This one hits close because I'm a teacher. When I was a Waldorf teacher in the US, the experience was life-changing horrible, so much so, that I ended up writing a book about it. And I took a break, which involved an expensive MA in Elementary Education, which I did not finish because the dysfunction (again) frightened me and because I couldn't afford it.
Following that were a LOT of temp jobs and "What do I do with my life?" moments, before I ended up in Thailand taking a TESOL course. And now it's been 15 yrs of teaching English overseas.
Burnout, as you know, is the number one reasons why teachers quit. There's a HUGE crisis in education in the US. I'm very wary of the politics and drama in schools, having freshly left a 3rd grade teaching position that reaffirmed my fears and experience.
But the good thing is you're aware that you can quit again and that you don't have to love it 100%. That's been a big lesson this time around because as I caught myself whinging about this or that, I looked back at the many schools I worked at, and realized, hey, this one's OK. And sometimes that's alright because it allows you to do the things that you want. Good luck, Sarah, xo
Thanks Lani. I knew from reading some of your posts that you were teaching, but I wasn’t fully up to date with your background.
One of the most frustrating aspects of teaching is that there is a lot of great stuff going on, but you get totally swamped by admin and BS. Plus, it’s a job where you’re expected to have a desire to progress like become a manager. When I just wanted to say, can I just focus on doing a good job for a while?
I’m a little familiar with some of the things going on the US, partly from reading the news, but from chatting to my husband’s family who live there. The recent administration changes have led to chaos (especially around the government going into schools to remove students), and understandably, has led to heightened tensions. That’s a lot for students to deal with, and the teachers!
And yes, totally. Knowing that I don’t have to love my job has been the biggest realizations. It can just be what it is. I would love to be writing full-time! But I know that’s a pipe dream, and actually, having spent some time back in the classroom for a few months, I found that I did miss working with students. Their energy was infectious!
Thanks again for listening/reading, and for commenting here!
One of the hardest aspects of teaching, which you eluded to here, is you have to keep improving. Professional development is ongoing, but with the majority of work out there, this is not the case. Teaching feels like a ‘soft science’ trying to compete with the ‘hard sciences’ by trying to prove its worth. Very strange, but there you have it.
I found out recently that a family member wonders why I don’t “level up”. Why don’t I try to be a lead teacher or manager, etc, etc. which I found amusing. Teaching pays the bills, it’s the closest job to utilizing my skills, but beyond that I’d rather be reading, writing, enjoying nature. Don’t get me wrong. I love my students, but it’s hard work; you’re on the treadmill, and it would be nice to take a break or be fabulously rich, so in the meantime, I make the best of it! xo
As a former teacher I SO relate to the burnout. I remember going home crying everyday for months during my job as a primary teacher at an international school because the staff politics were that bad. Then when I left teaching, I felt so lost because being a great teacher was my identity for over a decade. Glad you're going back with a better sense of how you'll approach this role. Even if you're back in the same vocation/sector it sounds like you gained a lot of insights no matter what. Good luck in your new position!
Sorry to hear about your experiences, Sarah. If it helps, I would return home crying or just feel like a hollowed out shell every single day... while in my last job too.
The staff politics - it was one of the reasons why I left my last role; the cynicism and negativity. It was like a leech sucking the life out of me.
And you're right, when a job becomes our identity, it strips away other parts of ourselves. I think that is something that is missing from conversations about our relationships with work (and in teaching, particularly). I am definitely less of a people pleaser than I was, but I will need to see how it goes. I don't want teaching to be my whole identity, anymore!
After only a year of being qualified as a nurse working on a hospital ward, I had had enough and became disillusioned with it all. Luckily I managed to get a job in the community with a wonderful team. A great team really does help!
Great post, good luck with it all and with prioritising your work life balance. ☺️🙏
I am sorry to read that you were disillusioned when working on a hospital ward - are you still working in the medical field in your community role?
I wish that I had taken some of your advice and left sooner from some of my previous teaching roles, I stuck them out because I thought that I needed to give the school more time! Ugh.
