Why I quit my job as a teacher
I summarize 12 years of experience and why I decided to go my own path with entrepreneurship. This article can help you in your own journey in finding purpose in your life.
Here are a list of reasons that made me quit my job as a high school teacher:
Working and stressing too much for various reasons
Clear hints of replaceability
Lack of ownership in what i produce
Career stagnation
Wanting to test new ideas
Yearning for more creative pursuits
Reclaiming career self-worth
Designing the life I want and living more purposeful
Clarification: As of now, I am on a sabbatical leave from my job as a teacher at a high school. My goal is to grow my company and hopefully have the financial means to support myself and my family. My goal is to not come back to my workplace.
Working and stressing too much
I never had any issue with working a lot. When I find work interesting, valuable for me and my students, I have no problem working long hours. The problem is when you work in a group with other teachers, where the input from you is way too much compared to others. In one sense, it is clear that I have a hard time dealing with the unfairness.
In my experience, these are some specific situations I have had and how to deal with it. A lot of these problems boils down to group dynamics and knowledge gaps between teachers:
The teacher that knows more, is the one that designs and does most of the work
Situation 1: I have been in groups where the teachers are more novice and fresh out of a teacher-education. I have to work together with the teachers and come up with teaching material that the teachers feel comfortable teaching. Which means the material, in my experience cannot be to technical. The teachers that I have worked with, all had engineering backgrounds, but have not been actively developing technology for a long time. This group setting is not really a problem when it comes to working a lot, as long as we can complement each other. For example, if I do the more technical parts of the development, the other teachers can do the planning and the logistical parts with arranging material and other stuff. In my opinion, as long as you agree on who does what, this situation is not that bad because everyone contributes in one or another way.
In my experience, the one that knows the most and has the most experience are the one that knows how good technical content can be designed.
Situation 2: When I was working in another group with a “more“ experienced teacher, I had higher standard of what materials should be produced for the students. I wanted material that I wrote and have control over, and know how to teach the students. The other teacher had lower standard when it comes to materials, using existing tutorials and code written by others. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what the material is about and have gone through the guide yourself. Just so you know what you talk about to the students. In my experience, some teachers do not have the time for that, and the classes becomes too improvised. I myself, have been in that situation because of lack of time, but I always try to avoid these situations by taking my time to learn and figure things out in beforehand.
One anecdote that I will never forget was when I wrote a text whose purpose was to work like a theoretical document for the students. The other teacher thought it was a good idea. Of course it was a good idea, I am doing the work and he is not. So the document got produced, I shared it with my students and had a lecture about it. The document contained formulas that you have to show and explain to the students. My students had no problem with the contents of the document and liked the lecture. But in the other class, the students did not understand the document. It turned out that the teacher just handed the material to the students without explaining the contents in a clear way. I know that because when the other class met their mentor (assigned teacher that is responsible for leading the students and dealing with class-specific problems). The class complained about not understanding what was taught by the other teacher and because I wrote the document I was called into the class to explain the contents. I explained to them that I had no problem teaching the material to my classes because I explained the contents in a pedagogical way.
The whole situation was quite absurd. I mean, it felt like I had to explain why they did not understand the material. The students was not very happy with how they where taught in the course. That was my conclusion from the meeting with them. In the end it does not matter because the teacher gave high grades, so the students were happy. If you have low standards and students are unhappy, just give them high grades and problem is solved.
In my experience, good communication = good lecture. The students may be able to follow what you are teaching.
Situation 3: This is the worst situation of them all. In this situation I got paired with a teacher, where I did like 98% of everything related to designing course material, exercises, projects, examination and grading instruction. Basically the whole course. The other teacher was basically freeloading on me. I think the problem is that even though the teacher is eligible for teaching the course, I do not think he/she knows how to do the subject practically anymore. You get that because when you know your subject, you will know when others don’t. Because you know what is good for the students and the other teacher not as much, I became the driving force in getting things done. When we agreed to that he/she should do some part it just did not get done. The excuse was lack of time. But some task was super-simple and I could have done it in thirty minutes max.
Deteriorating health
As a result of too much stress my health has deteriorated quite a bit. After a workday, all my energy is gone and there is not much left for family life. I just want to relax and not relate to people. The thing with a traditional teaching jobs in high school is that each class has 30+ students and we are responsible for teaching and tracking the progress of each individual student. It is not possible to keep track of all the students in the classroom.
Some students has special needs. They need more guidance, have a hard time getting started, dyslexia, autism, ADHD, ADD and so on. The list can get quite long if you get many students deviating from the norm. It becomes quite the challenge in the classroom when the groups are not homogeneous. Some students have to get extra time and need explanation for exam problems and so on. in one workday you will relate to so many people, that it drains your energy. If you are an introvert, this is the ultimate way to drain your energy.
Don’t take me wrong. I really like teaching. All the other stuff around teaching, that the teacher is supposed to do, are not that fun.
At my current job, where I have been working for seven years, I can feel that my health and energy levels are deteriorating as each year passes. This is one of the major reason for quitting.
