How many times have you heard this one. “Teachers only work from 8-3 and then they get to leave and be home with their family!”. There remains this idea that teaching allows you a “family friendly” teaching schedule. I mean, you can leave at 3 and go home and be with your kids, right?!
Honestly, this is one that I REALLY struggled with when I thought about leaving teaching. The thought of sitting in an office, doing some sort of job that had me at a computer in a cubicle from 9-5 while my kids sat at their grandparent’s house or, heaven forbid, with a babysitter, was crushing. My dream of being a stay at home parent had ended with divorce, and this was just another THING to lose.
The Myth of the “Family Friendly” Schedule
Why Are There Still Cars in the Parking Lot?
The truth was, I already didn’t have a “family friendly” teaching schedule. Sure, the students left at 3, but I often didn’t leave until 5 or 5:30 as I had to make copies, go to a meeting, enter book orders, return emails, clean up the classroom, go to another meeting and prepare little baggies of manipulatives for math and reading so that we could actually do our lesson the next day. I would pick my kids up from my parent’s house, drive home and start making dinner.
In my last year of teaching, I had been moved from 4th grade to kindergarten due to available positions (and position on the totem pole), so a lot of my time was also spent learning new strategies of how to “do” kindergarten. For the last few years of my career, I had been an upper grades teacher. I had taught 3rd for 4 years and then 4th for two. I KNEW going into it that it was going to be some extra work.
If I didn’t do the work at school, then I had to take it home and work on it after the kids went to bed. As a single mom, after making and cleaning up dinner, getting two first graders fed, bathed, played with, read to and off to bed, I was exhausted. My last year of teaching was a nightmare, so add to that that I was already stressing (having panic attacks) about returning to the classroom the next day or week.
Weekends
The weekends didn’t belong to me either. Every other weekend, I have my kids home. I LOVE doing stuff with them, finding seasonal activities like a fairy garden walk, pumpkin patches or running around the splash pad in the summer. While teaching, these activities were delegated to Saturdays as Sunday I had to spend preparing for the next week.
I would spend hours planning my week (again, new grade level…but this will pay off next year, right?!). Sometimes I would have to drop them off at my parents while I went in to make copies, clean up, plan, stapled, cut out, etc (sound familiar?). I would inevitably be resentful. I truly enjoyed the actual teaching part, but now literally my entire life was dedicated to the classroom, whether I liked it or not. This is seriously making me anxious just writing about it. COULD I have outsourced some of this to a parent? Maybe, but truthfully, I could barely make it through the day, let alone plan for two weeks in advance for someone to come in and help.
My weekends without kids were spent preparing for school. I could EASILY go into school and spend 6-8 hours there “getting stuff done”- tests graded, units planned out, etc. To be clear, I did NOT want to be a martyr. I don’t feel I was any sort of spectacular, over-the-top teacher. The building was never empty, as going in over the weekend is often worn as a “badge of honor”.This was not a badge I wanted to posess, it was just the time it took me to feel ready for the next day or week. I knew from experience that the following year in the same grade level would then be better, easier, because I had put this work in. Worth it, right?!
Why Not Just Leave the Work Undone?
Not only was I deeply unhappy in my job, a job that I had loved, dedicated myself to and had gone BACK to school for, but now 90% of my awake time was dedicated to preparing for, cleaning up after and thinking about returning the next day.
You may be wondering why I wouldn’t just leave the work undone? The worst feeling (for me) is to be standing in front of a group of kindergarteners unprepared with what to do next. I’m not great at “winging it” all day. If the math shapes weren’t in the little baggies, there was no way to do the lesson. I felt I had no choice.
Are there teachers out there who are able to leave after school, have their weekends and return to school Monday feeling prepared and ready? Maybe, but I don’t know any of them. If they do leave right after school, they are carrying heavy bags and admit to just making it day-to-day. This isn’t a great way to live either.
Relationship Toll
All of this inevitably negatively impacted my relationships and my teaching. I tried to keep a smile on, but I was in a pretty dark place. I’m not much of a “fake it till you make it” kind of gal. I have always been aware that I can be prone to severe anxiety, and had taken steps to counteract that, but overtime it was no longer super helpful. I often spent lunches in my room crying, hoping my eyes weren’t super red by the time the afternoon class arrived. Towards the end of the year, more often than not I broke down in tears at my parents house asking how I could possibly continue like this. I knew it couldn’t be great to have my kids see me crying all the time (they started to comment on it).
At the time, I was also engaged to be married. The relationship ended for a number of reasons, but this was definitely one of them. He would comment on how negative I was getting overall. His ex (who, ironically, had left teaching because she didn’t like it) was upset when I would choose to take a few hours to relax by myself on a Saturday instead of rushing over to spend time with my then fiance and spend time with his daughter (THAT’s another blog!).
Personal Toll
I felt that I was ALWAYS seeking support from others and never able to give back. I felt like a bad mom, a bad daughter, a bad friend and a bad teacher. Despite ALL this work, it was still so freaking hard! Something had to break, and I felt it was me.
What if Things Could be Different?
During this time, my therapist got me thinking about what it would be like to have all that time after school and on weekends back. Imagine just do my job and clocking out at 4? How would it feel to leave on Friday and not THINK about it until Monday? What if I could come home and just focus on the kids, their activities and enjoy my weekends again.
It started to nag at me that this might be nice. At the time, I had NO IDEA what this other job was, but I did know people who did jobs and just got to leave them when they went home. Maybe the job wasn’t their calling, but this wasn’t top of my criteria anymore. NOT crying at lunch was my bar. I had heard Starbucks offered good benefits and that Aldi, based in the town over, was a good place to work.
Ultimately my path out of teaching did not end in a corporate job. One of my “must haves” for a new job was that I didn’t want to have a boss, someone who could simply decide they didn’t like you and rip the rug out from under you overnight. This swiftly cut out most jobs and left me with being self employed. To be honest, this path has been hitting me over the head for awhile. My TeachersPayTeachers store had been sitting there for awhile, whispering my name, making money through the divorce and while returning to teaching. My “cha-chings” had diminished, but had never gone away. Yes, I took other steps to make this work, but that is yet again, another post.
My Crystal Ball is Broken
Will this path ultimately be successful? I don’t know, and I have had to learn to live with that, but that’s OK. Is there still fear and anxiety? Yes, but it’s a different kind of fear and anxiety, one tinged with hope and that I can see myself staying on for the next 30 years, no problem.
What I CAN tell you is that I cry 100% less than I did last year. I can tell you that my quality of life is better beyond measure and that I can truly enjoy my time with family and friends without the anxiety cloud of work hanging over my head (do I still think about it, YES! The difference is now I can’t WAIT to make it and get it in my shop!). I now TRULY have a family friendly schedule.
Comment below if this post sounds familiar to you. Are you thinking of leaving teaching, but reluctant because of the schedule? What do your nights and weekends look like?