I find it so interesting that we expect our lives and decision-making to be linear, as though it's all supposed to be one seamless upward trajectory. I'm still learning that it really doesn't always work that way!
A few years ago I decided that I wanted to live in Australia again, having left there three and a half decades ago. I told everyone, including my family, that I was moving back... And then I changed my mind. I was so embarrassed and felt so guilty! But that's the way it works sometimes. We need to take time out, to look at things from different angles, to give ourselves permission to make new decisions and change our minds. I think this process makes for much better decision-making than any sort of rigid foward-at-all-costs determination.
I hope you'll enjoy teaching this time round. I'm sure you'll have a much more positive experience of it, having taken a break, thought about different options, and given yourself permission to be flexible in your approach to things. It's good not to hold on to things too tightly.
Once a teacher, sometimes a teacher, and sometimes other lovely things too 😊 x
I agree, holding onto things (ideas, patterns of behaviour and thinking) can be unhelpful, even though we may think that doing this makes our lives easier. And my gosh, giving ourselves permission to quit something has been one of the BIGGEST, if not the biggest learning experience haha!
I didn't realise that you considered moving back to Oz? That would have been during the pandemic, right?
Yes, it was during the pandemic that I considered the big return. My dad died in Australia and I was stuck in China, and I felt a million miles away from my family. But when I was able to spend some time there about six months later, I realised that it's just not the place for me anymore, if indeed it ever was. I felt so bad, having told everyone of my grand plans... It was one of my sisters who eventually reminded me that it's OK to change your mind.
Gosh, losing your dad in the midst of the pandemic. It makes total sense to want to return to a place that you know, and especially if other relatives and loved ones are there.
Congratulations, Sarah! It seems you used this time off exactly as you needed. You've gained valuable perspective on where teaching sits in your life, and this clarity might have been impossible without some distance from the job. I'm excited for you!
Thanks Maria - the distance has been incredibly useful and has helped shift my thinking about my relationship with a job. Knowing that I don't have to love me job has been the biggest eye-opener for sure, because that way, I can put that energy (and love) into other things including writing!
I am reminded that our life choices are anything but clear and our life paths are rarely linear. We have been fed with illusions that the people who seem to have succeeded in life had a clear vision from the beginning of their new career and it was a clear execution path to results.
The only way to know especially in complex situations like career transitions is to take action and notice how it makes us feel. We are never the same person, affected by so many variables in our environment.
In the beginning of your Substack writing, we were exchanging comments to some of your posts because I was and still am in this career transition phase. I have always worked in tech and honestly was very sick of it when I left my job in Jan 2023 with feelings as you. After a year of throwing myself into meetups to check out communities I feel a slight curiosity of, I felt exhausted, not belonged, anxious, depressed and fearful from not finding anything that lit me up and that was concrete for me to work on. Then an internship opportunity came along. I was not hot about it because it felt like going back to the world of tech, it was not paid and lots of work. But I took it because not having a job and a structure for my weekday time was impacting my mental health severely. After about two months into the job, I discovered what I liked to do: still something around developing or using tech solutions to help people in organisations to work more collaboratively and have an overall better work experience. It's still not all clear for me what type of job it is I want to do and I am discovering I have a need to work in a team, nor the solo subject matter expert, but these learnings have given me pieces of evidence or breadcrumbs on what to look for or what to try in the next moment.
I also have to confront lots of my own judgements about status/face of not having a paid job, a lowly paid job, an unimpressive job title etc. It's been difficult and it feels like I am fighting with myself to prolong this pain by not settling.
So that's what I discovered in a roundabout way that has been mentally and emotionally challenging. As much as I wished someone gave me the answer on what to look for
The linear path feels like it is do deeply engrained in many aspects of human life. And certainly, leaving my previous job/career threw of a lot of these ideas up into the sky. Your point about having structure in the day really hits home for me, too. When I first left my job, my head felt all over the place. It's was like taking all of these building blocks of how to build a life and start again, but with no-one to tell you how to do things. It didn't always work, but I noticed over time, certain patterns - particularly, when it came to my energy levels, levels of focus and so on.
