Why I Left Teaching after 15 Years

when you know, you know

I taught high schoolers for 13 years at an alternative public charter school. I left my teaching position there at the end of the ‘22-’23 school year, returned for occasional student support as a volunteer in ‘23-’24, and then returned as a substitute on the first day of this school year.

I feel welcomed back to campus again as a familiar face to the older students, who curiously ask me why I left and why I’m back and what I’ve been doing this past year. I say I left because I could no longer stomach being a part of a system I believe needs to go out with the Boomers.

No offense, Boomers, but it’s true. I didn’t leave because of the students or the challenges that they brought to the classroom. I welcomed them with their broken hearts and negatively focused minds, and I tried to make the best of it for all of us.

I announced my planned departure from teaching as a profession spontaneously and almost flippantly one 7th period 9th Grade Academy class to half of our school’s future Class of 2026, this year’s seniors. The second semester had started, and Spring Break was still weeks away.

For any reader who may not know, these are literally long, figuratively dark days of a teacher’s life.

I leaned back against the room-length white board painted wall, under the mounted 55” TCL. It’s been powered on but remains in sleep mode with the brand logo bouncing old school Pong-style from edge to edge across the screen. Some classes cheer when it perfectly hits a corner. No one appeared to be paying any particular attention to it that day.

On the board just next to me, my agenda for the day in blue Expo marker:

1. Mindset video

2. Writer’s journal response to video

3. Game time: Academy competitions

The 20-23 students, depending on who was present this particular day, prepare to begin class. Or rather that’s what I silently expect them to do because, after all, it is the second semester.

In reality…

1-3 students, depending on who was present this particular day, prepare to begin class: writer’s journals appear n the surface of their assigned desktops. They might have a phone out, but they’ll be able to switch their attention back to me and the blue Expo agenda telling them what’s expected in today’s class. And they’ll complete the tasks. And they’ll do it well, probably beyond my expectations at this point. This group of students long ago mastered being a student and meeting teacher expectations. Even Zoom middle school classes didn’t throw them off their school game. And that’s all I’m going to say about that at the moment.

A couple of the students not preparing for class are heavily absorbed in a YouTube video they started watching on one of their school Chromebooks in their last class. They’re “waiting for me to start.” This tends to really irritate me because it gets in the way of “doing my job,” but the reality is that they’ll likely retain what they learn in that video. Where’s the logic in any of this set-up?

A few have their heads down because they only slept three, maybe four, hours last night and haven’t eaten enough today. Protein bars in my bottom desk drawer for these kids will help them survive this last hour and a half block.

The social ones enjoy a lively conversation, having moved their desks together in the far back corner of the room two minutes before class started. They might know there is an agenda for the day, but it’s clear they don’t really care.

The last group have their foreheads resting on their arms on the desk with eyes on the phone in their laps, thumbs scrolling away at their preferred social media platform. These are the ones that I can’t tell what’s going on over there until I peek under the desk.

“Oh hi, you are awake. Join us.” Raised head, glare or eyeroll, and now they’ll sit up, or they will seemingly ignore me because they’ve got both ears filled with earbuds, and it’s probably the noise-canceling kind.

I’m just leaning back against my white board wall, looking out at them in all their adolescent configurations when I say, “Yeah…this is my last year teaching.” The number of turned and raised heads surprises me. I feel their *huh?* settle in and realize I’m as surprised as they are at what I’ve just said to the room, but mostly said for myself so I can finally hear what I’ve been whispering. *inhale*

“I can’t do this anymore.” *exhale*

“Because of us?” I hear from somewhere. “We are pretty bad” from somewhere else. Then *laughter*

“No” I say, but I hear my implied question mark. *hmm*

“No,” I say, firmer this time. “No. It’s not you guys. I mean yeah, you drive me nuts.” *giggles/chuckles* “But you know I asked for it. ‘Give me all of them,’ I said. ‘Twice. English 9 and Academy.’ But really, it’s not you. It’s just all this.” I move my arms around in the air, and point at random things in the room. “I don’t know, this isn’t working anymore. It’s not working for any of us.”

I mean the whole set-up in school. We need a do-over, at least with high school.

That first time you say a thing out loud that you’ve been feeling for a long time without recognizing it, is a moment you never forget. This was the second moment like that I had felt in my life; the first one led to me coming out as a lesbian and leaving a 15-year marriage.

I knew this was a big moment, and I had started the process of knowing it the year before, the year we all came back to school in person for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. That year was a doozy.

The entering 9th graders of 2021-2022 , the current seniors who will graduate as the Class of 2025 in June, collectively broke my heart when I met them. It was a time of great trauma and debilitating grief, with widespread divisiveness across the country impacting all of us. And we couldn’t talk about it. Even if we all wanted to, there was too much internal fear turned outward as anger to even know where and how to start.

They joked about their and others’ fatherlessness, dealt to some of them by death, both COVID-related and not, and to others by incarceration. They rated the physical appearance of each other with and without masks. They were traumatizing each other right in front of me, and I felt helpless in my failed attempts at squelching the hurtful exchanges. You can’t put toothpaste back in its tube, and you can’t unsay what’s been said and heard.

Some of them refused to ever put down their phones, to the point of full meltdowns if admin confiscated it. They needed them in a way that had me fearing for their future relationships.

Others, mostly the ones who kept wearing masks past the mandate, squirmed in their seats, visibly uncomfortable in their own skin. And they reacted more intensely than I’d ever experienced. And they lashed out, both at teachers and at each other.

I heard “What are you looking at?” between students more often and in a more concerning tone than I ever had with previous groups of students, especially this young. That sort of heated comment just didn’t happen very often, especially at this weird little school of ours. I think this is the fear of being seen, I realize after researching. That sounds horrible.

Those 14 and 15-year-olds broke my heart. I didn’t know how to teach the way I had taught, and when I started to barely be able to show up, that’s all I could focus on—showing up. I vowed to continue showing up for them until the end of the school year.

Now that I’ve been back on campus to see a new school year begin with faces I don’t recognize in the 10th and 11th graders, have a beginner’s mind again with a majority of the students. I know nothing and have everything to learn.

Even the seniors, those heartbreaking freshmen, have grown in ways I couldn’t have predicted. The ones who swore they’d be leaving this weird little school who are still here? The ones who were going to go to a bigger campus to play CIF sports who are still here representing us in our intramural charter school league? Did they give up or give in? Or did they find something a little special at this weird little school? And the one s who never felt like they really had a choice? Have they found something that made it worth the weirdness in the end? What worked for them and brings them pride?

I look forward to asking them. And I look forward to writing about it as I work to unpack all they taught me.