I'm coming up to a year now since I quit my teaching job. Nearly fifteen years of senior education, in a well renowned, reputable private school which, looking back, I was lucky to work at. Good money, good professional development, well behaved young people from supportive families. I didn't have to herd cats, just teach. And I loved in, in the early years. Teaching is theatre, often. You step outside yourself and into character and have fun with the drama of performance. It's creative, too, trying to work out engaging ways to deliver content. It's also very rewarding, supporting teenagers to be good people and experience a-ha moments as they learn. They are the bits I still miss.
I taught EAL also, foreign language students, which I loved. They were from China, Hong Kong, and Thailand mainly.
One year I taught all year levels, 9 - 12, plus another combined EAL VCE class of year 11 and 12. That is, six different units across five classes. That's a lot of books, characters, students, reports, essays. Add that to staff politics, meetings and so on as well as being a mother and a wife and you have yourself one stress breakdown from which I'm still recovering five years on. I simply couldn't get out of bed, couldn't stop crying, and was not, as the school counselor said, capable of teaching. All the warning signs had been there, but the school, and myself, just didn't see them.
There were a lot of feelings of disappointment in myself. You're meant to shoulder a lot, as a teacher. You are an unflappable rock to your charges, who look to you for guidance. There's a culture of not letting your colleagues know you aren't coping with the workload, because everyone else is, so why shouldn't you? You're getting paid a decent wage, and you don't want to lose your job or your reputation as being a Really Excellent Teacher. Which I was. I was really good at it.
I had some excellent support coming back after about a month trying to put my brain back together and calm my nervous system. They only fix you when you fall, and pay lip service to systems that are meant to stop you falling. But I got back into the classroom and felt a little wiser, knowing I could say no to the crazy workload they threw at me. I went part time, and dropped even more hours the following year til I was properly part time. But I never really recovered. Some days my body felt like going into the classroom was like going into a war zone. My heart would race and my palms would sweat. It didn't make it easy that I never really felt I belonged there. By 2021, I was crying on the couch at home every night again. I can't do this anymore, I'd sob. Jamie spent months trying to get me to quit.
But again, I was disappointed in myself. Why couldn't I handle a job that others could? Why couldn't I manage to bring in money for the household like I always had? Who would I be if I didn't teach? Was I quitting because I had a massive mental health issue I couldn't Get A Grip on? I should be able to handle it.
But my anxiety had reached fever pitch and every cell of my body was vibrating with stress. If I didn't quit, I was going to die.
In the end, I quit. The sky didn't fall in. I came to terms with the fact that although I was a good teacher and did an excellent job, I was out of place in that school, and I am just probably not suited to such an intense, hectic work environment. I don't have the energy to deal with such a broken system that's been getting worse over the years. None of that was something I could control.
In fact, I shouldn't be disappointed in myself at all - I should be proud of who I was as an educator. Empathetic, creative, energetic, intelligent and passionate - all of those qualities totally trumped the fact I had to give it up to have a life.
Now I know to hold onto what I can do, and release what I can't. It doesn't make me a lesser person. Sometimes it's just the universe pushing you elsewhere. Sometimes it's just not you.
A year on, it all feels like a distant dream.
This post is in response to the Weekend Engagement challenge hosted by 