Another thing that has struck me over the past year or so is the duality of our experiences, and how this affects our thinking. For example, I like to collaborate with people (so, like you, I need to work in a team), but I also want a degree of autonomy with a role. I need independence to be able to pursue an idea, or just simply to be left alone at times! And fortunately, for the most part, teaching can provide me with these things.
The subject of status is so significant. I am curious if you found that when you told people (or if you told people) that were looking for work/seeking roles, if people tried to 'fix' things. Sometimes, I really just wanted friends to listen, and not try to solve stuff.
Thanks again for sharing here. I remember our comments to one another previously, so it's good to hear from you and see what you have been up to.
Regarding the conversation about status, it's more of me rather than others imposing their expectation on me. I carry a lot of shame and judgement on myself which is coming from childhood traumas. That's why part of the work I have found myself doing is to go to therapy to learn 'basic' skills for building self-resilience like self-regulation, grounding techniques that work for me who prefers tangible, somatic types of actions and experiences.
Herminia Ibarra who wrote this book Working Identity has lots about career transition experience and 'how' to go about it, which will most likely resonate with you. If you haven't heard about it, I can highly recommend the book, and follow her on LinkedIn where she posts snippets from her book: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/herminia-ibarra-4455411a_career-careerchange-careertransition-activity-7295713320433532929-3nHq?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop. Though I had the book on my bookshelf for 18+ years, it's only recently - this year - that I could 'hear' the message in this book. As the saying in Tao goes, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will Disappear."
Thanks for sharing the details about Herminia and the link - I hadn't come across her work before. And the saying in Tao is particularly pertinent!
What you say about being able to 'hear' a message is so important, too. It's like you need to be ready to hear certain messages before you can take some steps to address anything.
Just realised that I hit "Send" before completing my last sentence. That's the outcome from writing this at the gym while waiting for the person who padlocked my locker instead of hers to get back!
This one hits close because I'm a teacher. When I was a Waldorf teacher in the US, the experience was life-changing horrible, so much so, that I ended up writing a book about it. And I took a break, which involved an expensive MA in Elementary Education, which I did not finish because the dysfunction (again) frightened me and because I couldn't afford it.
Following that were a LOT of temp jobs and "What do I do with my life?" moments, before I ended up in Thailand taking a TESOL course. And now it's been 15 yrs of teaching English overseas.
Burnout, as you know, is the number one reasons why teachers quit. There's a HUGE crisis in education in the US. I'm very wary of the politics and drama in schools, having freshly left a 3rd grade teaching position that reaffirmed my fears and experience.
But the good thing is you're aware that you can quit again and that you don't have to love it 100%. That's been a big lesson this time around because as I caught myself whinging about this or that, I looked back at the many schools I worked at, and realized, hey, this one's OK. And sometimes that's alright because it allows you to do the things that you want. Good luck, Sarah, xo
Thanks Lani. I knew from reading some of your posts that you were teaching, but I wasn’t fully up to date with your background.
One of the most frustrating aspects of teaching is that there is a lot of great stuff going on, but you get totally swamped by admin and BS. Plus, it’s a job where you’re expected to have a desire to progress like become a manager. When I just wanted to say, can I just focus on doing a good job for a while?
I’m a little familiar with some of the things going on the US, partly from reading the news, but from chatting to my husband’s family who live there. The recent administration changes have led to chaos (especially around the government going into schools to remove students), and understandably, has led to heightened tensions. That’s a lot for students to deal with, and the teachers!
And yes, totally. Knowing that I don’t have to love my job has been the biggest realizations. It can just be what it is. I would love to be writing full-time! But I know that’s a pipe dream, and actually, having spent some time back in the classroom for a few months, I found that I did miss working with students. Their energy was infectious!
Thanks again for listening/reading, and for commenting here!
One of the hardest aspects of teaching, which you eluded to here, is you have to keep improving. Professional development is ongoing, but with the majority of work out there, this is not the case. Teaching feels like a ‘soft science’ trying to compete with the ‘hard sciences’ by trying to prove its worth. Very strange, but there you have it.
