So, once again, I’m no longer teaching.
I really tried this time. I have cats now. They need food and litter.
I still couldn’t do it.
I could give you all the reasons it didn’t work. I could tell you I finally hit every square on my “Teaching Is Toxic” bingo card and walked away from things even the recruiter said were justified.
But that’s not why I’m not going back.
I can’t take on anything that isn’t mine anymore.
I don’t care that it isn’t your fault.
I don’t care that someone handed it to you a decade ago and now it’s “someone else’s turn.”
I don’t care if the state handed it to you.
I don’t care that people keep showing up, dropping their own mess, and leaving.
I don’t care if it’s funding.
I don’t care if it’s staffing.
I don’t care if it’s health.
I agree—you shouldn’t be holding it.
But I’m not going to hold it either.
I don’t care why you think I should.
I don’t care if it’s for legal reasons.
I don’t care if it helps you sleep at night.
I don’t care if you “just need a minute” and you’ll be right back.
I don’t care if we signed a contract where it said, in 8-point light grey font, that I would hold it.
No.
I’m not holding it anymore.
I would rather sit on my couch, refreshing LinkedIn and trying to figure out how I’m paying May’s rent—with no health insurance—than walk into another crumbling 1950s classroom.
I’m no longer dealing with:
- drunk parents at meetings
- discipline meetings where no one shows up
- kids old enough to drive who were never taught what an equal sign means
- superintendents who wouldn’t recognize a Title IX violation if it hit them in the face
- directors who are either impossible to hire or quietly taking screenshots of my emails
- principals waiting for a reason to expel
- gen ed teachers who don’t come to IEP meetings
- behavior interventionists sending students back to my room to “get services” after they hit someone the hour before
And that’s just in the past few months.
It doesn’t include Morocco.
It doesn’t include the farm towns where people voted for this and still don’t have heat in the winter.
It doesn’t include my first year, when one of my students died three months after school started.
I still showed up after that.
But I’m done.
So I don’t know who wins.
COVID.
Charter schools.
The Department of Education.
Whoever built it like this—
You win.
I’m out.
Enjoy it.
The placement I left in December still hasn’t found another certified special ed teacher.
They were paying $2000 a week.