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I know the title is a heavy one, but it’s a thought I’ve had since I started in this profession.

I am in an abusive relationship with teaching.

I know this isn’t everyone’s story. I see teachers all over Instagram discussing the love and dedication they have for their schools. Their leadership is great. Their kids are great. Everything is just great.

Then, I look around my school and think “I need to go home” or “I don’t need this.” But for some reason, every year since 2014, I’ve gotten out of my bed and prayed for a better day, only to be met with chaotic school environments, disrespectful administration and colleagues, and children who are doing the best they can with what they’ve got.

But somewhere, deep, deeeeeep down inside of me says, “Stay.” Something in me keeps saying, “Fight for this.” In the moments I’ve come home crying about the chaos at my school and the verbal and occasional physical abuse I’ve experienced, my mouth will say, “I Quit” as my heart says, “Stay.”

Then one day, it dawned on me. I’m in an abusive relationship. Am I the only one who feels this way?

I don’t use the word abuse lightly or use it to minimize or take away from the verbal and physical abuse that women and men experience every day in other relationships. I’m discussing this from a different point of view with similar traits involved.

My first two years of teaching were through the Teach for America program. Although they offer many avenues of support for their teachers, nothing can prepare you for what you experience in the classroom. I knew a few teachers who quit within the first few months, were harassed by their administration or had to take some form of anxiety medication to cope. But for some reason, THEY KEPT GOING BACK.

Our repeated teacher slogan is “It’s all about the kids.” This slogan we hold near and dear to our hearts can be heartbreaking. On the one hand, we know our kids need us. Outside of those school doors, the world is waiting to eat them alive. On the other hand, we take on this burden of saving our students while leaving ourselves hanging high and dry with nothing left at the end of a school day. The students, our colleagues, our administration, and our district use us up until there’s nothing left. We cry, we march, we go on strike, demanding change, but we all know at the end of the day, we’re going back because “It’s all about the kids.”

What is it inside of us that keeps us in places that don’t deserve us? What guilt continues to arise in us when we make the decision to leave one minute, and then change our minds the next? Is it the teacher shortages? Is it the “teacher calling” that people love to talk about? Is it a guilt where we feel we haven’t done enough or as much as the other teachers we see on social media or at professional developments?

[bctt tweet=”“If we won $50 million dollars today, would you quit your job today?” username=””]

My husband always asks me this question when we start talking about leaving the profession. “If we won $50 million dollars today, would you quit your job today?” My answer has always been “No.” I know it sounds crazy, but something inside of me just can’t let go. Something in me feels the need to finish. Something in me doesn’t want to let the kids down, but I always think about what a colleague said to me when I first started teaching. I was feeling down. I was struggling to continue. She saw how much I was stressing myself out. She saw the burden I carried…and with six words, she helped to lighten the load:

You have to put yourself first. This train will keep moving with or without you. Whether you show up or not, it will keep moving. If you quit today, it would keep moving. If you died today, it would keep moving. The kids will still behave the same. The administration will still act the same. The district will still create unrealistic expectations for teachers and students. This train will keep moving.

Your students need you, but they need you happy, healthy, and whole. What good are you to them if you are broken internally? What good are you to ANYONE if you are broken internally?

Stop carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Stop giving more than what you have. Stop sacrificing yourself to make the world happy, ending up with nothing for yourself and your family at the end of the day.

In this moment, I want you to answer a question. Don’t take too long to answer it. Respond with the FIRST answer that comes to your mind. Once you have the answer, I challenge you to do something with it. I don’t know what options you have available to you at this time as an educator, but I do want you to know that you can always do something about your life and its current state. Whether it’s moving to another city, teaching at another school or in another county, changing grade levels, etc. You CAN do something about it, but I need you to commit to doing something about it before you read the question.

Ready?

Are you in an abusive relationship with teaching?

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With a deep commitment and passion for all things youth, Allyson began her teaching journey in 2014....

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24 Comments

  1. I’m done. Pulled out of the classroom in January. Retiring at the end of the school year in May.
    What a relief!

  2. No, I am not. I have been teaching middle school for 17 years and in the profession for 30. I’m staying around a bit longer.

  3. Do you feel like you are in an abusive relationship with teaching since you went abroad? What do you look for in places when seeking change.

    1. Unfortunately, yes. It’s continued here. My first year here was better because of my administration, but the kids were still not the best. This year is worse. What I did was look into districts that are on the outside of inner city schools. I feel a small guilt because I know inner city kids need teachers that really care, but honestly I needed a little break. It may be better and it may not.

  4. I keep going to teaching. I love it, I love my kids, and many of them love me and say so. I love helping them, and showing them what to do, how to do better.

    But every time, maybe it’s because I’m unconventional, maybe it’s because my classrooms can be noisy — every time I’m in a classroom, my admins find a reason to say I’m not good enough. I know in the beginning, I really needed to improve. I know I have. But still, it’s never been enough. Now at a charter, I was told they were going to find someone to replace me “who has more experience in middle school”. I have 12, now almost 13 years experience with high school, and those classes have been very successful. I have one middle school group.

    My ex husband used to always tell me what I did wasn’t good enough, and I didn’t realize it was abusive until afterward. Maybe you’re right, but without experience in other fields, without money to go back to school again, what can I do?

    1. How are you with curriculum? Had you tried becoming a trainer within the district? Teaching online is also an option, and from what I’ve heard, can pay well if you find the right program. I’m so sorry that this is happening to you. Administration can be even more abusive.

