So You Want To Teach?

Lisa writes:

I googled “bitter about teaching” and came up with your blog.  I was recently let go from a school I busted my a$$ in for a whole year (my first year) – constant criticism, cattiness, and pointing out and embellishing the negative things I had done while minimizing the positive (all the while they were telling me to stay positive!).

She concludes her email:

I just wanted to let you know that your blog picked me up a little bit.  I still have a lot of healing to do, but I’m glad that I’m not the only person that this has happened to.

What an awesome thing! In case you missed the story, here are a few articles that address the situation:

• Turning The Ship: Overcoming A History of Poor Teaching
• The Honeymoon Is Over: What Killed My First Job And 7 Tips For Getting Your Next Job
• Why I Hated Teaching During My First Two Years

My response to her email was pretty straight-forward. I’m sure that she is not the only one who has come to my blog because she is burned out of teaching. In fact, 100% of the people who have come to my site using the keywords “quitting teaching” or “quit teaching” tend to be among the most popular that bring people to my site. I think my reply to her can be instructive to a lot of people, so I’m going to include it here.

Here is my response in its entirety, for anyone else in similar circumstances.

Hey Lisa,

Thanks for writing. I’m glad my blog will hopefully be one of many things that help you decide to continue on the teaching track. Just because one school gave you a bad experience doesn’t mean that every school will. And just because SCHOOL gives you a bad experience teaching, there are plenty of other opportunities for you to continue doing the teaching thing without actually staying in a school.

I would commit to another year (or even better two) in a new district. Look for a job, find one (districts get desperate at the end of the year and will hire anyone who has a piece of paper that might even look like almost a teaching certificate), and go into it a smarter, wiser, braver soul than you were before.

Read my blog and a few others. Start your own blog and talk about your successes and failures. Go back and reread the successes. Look for positives every single day — even if that means you celebrate because you almost hit the trash can when you threw away the copy of the incorrect paper that they stuck in your mailbox even though three of the secretaries and one counselor already emailed the corrected memo to the entire school already. :)

Hang on, set up a blog, and get ready to learn this year!