Clear hints of replaceability: The value of my employment
During this school year of employment I got a promotion to a lead teacher and I was responsible of leading 4 other teachers in a project on improving the motivation and mindset of students. The promotion was temporary for one year because the position was a stand-in for another teacher that is on a sabbatical leave for studies. Half-way through the employment of the position, due to the uncertainty in whether the teacher of sabbatical leave will come back, my principal wanted me to continue the work in leading the other teachers for free. My principal wanted me to agree to working in the project without the salary supplement that the lead teacher position entailed. If the teacher on sabbatical lead do not come back I can continue the lead teacher position for another year. Promising this is in my opinion very risky. If the teacher comes back I have to work for free, doing similar work as other lead teachers, without the salary supplement. That is rather stupid. I refused and the principal basically hinted on that my work is not unique and other teachers can take the role of lead teacher and do the project that I was leading at the time.
My principal sent very clear signals that I am replaceable. This was the last straw for me. Because he/she is sending very clear signal on the value of my employment. I am totally replaceable with someone else. Is this the thank you, you get after working seven years?
I started thinking of ways to leave my job and still make it. As of now I have savings that will last for half a year, so I have not really solved the financial part. During this time I plan to design a career around the life I want to live.
Lack of ownership
I talked to the local union representative at my school and they said that all things produced by me at work, are owned by the school. With that in mind it became more clear to me that I should find ways to own my stuff.
One way is to leave my position and take the entrepreneurial path, where all that I produce is owned by me.
During this last year of employment I had serious reflections and contemplation on what kind of life I want to live. Basically I’d like to live a more free and creative lifestyle. I really value craftmanship and would like to create something from scratch.
My reflections and contemplations along with my experience in teaching and guiding students for years have given me a set of skills that I can leverage in order to provide value for a larger mass.
Identifying my core values as a creator
During my lead teacher position and working in my motivation and mindset project, I did some serious reflection on what I value and want to output in this life. It boils down to some core values:
These core values are valuable for me because without the Basics category you cannot really experience anything clearly and as it is. With my background in meditation training, these abilities are important in order to perceive reality as it is and are useful in proper decision-making and works as a stress-reliever.
The Core category values learning from fundamental knowledge that are building blocks for more sophisticated and complex things.
The Creating level uses the core abilities in order to create more complex things and I value creation with integrity and craftmanship. These abilities leads to value creation for yourself.
In the top you provide value to others and help other people, which in turn can help others and so on. If you want to read more about how to identify you own core values, you can read this article here.
When I identified these core values, along with the clear hint of replaceability, lack of ownership for your own work and a bunch of ideas that I wanted to test out, I got more interested in taking the step towards entrepreneurship and realize my own dreams in my own terms.
Life is way too short to live with regrets
Since I published my first digital course book (the only one in the course) and made some money from it (gross revenue: Six figures in three years), I felt that it is possible to make money online, as long as you can reach potential buyers with a valuable product. This book selling business have been a side hustle that I had along with my teaching job. I just did not have the energy nor time to develop and expand it to something bigger that I can live off.
On and off during my employment from 2022 - 2026, I have been thinking of testing several ideas that would be interesting in testing:
I have always dreamed of creating a JRPG: An epic martial arts journey to get strong and develop mentally as an martial artist.
Doing more artistic work: Creating digital art pieces with programming. Like procedurally generated art.
Provide value to others in ways so they can lead their own life: Help people find purpose in their life.
Deepening my spiritual practice: Exploring the truth of reality.
Writing books/digital content on technical subjects, and share it with others.
In other words, I value a more explorative and creative lifestyle. I you want to know more about my interests and how to find your own purpose in life you can learn my transformation framework for free here (limited time). It is my personal website. Just log in to the resource page.
Life is really short if you reflect on it. When you turn thirty, depending on your health, you might have lived half your life. If you want to set time in perspective I have created a tool that visualizes your life-span. Click here to test it out.
Designing and living a purposeful life
As I said before, life is too short to “wing it”. Finding what you value that stems from your core values, will help you design a more purposeful life. The rest is about executing consistently and managing your energy output so you last long enough to see the fruits of your efforts.
By reflecting and contemplating what you value, you can start designing the life you want and remove all the unnecessary noise that you do not need. If you want to learn how to get all the abilities in order to life a more purposeful life:
Focus: So you can learn and deepen your understanding in various subjects
Awareness: To actually see things as it is and make proper decisions for you life
Prioritize the right knowledge: So you can create value for yourself and others
Identify your core values: So you can find your purpose in life
Have the right mindset: Growth mindset. There is only learning and working towards improvement
Reflecting, contemplating and evaluation of your progress: So you move towards your goals
Create value for yourself and share it to others
You should take the chance and read my digital book that is free for now by going to my personal website and log in to the resource page.
Let’s keep in touch and create a community
I’d like to form a community of like-minded individuals. You know what I value in my life. If you are interested in finding your values, or have similar ones, let’s get connected and learn from each other!
You can reach me in several ways:
Subscribe to my Substack newsletter. It is free!
Contact me through my personal website
Join the chat for this publication
Follow me on substack
Let me know what your thoughts are and what you would like to know more about.
Kind regards,
Lin
