Why I Left My Career as a Teacher

Teachers leave the classroom for a variety of reasons, and sometimes it has nothing to do with teaching. This is the story of why I left my career as a teacher.

My students were too mature to dress up as animals or fairytale characters, but they were too immature for most high-school shows. It was like looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack. 

Finally, I decided that I should just write my own show. It would probably take less time than reading through plays anyway, and I could write it just the way I wanted. So that is what I did.

Writing comes naturally to me, so over the summer I wrote a script and put together audition materials. In the fall, 60 students performed my play to an audience of hundreds of people. 

The play was a hit (for an 8th-grade play anyway). 

It went over really well in our community. Both the students and their parents liked it, and my admin was thrilled that my original play was well-suited to my 8th-grade students. (It was also really funny, which didn’t hurt either.) A few months later, I published that play.

Why I left my career as a teacher: A change of purpose and passion

The crazy thing about that play is that writing it made me feel more like myself than I had in a long time. It gave me a purpose that, although inspired by my students, was really about a completely different aspect of my craft, and that new purpose turned into a passion project. It was something I did for me.

I think many teachers can relate to losing themselves in their work. Many of us work in the classroom during the day, take grading home with us at night, and often do extra-curricular work either because we love it or because we need the extra income. I loved the theatre stuff at the time, so I fell in line with the former, but my days were filled with school work and left little time for other pursuits.

The Beginning of the End

Unfortunately, the performance of my first play was both the highlight of my career as a teacher and the beginning of the end of my time in the classroom as well. It is actually one of the main reasons why I left my career as a teacher. Don’t worry. I wasn’t let go or anything, but the change was in me. 

I realized how much fun it was to write a play poolside on vacation. It was exciting to think that a play I wrote (if published) could make me passive income for the rest of my life. All of a sudden I started to dream about what life could be like if I had more time to write.

Shortly after writing that play, I started listening to podcasts about writing. It started with creative writing, and then publishing, and then online business, and then freelancing. I was on the slippery slope that is my phone’s podcast app. 

That spring, my play was published, and I began on another and another. In the next year, two of my plays were produced at my school, and again, they were incredibly well-received. I started to consider doing playwriting camps, so I listened to different business podcasts and started developing that idea. 

I kept thinking that I would love to leave the classroom to pursue writing full-time, but I needed money to do it. With three kids under 3 in daycare, we had not been able to save up much of a nest egg, and we couldn’t afford for me to stay home, so I started looking for other employment.

My journey to online business

The hard thing about considering jobs outside the teaching profession is that the teaching profession offers a lot of positives. The pension is great, the summers off give a much needed mental break every year, and the hours are very conducive to having kids. All of those pieces mattered to me, but still, I wasn’t excited about it anymore. 

That was never more obvious than the day my husband made a startling observation.

He told me that I seemed unhappy. 

This floored me. I had always lived a pretty stress-free life, and I was pretty good at going with the flow, but he was right, I was feeling pretty bummed and stuck.

He was right. I was definitely unhappy, uncertain, and generally handcuffed to the profession I had chosen as an 18-year-old.

Why I left my career as a teacher: My big WHY!

Teaching offers whole summers off and long breaks around the holidays and in the spring, but it does not offer any freedom. Teachers don’t choose their breaks. They can rarely take a vacation in the middle of the school year. They frequently go to work sick because it is more work to prepare to be gone than to actually be gone. 

In my last year of teaching, I had a 30-minute lunch break (counting passing periods, so it was closer to 22 minutes), and it was almost impossible to go to the bathroom more than once during the school day.

In the entrepreneurial world, everyone talks about their “why.” What is the one thing that will continue to motivate you even after the initial excitement wears off? Mine was freedom.

Why I left my career as a teacher: My list?

I actually wrote a list on my phone with what I wanted most from my career. You can read the full list here, but here are a few highlights.

I want to

• take my kids to school and pick them up.
• take at least two trips a year with my husband.
• have control over my own potential…that one was HUGE for me.

Either do something about it or stop complaining

Be happy teaching or be done teaching…that is the decision I needed to make.

At this point, I had been in the classroom right around 10 years. After a decade in the classroom, I was teaching the most fun theatre elective you can teach, but…

Still, I was unhappy with teaching. I knew that I could not continue in the education field anymore because if this wasn’t the job that was going to make me happy, then there wasn’t one in public education that would. That is when I got serious about leaving.

I needed to supplement my income

Teacher contracts are typically a year-long, and I had already signed my contract for the following year, so I had one more year no matter what.

On my way down the podcast rabbit hole, I stumbled onto the idea of freelancing as a virtual assistant. I had heard about this from several podcasters, but I finally landed on a woman from the midwest who focused specifically on teaching mothers about becoming virtual assistants, so I subscribed to her podcast, and I listened regularly. 

From teacher to virtual assistant

If you don’t know what a virtual assistant is, and you are curious about it, I have created a 5-post series answering the question: What is a virtual assistant and why is it a great side job for teachers?

As it turns out, I already knew a lot about what she was talking about because I more or less had a podcast-learning degree in online business at this point.

I’m a forward thinker. I knew that freelancing as a VA wasn’t going to be my end-game, even then. However, I could freelance on the side while still teaching. So virtual assisting was a great option. Freelancing, to put it simply, was my means to an end, so in June of 2019, I enrolled in a virtual assistant course. 

After only 2 months as a virtual assistant, I made more money than I ever thought I would. Over a year later, I am talking to other teachers about becoming virtual assistants to supplement their income.

I believe virtual assisting and freelancing is the best side job for teachers who want to stay in the classroom, and the best first step of an exit strategy for teachers who want to pursue other interests.

If you don’t know what a virtual assistant is, and you want to know more, Read this series of posts. These posts are for teachers who are interested in virtual assisting. The series starts here!

Want some help getting started?

In only a couple of months as a virtual assistant, I was earning over $3000 per month freelancing on the side while still teaching full-time. Want to find out what I was doing to make that much money?

So that is my story. That is why I left my career as a teacher.