  5. 30 years in and I still love what I do…I do make a difference every day, in the life of a child or in my own life..I make a difference! Not done yet….

  6. Yes – well I was, a change in school leadership led to a mentally abusive person in charge often having deliberate 1-1 meetings and never talking to teams as a whole. His way of hiding his inept ability to lead. So, after much discussion I moved schools (much to his delight) but so did 10 other staff members and a large number of students moved to a different school also. His treatment of staff is unreal! I know work in a lower decile school with kids in real poverty and like everyone else trying to do my best and help kids – but I am now more aware of the huge impact and toll poor leadership can have on a teaching staff.

  7. I have said exactly this. It’s like an abusive relationship and I am literally traumatized by it.

  8. I am definately NOT in an abusive relationship with teaching. I own my own preschool and I work hard to ensure each student gets the supports they need, staff are appreciated and heard, and I wake up every morning ready to take on whatever the new day holds (whether that is a struggling child or the laughter that young children bring with their comments or hugs). I love my proffession and wouldn’t change that if I won a trillion dollars.

    1. Omgeee! Congratulations. I used to loooooove teaching my first three years! I literally used to stop before entering halls or common areas to compose myself so people didn’t think I was too happy. I was silly happy. I was in a growth environment. We were all on mission to help bring these kids new experiences and generate happy, confident and productive citizens.

  9. Secondary (11-19 y o) science teacher in UK for 36 years. I have worked in a significant number of schools inner-city(mostly), semi-rural and rural. Many of the issues are the same but the one that really ‘hit the nail on the head’ was the abusive / weak leader. Here this leader would manage staff by mountains of unnecessary paperwork (I was Head of Faculty). When preparing for our second monitoring inspection in six months, they found senior management inadequate on the first visit, he had his leadership team write a policy for the writing of policies and all department documentation had to fit this framework. The workload was soul destroying. I like pressure but I couldn’t work under that amount of stress.

    Unfortunately I used to fight him. My mental health was the loser.

    In another nearby school with many similar needs and demographics I worked for Head who used to come and sit at the back of the lesson and many a time join in the activity if it were Q & A or Assessment for Learning deliberately getting things wrong sometimes, for children to then correct him was a powerful learning tool.

  10. I was and I have made the decision to leave this year. A weight has been lifted. I will continue to work with children in another setting.

  11. I had to leave 2 positions in the past 2 years. Private schools where parents had a say in what levels their child should be in, students moving forward whether they passed or not, many students with learning and behavioral issues, and teachers expected to manage it all, with extreme criticism from management and a very unmanageable work load..

  12. Wow! What an honest article. My experience, thoughts and feelings mirrored yours when I was a teacher. At some point, I just started to see some things that bothered me–things I couldn’t do anything about.
    1. my actual power to change systematic problems.As long as I was working working working like a Hebrew slave, I would never have the time or energy to invest in systematic change.
    2. non-classroom district level administrators. They got paid wayyy more money than I did to make decisions that counterproductive and would take the defense mode when teachers gave feedback about them. For me, their posture read “I don’t care about kids; I care about getting this $$.” I’m doing all the footwork knowing stuff doesn’t make sense and that yall don’t care and are getting paid more? I felt like a sucka. A big sucka.
    3. Realizing that I can’t be that amazing teacher that my scores, presentations and student work made people think I was. I’m not an amazing teacher. I was a struggling teacher. I was STRUGGLING everyday. I was being kicked out of the building by the maintenance workers regularly. I was buying kids shoes, trying to be supportive to kids dealing with parent abductions, abuse and neglect, crafting impressive lesson plans that only suited the needs of the front office, praying for the flu so I could take a few days off, presenting lessons with recurring UTIs hoping I didn’t have an accident, constantly thinking of stuff to add to my lesson or classroom procedures to ensure that anyone observing me could check them darn boxes off…I was teaching other teachers’ students and trying to build a relationship with them so they didn’t think they were the pieces of trash their home environment told them they were. I was asking my own students for forgiveness for my short tone or feeling guilty about my classroom not looking as nice or being as fun as I assumed the other teachers’ rooms were. I was a hot mess!
    I quit…I mean retired because I’m not set up for that. I enjoy teaching. I love teaching and learning. I love working with those children. I love planning lessons. (Yeah, even those loooong lesson plans that used templates that must have been designed for preK teachers.) I love the science of teaching. The cause and effect. The creativity. The innovation. The spark!
    Now that I’m out, I am looking for ways to help teachers. Way to go, Educator’s Room! Keeping it 100 in the 2020. 🙂

    1. I’m exactly where you were but I can’t stop cause I need the money. I’ve tried for years to get another job but I’d need to take a huge pay cut that I’m not sure I could weather. I’m just stuck.

  13. Thank you for this article. I am in an abusive relationship with my school. Mental abuse from students and administrators, physical abuse from students where nothing is done about it. I’ve had students (over 5 feet tall athletic students) push me and throw furniture and my school refuses to do anything but talk to them. If I’m lucky they will remove them from class for about 45 minutes. I had a mentor for my first year who knew nothing about my subject or how it’s taught (general elementary music) and would literally make up something negative to say after an observation. She would constantly threaten to give me a negative evaluation and never gilave me tools to improve, then yelled at me for about 30 minutes when I asked her to clarify what she wants me to do. Not to mention my district will sue me for $3000 if I terminate me contract early.

    Thank you for this. Per my Union’s advice, I have to document everything that happens to me for my own protection, just like an abuse victim would. I am never good enough and always at fault.

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