I found out recently that a family member wonders why I don’t “level up”. Why don’t I try to be a lead teacher or manager, etc, etc. which I found amusing. Teaching pays the bills, it’s the closest job to utilizing my skills, but beyond that I’d rather be reading, writing, enjoying nature. Don’t get me wrong. I love my students, but it’s hard work; you’re on the treadmill, and it would be nice to take a break or be fabulously rich, so in the meantime, I make the best of it! xo
As a former teacher I SO relate to the burnout. I remember going home crying everyday for months during my job as a primary teacher at an international school because the staff politics were that bad. Then when I left teaching, I felt so lost because being a great teacher was my identity for over a decade. Glad you're going back with a better sense of how you'll approach this role. Even if you're back in the same vocation/sector it sounds like you gained a lot of insights no matter what. Good luck in your new position!
Sorry to hear about your experiences, Sarah. If it helps, I would return home crying or just feel like a hollowed out shell every single day... while in my last job too.
The staff politics - it was one of the reasons why I left my last role; the cynicism and negativity. It was like a leech sucking the life out of me.
And you're right, when a job becomes our identity, it strips away other parts of ourselves. I think that is something that is missing from conversations about our relationships with work (and in teaching, particularly). I am definitely less of a people pleaser than I was, but I will need to see how it goes. I don't want teaching to be my whole identity, anymore!
After only a year of being qualified as a nurse working on a hospital ward, I had had enough and became disillusioned with it all. Luckily I managed to get a job in the community with a wonderful team. A great team really does help!
Great post, good luck with it all and with prioritising your work life balance. ☺️🙏
You're exactly right, a great team helps!
I am sorry to read that you were disillusioned when working on a hospital ward - are you still working in the medical field in your community role?
I wish that I had taken some of your advice and left sooner from some of my previous teaching roles, I stuck them out because I thought that I needed to give the school more time! Ugh.
Yes, community nursing. Where I actually get to use my skills and feel like a nurse! 🙏
I'm so glad you shared this post, Sarah!
I find it so interesting that we expect our lives and decision-making to be linear, as though it's all supposed to be one seamless upward trajectory. I'm still learning that it really doesn't always work that way!
A few years ago I decided that I wanted to live in Australia again, having left there three and a half decades ago. I told everyone, including my family, that I was moving back... And then I changed my mind. I was so embarrassed and felt so guilty! But that's the way it works sometimes. We need to take time out, to look at things from different angles, to give ourselves permission to make new decisions and change our minds. I think this process makes for much better decision-making than any sort of rigid foward-at-all-costs determination.
I hope you'll enjoy teaching this time round. I'm sure you'll have a much more positive experience of it, having taken a break, thought about different options, and given yourself permission to be flexible in your approach to things. It's good not to hold on to things too tightly.
Once a teacher, sometimes a teacher, and sometimes other lovely things too 😊 x
Thanks Michelle!
I agree, holding onto things (ideas, patterns of behaviour and thinking) can be unhelpful, even though we may think that doing this makes our lives easier. And my gosh, giving ourselves permission to quit something has been one of the BIGGEST, if not the biggest learning experience haha!
I didn't realise that you considered moving back to Oz? That would have been during the pandemic, right?
You're right! Quitting can be SO GOOD!
Yes, it was during the pandemic that I considered the big return. My dad died in Australia and I was stuck in China, and I felt a million miles away from my family. But when I was able to spend some time there about six months later, I realised that it's just not the place for me anymore, if indeed it ever was. I felt so bad, having told everyone of my grand plans... It was one of my sisters who eventually reminded me that it's OK to change your mind.
Gosh, losing your dad in the midst of the pandemic. It makes total sense to want to return to a place that you know, and especially if other relatives and loved ones are there.
Congratulations, Sarah! It seems you used this time off exactly as you needed. You've gained valuable perspective on where teaching sits in your life, and this clarity might have been impossible without some distance from the job. I'm excited for you!
Thanks Maria - the distance has been incredibly useful and has helped shift my thinking about my relationship with a job. Knowing that I don't have to love me job has been the biggest eye-opener for sure, because that way, I can put that energy (and love) into other things including writing!
