India Amos says being a teacher was “the most rewarding career” she’d ever had, and from her first day on the job, she fell in love with the students.
However, she hadn’t been in the profession long when she found that school hours were just the beginning of her work. Grading and prep consumed her personal time, to the point that the rest of her life began to fall apart. In a Medium post, she writes, “I barely had enough energy to clean my house, work out or go to the grocery store—let alone do something fun.”
And so she, like many others, decided to quit—or transition—to a new career. She began working a 9-to-5 as a corporate marketer, but to her surprise, within a year she yearned to return to the classroom.
Teachers are burning out and quitting. Where are they going?
The national teacher shortage is getting no shortage of attention. Many educators are leaving the profession, citing burnout, poor administrative support, worsening student behavior, the negative impact of technology in the classroom, brutal workloads, and more.
Turnover in teaching has been a problem for decades, but The Learning Policy Institute reports that things are about 27% worse than in the 1990s. Teachers leaving the profession altogether have “increased by more than 50%.”
What gets discussed far less is what teachers do when they leave the classroom. There’s not one clear answer, of course. Many turn to the corporate world, like Amos, with promises of more predictable hours and higher pay.
Others go back to school to pursue entirely new fields. Brookings Institution pegs legal work, medical professionals, higher education, and even hourly work like cashiering and customer service as top destinations.
What’s fascinating is that, like Amos, some of these teachers are choosing to return to the classroom after some time. And most of them cite the same reasons.
About 20% of transitioned teachers come back and here’s why
Most educators who leave the classroom do not return, whether they find success in their second career, choose to stay at home, or retire.
But a decent-sized chunk of them find themselves pulled back to education.
As for Amos, she wrote in a viral Business Insider essay that the corporate world wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. And while the pay may have been better, she found herself missing all the things that initially inspired her to pursue teaching.
For starters, the marketing job didn’t give her nearly as much creative freedom as teaching did. While teachers are guided by strict curricula, they still have plenty of leeway in how they present lessons. Coming up with engaging ways to help students learn was taxing on Amos’ free time, but when she lost it, she realized it was a creative outlet she relied on.
The corporate job also forced her to sit at a desk most of the day. While it was a nice change of pace for a while, she missed the active work environment—being on her feet, moving around the school, and moving more often.
More importantly, she missed the human connection with students and a greater sense of purpose, which showed her that office life wasn’t for her. After a year in corporate marketing, she left and returned to the classroom.
Teachers on social media echo the sentiment
In a thread on Reddit, users shared their stories about leaving education and returning years later:
“I left for about 4 years. Got an office job as a data analyst, half the work, twice the pay, was constantly bored. I’ve been back in education for about ten years now. … I sometimes wonder if it was the best choice. But I’m having fun, our needs are met, and I feel like I’m doing something good.”
“I thought I was done. I had sworn I’d never go back,” one user wrote. “I realized that I actually missed it a little. I had to remind myself why I chose to become a teacher in the first place. I had to remember the students that came back to visit me to tell me they appreciated the advice I had given them or the letter of recommendation I’d written for them.”
“I took a year off. Got a office cubical farm, non-profit job. Sat and stared at my computer for 8 hours. Email job at best. Had two days in the office requirement and all we did was have meetings. … BORING. Also, adults who acted like petulant children. Bosses who ignored it. Give me the chaos and unpredictably of a classroom anytime. I’ll take teens over adults as my ‘coworkers’. Also, if you value autonomy at all, stay a teacher.”
It’s the kids, the colleagues, and the sense of everyday adventure that draws people to teaching in the first place. Those same ideas often pull them back once they’ve left.
Of course, teachers loving their students and the active, creative nature of their jobs don’t solve today’s education problems. In fact, many teachers who’ve returned to the profession successfully say they only found a way to make it work by changing schools or districts.
They need healthier budgets so they don’t have to pay for supplies out of pocket, protected planning time so they’re not burned out from lesson planning at 10 p.m., and administrative support that has their back.
But it’s nice to know, amidst the deluge of negative news and murmurs of the teaching crisis, that these teachers really are passionate about the future of our kids, so much so that even all the drawbacks sometimes can’t keep them from coming back to give it another try.
