I get it. I GET IT. Teaching is a bitch. As a teacher you are GUARANTEED to work overtime, unpaid. You will MOST CERTAINLY be
disrespected frequently. I can promise you will be blamed, often, for things
that could not possibly be your fault.
Still teach.
Flaws in parenting, upbringing, home life, work ethic,
determination and educational value will become your problems and you WILL NOT
be provided with adequate tools to solve them. Students are more unmotivated
than ever, and it WILL be cast as your fault if they fail, but you’re too nice
if they get As.
Still teach.
You will be purposely misunderstood and willfully misquoted.
You will receive little societal respect. You will spend more hours with other
people’s children than your own. You will spend more time on bureaucracy than
wisdom.
Still teach. OR don’t.
If these are things which you are not committed to
experiencing, then don’t. If you are too proud to hear that you are only part
of a whole, certainly don’t. It’s doesn’t make you a bad person, and I thank
you for your honest self-analysis. But know that that is the deal. I am
continuously asked to step away, as if difficulty and disrespect from children
should deter me, as if somewhere along the line we forgot that that is much of
adult interaction as well. I am repeatedly reminded that as a professional, I
deserve better, as if I am somehow unaware of the hardships of my chosen career
path, as if somewhere there exists some perfect, faultless work.
There are a million articles about why to stop teaching, why
to not even enter the profession in the first place. And they speak an
inarguable truth. Teaching is NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE.
It is harder. It is more tiring, and draining, and NECESSARY
then perhaps ever before. Our world is plunging into a new age. Of course the
concepts that fed useful workers into the system of Industrialism are no longer
the most pertinent. And instead of taking a responsibility as a whole country
to prepare our babies for THIS world, a world that we have broken and returned,
instead of looking our forefathers in the eye and saying, “I shall go further
still”, instead of OWNING our hurts and our hearts and our privileges and our
failures, we (as a country) are turning a blind eye.
It’s not enough that my students can regurgitate
information. I must make them self sufficient, as we continue to allow for a
government whose priorities leave our brothers and sisters of color and LQBTQI
family to figuratively and literally wither and die. But I don’t need to
protect my students. They will protect themselves. Let me arm them with hope
and open minds and thoughtful voices. Let me tell them where we as people have come from,
what are hearts are made of, and how we have failed them, so that they may
succeed. May they be critical of the world they live in, knowledgeable on how
to educate themselves, and unswayed by public or popular opinion. Let me create the kind of student-citizen that
we so desperately need now. The kind of student-citizen that DESIRES to educate
THEMSELVES.
For me, born into a life of privilege, the answer seems
inescapable. Not because I’m better. Simply because I am called. And as I do my
best to lean into the discomfort with grace (and fail publicly, frequently), I
need to be clear. If you are called, if you are fierce, if there is discomfort
of others surrounding the choices you’ve made, there will always be someone
telling you it is too much. Whether it’s teaching or ministry or parenting or
business, there will ALWAYS be someone explaining why you shouldn’t, why you can't. I’m here
to remind you. Not that you SHOULD. But that you CAN. You are strong enough,
brave enough, smart enough to make that choice for yourself.
If teaching is yours, if it is in your heart and mind, we
need you. It will be too much. Almost constantly. But my experience, my truth,
means that many of the sentences in “Why I Quit Teaching” articles are only
half finished. At the other end of all that difficult, often painful giving of
one’s self is the most potent energy and love and purpose and rejuvenation I personally
have ever experienced. You will have an unquestionable
purpose. If you are called, I promise, you are strong enough. Not that you’ll
never break down, but that you are made to be rebuilt. And what a thrill to
stand shoulder to shoulders with all those brilliant, fearless, everyday
humans, the only people that have ever had the capacity for creating change. Stronger, wiser, and more full of love.
So, you could quit.
But I’m willing to bet you’re braver than that.
