available and right now I've only applied to two jobs which I feel like isn't a lot so I am getting a little worried but here is my plan my plan is to after we found the house either line up a full-time teaching position if there's anything available if not I'm probably going to sub in a nearby District to really see what school system I like and what grade level I like the best I mean I I know that I like cater to the best and I'm only licensed preschool the second anyway so it doesn't even give me a lot to um dabble with but I think it would be really beneficial for me to take the time to really explore different districts explore different schools explore different grade levels and see like what is the best fit for me while I'm doing that I think I'm going to be also teaching on out School created a couple summer classes for July and August just to see if I like it it's ironic because I feel like as a teacher in covid when the pandemic happened and we had to all teach remotely like out of the blue we hated it because it was so impersonal but there is something that sounds appealing to teaching like a classroom of less than 10 students on topics that I actually enjoy and like getting to actually interact with them in those small groups so I'm going to try and teach a couple summer review math classes this summer and see how it goes and then I might just sub this next fall while also teaching it online which I'm afraid to like announce on my other platforms that I'm not coming back to the classroom because I feel like people are going to unfollow and assume like oh she's leaving teaching just like everybody else that's not the case I love teaching I literally would never want to do another job in my life I watch a lot of people leave and go to edtech or other like social media management jobs that's not for me I love to do the Social Media stuff as a side gig for fun as an outlet but I don't feel like it would be fulfilling and I don't feel like it would be my passion so I just don't want people to get the wrong idea when I do share this on my other platforms I'm not leaving education I'm finding a way to be a teacher in an environment that suits me and will provide for my family and will still fulfill me whatever that may be did I ever think as a fourth year teacher with my masters that I would be possibly subbing next year no that's a that's a total curveball but I do know that God is faithful and that he will provide and that whatever is meant for me he will make it abundantly clear so while I can't see right now where we're gonna live how much our house is going to sell for how fast it's gonna sell um how long we're gonna be living at my in-laws where I'm going to be teaching all that I have no indication of what's going to be happening at what timeline at what pace and I'm a complete control freak I'm just completely leaving it in God's hands and saying like thy will be done like you tell me what you need me to do Lord and I will do it so that is the update just to recap I'm not leaving education I'm just leaving the current position that I'm at because I don't feel like it's the best fit for me and you can ask my friends last year I remember telling them I said I'm gonna go to this new school it is so much work to change schools and to move all your stuff and to learn all new curriculums procedures I said if this is not the right school for me then I'm just done but here we are openly admitting that if I could find another teaching position that seems like a better fit for me I do it all over again to keep teaching so just a little bit of encouragement it's okay not to know your plan that's why we trust in the Lord two it is okay to be unhappy where you are and to know that you need to leave even if you're disappointing some people I know I have some friends here that I disappointed that did not want me to leave and I know that ultimately my students are gonna be really sad about this but you have to prioritize yourself you have to do what's best for you and your mental health and your family so it is okay to not know what you're gonna do and it is okay to leave something that does not fulfill you or is not going to help you be successful and three it is okay to take a step back I did not think again that I would ever be subbing or entertaining the thought of something like it's not a back step if it helps me set myself up for the future I think unfortunately what I did here was I really rushed the decision to find a new school and I didn't give it enough time to maybe come in maybe I should have come and observed this school before accepting the job maybe I should have shadowed some teachers maybe I should have asked them more questions that's something I struggle with in interviews they don't ask enough questions let me tell you now that I've worked at two different schools in two different grade levels with different curriculums different expectations I have some really good questions to ask the next school that I work at I just do because I know more now and sometimes you can't ask what you don't know but all that to being said I just want to validate people and say wherever you are in your teaching career wherever you are whether you don't have your own classroom yet whether you're switching grade levels whether you feel like you want to be done with education period it's okay you are welcome here you are validated I see you I hear you I understand you and just know you're not alone and if you're one of my students and you've made it this far in the video I love you guys this is not a goodbye this is just to see you later if you have any questions or want to be updated feel free to like comment and subscribe feel free to follow me on my other platforms at underscore big heart little Minds underscore and Instagram and Tick Tock I love you all so much thank you for being here with me on this journey thank you for allowing me to be vulnerable and transparent with you guys and just share my life with you um it's really hard and it's scary sometimes but it's definitely worth it love you guys

Channel: _bigheartlittleminds_

Views: 5,701

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Id: m_4G-W_0P6A

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023