I am reminded that our life choices are anything but clear and our life paths are rarely linear. We have been fed with illusions that the people who seem to have succeeded in life had a clear vision from the beginning of their new career and it was a clear execution path to results.
The only way to know especially in complex situations like career transitions is to take action and notice how it makes us feel. We are never the same person, affected by so many variables in our environment.
In the beginning of your Substack writing, we were exchanging comments to some of your posts because I was and still am in this career transition phase. I have always worked in tech and honestly was very sick of it when I left my job in Jan 2023 with feelings as you. After a year of throwing myself into meetups to check out communities I feel a slight curiosity of, I felt exhausted, not belonged, anxious, depressed and fearful from not finding anything that lit me up and that was concrete for me to work on. Then an internship opportunity came along. I was not hot about it because it felt like going back to the world of tech, it was not paid and lots of work. But I took it because not having a job and a structure for my weekday time was impacting my mental health severely. After about two months into the job, I discovered what I liked to do: still something around developing or using tech solutions to help people in organisations to work more collaboratively and have an overall better work experience. It's still not all clear for me what type of job it is I want to do and I am discovering I have a need to work in a team, nor the solo subject matter expert, but these learnings have given me pieces of evidence or breadcrumbs on what to look for or what to try in the next moment.
I also have to confront lots of my own judgements about status/face of not having a paid job, a lowly paid job, an unimpressive job title etc. It's been difficult and it feels like I am fighting with myself to prolong this pain by not settling.
So that's what I discovered in a roundabout way that has been mentally and emotionally challenging. As much as I wished someone gave me the answer on what to look for
The linear path feels like it is do deeply engrained in many aspects of human life. And certainly, leaving my previous job/career threw of a lot of these ideas up into the sky. Your point about having structure in the day really hits home for me, too. When I first left my job, my head felt all over the place. It's was like taking all of these building blocks of how to build a life and start again, but with no-one to tell you how to do things. It didn't always work, but I noticed over time, certain patterns - particularly, when it came to my energy levels, levels of focus and so on.
Another thing that has struck me over the past year or so is the duality of our experiences, and how this affects our thinking. For example, I like to collaborate with people (so, like you, I need to work in a team), but I also want a degree of autonomy with a role. I need independence to be able to pursue an idea, or just simply to be left alone at times! And fortunately, for the most part, teaching can provide me with these things.
The subject of status is so significant. I am curious if you found that when you told people (or if you told people) that were looking for work/seeking roles, if people tried to 'fix' things. Sometimes, I really just wanted friends to listen, and not try to solve stuff.
Thanks again for sharing here. I remember our comments to one another previously, so it's good to hear from you and see what you have been up to.
Regarding the conversation about status, it's more of me rather than others imposing their expectation on me. I carry a lot of shame and judgement on myself which is coming from childhood traumas. That's why part of the work I have found myself doing is to go to therapy to learn 'basic' skills for building self-resilience like self-regulation, grounding techniques that work for me who prefers tangible, somatic types of actions and experiences.
Herminia Ibarra who wrote this book Working Identity has lots about career transition experience and 'how' to go about it, which will most likely resonate with you. If you haven't heard about it, I can highly recommend the book, and follow her on LinkedIn where she posts snippets from her book: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/herminia-ibarra-4455411a_career-careerchange-careertransition-activity-7295713320433532929-3nHq?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop. Though I had the book on my bookshelf for 18+ years, it's only recently - this year - that I could 'hear' the message in this book. As the saying in Tao goes, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will Disappear."
Thanks for sharing the details about Herminia and the link - I hadn't come across her work before. And the saying in Tao is particularly pertinent!
What you say about being able to 'hear' a message is so important, too. It's like you need to be ready to hear certain messages before you can take some steps to address anything.
Just realised that I hit "Send" before completing my last sentence. That's the outcome from writing this at the gym while waiting for the person who padlocked my locker instead of hers to get back!
Oh no! Hope you have got your stuff out now!?