I recently had a conversation with a friend who teaches 6th grade. She is an amazing teacher with every teacher award one can have. She has been teaching for 10 years and loves her student; however, does not love the politics or administration that comes with teaching. Therefore, she has decided she does not want to teach any longer. So, we talked about other jobs like: changing schools, higher education, or working at an education publishing company. However, through our conversation she decided her need to get out of education was too great. As I reflected on our conversation, I am almost at the ten year mark myself. I too, feel like leaving education sometimes or doing something more lucrative; however, I enjoy teaching 90% of the time. I think we are at a critical point in education when good teachers are leaving education. Therefore, teachers are leaving and going into fields that make more and be happy. My honest advice for her was to leave and do something that makes you happy. I also explained to her that if she starts early and uses time wisely the transition to another career over the summer would be easy. Many of educators who leave teaching go into corporate training or instructional training of some sort. I think what we have to realize, as teachers, is that although it’s sad when teachers leave this field, many times we have to make decisions for personal growth. As a millennial, we are not the generation that stays in one job for twenty plus years. Therefore, the trend is to move around until finding a career that is suitable and makes one happy.
I agree Noco, more and more often now I see good teachers leaving to switch careers after 5 or 10 years. I think that frustration can continue to build up as many teachers are forced to make do with less resources and less support. When you work as hard as most teachers do for low wages and low recognition it can be frustrating to watch your peers make more money in far more lucrative careers. An unsupportive administration can also make things tough. I think that school systems need to do a better job of recognizing the hard work and sacrifices that teachers make on a daily basis in order to keep more talented teachers in the field longer.
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