My career path has been more circuitous than most, and I feel no shame about that. Some estimates place the share of workers that are unhappy with their jobs at around 85%. Having had a life with enough difficulties, I have never been satisfied to be among them. I have always allowed myself to try things, to switch careers and sectors to find work that sustains me.
A devout Trekkie, I am pulled toward meaningful, community-oriented work: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Right out of college, I dabbled in the nonprofit sector, working for an organization that advocated on behalf of LGBTQ students in colleges across New York City. I eventually translated that advocacy work to teaching, broadening the scope of my work.
As much as I love teaching, it is often thankless. Teachers are targets of moral panics, constantly underfunded and underappreciated, underpaid, work far more than our contractual hours, and invest so much of our own emotions and care into the work. There are always new initiatives handed down from politicians at the top more worried about optics than outcomes that are just as ineffective as they are time consuming. Parents and students alike are frequently adversarial, and teacher appreciation gifts all but dry up by middle school. Interpersonal dynamics between teachers can be complicated, just as they are in any workplace, made more so because the kids can’t find out.
COVID was a perfect storm of teacher burnout. The two years of online learning were so soul-sucking and the transition back into in-person learning so profoundly difficult that teachers were abandoning the profession in droves. I-unhappy in my position for the first time—left as well.
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