Why I Resigned From My Teaching Job

Part One: My Teaching Career

As y’all probably know, I resigned from my teaching job two years ago. A lot of y’all have asked if I would share more about what led me to this decision, what I’m doing now, if I’ll ever go back, etc. I’m going to answer all these (and more!) but first I think it’s important to share a little about my teaching career, so that’s what today’s post will be about. In this post, I’m sharing my teaching story- how I started out and how I ended up resigning. We’ll get into more reasons why I resigned and what I’m doing now in the next post.

My teaching career began 14 years ago in the fall of 2009. We were in the thick of the recession and teaching jobs were scarce! When I graduated from college, my dream job was at my home school where I had attended from kindergarten to graduation. I also thought 2nd grade would be my ideal grade.

When it came time to apply for full-time teaching jobs, there was ONE elementary position in my entire district. ONE. It was a 1st-grade position at my home school. It was actually a one-year leave of absence for a teacher who was taking an educational leave-keep this in mind because it becomes very important to my resignation later in the story!

I got the job.

I spent my first four years teaching first grade. When I was first hired, I didn’t care what the grade level was-I was just grateful for a job! When I heard it was for a first-grade position, I was happy. I had gone all throughout college thinking I would only teach lower elementary. Anytime we had an assignment that required us to focus on a particular grade level, I never selected anything above 3rd grade. I was absolutely terrified of leaving the younger grade levels and dealing with what I envisioned to be high schoolers! LOL! But after teaching 1st grade (by far the hardest grade I taught!) for 4 years, I needed a change. I went to my principal and asked if I could move to upper elementary. The 5th grade ELA teacher was also wanting to switch grade levels, so it worked out perfectly. I was excited but also scared to death to teach older kids. I couldn’t keep working in 1st grade though. I knew it was time to change things up.

Moving to 5th grade was the BEST decision I ever made in my teaching career. I remember coming home after my first day of being a 5th-grade teacher and just knowing that I did the right thing. I loved the independence of the older kids. I loved only teaching one subject. I loved having 3 different classes instead of spending the entire day with one group of kids-not because of the kids, but because it made the day fly by! I loved everything.

I stayed in 5th grade for 6 years. It was the longest amount of time I had spent in one grade level in my entire teaching career. I felt like I knew what I was doing. I felt like I knew how to teach the content. I felt like I had everything in my classroom designed in the way that worked best for my students and me. Everything was good.

And then I made a mistake that I really regretted.

My last year of teaching 5th grade was very stressful because, in addition to teaching full time and running what had now become a full-time side business with TpT (read more about what a typical day in my life working two full-time jobs looked like here), I started the process of building my new house, selling my old house, and moving in with my mom while I got my house ready to sell. It was such an overwhelming time. My mom’s house has terrible internet service and since my TpT business is entirely online, this was extremely difficult. I also had most of my things packed away which also made working extra challenging. Not to mention all the stress that comes with building a house. All of the decisions that had to be made. Every single detail of the house had to be considered. I was working two full-time jobs (and we all know teaching is overwhelming on its own!) while at the same time trying to think about light fixtures and where I wanted electrical outlets, and installing water lines and EVERYTHING. I love my house, but I would never build again.

I was so exhausted once the house was built in March 2019 that I felt like I needed a change. Changing things up four years earlier had worked, so why wouldn’t it be the same this time? Looking back, I think I associated my teaching job with all of the stress that the previous year had brought on when in reality it would have gotten better if I hadn’t attempted to do something different. I was thinking that if I did something different, my life would become easier than what it had turned into.

A 2nd-grade position opened up at my school. At my school, 2nd grade is departmentalized, so I would only be responsible for teaching ELA. I loved this idea. I thought it took the some of best parts of teaching 5th grade (only teaching one subject & having multiple classes a day) but it would be on a much lower scale when it came to content. Instead of attempting to teach 5th graders how to cite evidence by quoting directly from the text, I would be teaching 2nd graders how to identify the plot of a simple story. It was like I had forgotten how hard teaching 1st grade was. It just sounded so much easier.

It wasn’t. While I loved my kids in 2nd grade, I remembered almost immediately why I had requested to move to upper elementary all those years ago. I also severely underestimated how hard it would be to teach phonics and reading 3 times in a row, every single day, and keep data for almost 60 2nd graders. You know how detailed RTI paperwork is? I had that, DIBELS data, STAR data, and DIBELS Progress Monitoring each week. That year was the hardest teaching year I had.

And then in March 2020, the pandemic hit and everything changed.

A month before everything with Covid happened, I had gone to my principal again and told him how I felt. I told him I had made a mistake and I regretted leaving upper elementary. The 4th grade ELA teacher was retiring the next year, and I asked if I could transfer to her job.

So now we are up to the last year that I taught. I had just spent the last year learning a brand new grade level and now I was learning another one (by my own request, but still another year of an unknown grade level). You know how when you switch to a new grade level it almost feels like you’re in your first year of teaching? That’s how it was again for me, but this time there were also the challenges we were all dealing with that teaching in the middle of a pandemic brought on. Not to mention I had packed everything and moved classrooms twice! And designed two new classrooms in two years! In my effort to simplify my life, I made it so much harder by changing what was working. I was exhausted from moving-both my houses and my classrooms. Looking back, I have no earthly idea what I was thinking switching grade levels at that particular time.

And then my dad passed away two weeks before Christmas in 2020.

I cannot even begin to tell you how hard that was due to so many different issues.

By the spring, I was at my wits’ end. I felt so lost and unhappy. I wanted the feeling I had when I had been in 5th grade. I don’t think that was just because I loved 5th grade (although I absolutely did! It was my favorite of all the grade levels I taught) but I think it was because I was content when I was there. I was in the same place, both at school and at home, year after year. There were no moving classrooms or packing up houses. Everything was in its place. I knew what I was doing. I could manage both my full-time teaching job and my full-time TpT job. That alone was overwhelming, but it was manageable. And I thought now that I was back in upper elementary and I wasn’t packing up my house to build another one (ha!) things would go back to the way they had been. I decided I could finally get my masters as a Reading Specialist. Over the years I had attempted to take a few graduate-level classes here and there but I wasn’t making much progress. I decided to request a one-year educational leave of absence and do grad school full-time. I wanted to take a full load in the fall, spring, and summer semesters in order to get my degree and return to teaching. I know many people get their masters while teaching, but I knew I would not be able to teach the way I wanted to while at the same time completing grad school work in addition to my TpT job.

I requested the educational leave of absence in April of 2021. I met with my principal who was very supportive, as he always had been. He told me the steps I would need to take to begin the process. I completed all the necessary paperwork, and he brought my request to the superintendent. The superintendent wanted him to meet with me again to make sure I was aware of the guidelines that went along with taking a leave. I had already looked up the employee handbook to see what it said about taking a leave. I was aware it meant I would not have a salary, nor would I have insurance through my job for the year. It also meant I would not be promised the same job I had or even a job at the same school. I submitted all the paperwork, and the school year ended.

A few weeks into summer, I received a call informing me that my request for educational leave was not going to be approved. I was given reasons I did not agree with. I was originally hired under very similar circumstances, and I also knew of at least one other teacher who had previously taken an educational leave in my district. I accepted the decision, but at this point, I had already made up my mind that this was what I wanted to do.

So I resigned.