Building Teacher Confidence

My friends with more humdrum jobs used to come to me to hear crazy stories from my life as a public high school teacher. After all, I saw it all in the classroom: love, despair, abuse, neglect, outrage, hunger, mental illness, death, sex, poverty, entitlement, race relations, brilliance, violence, and so on. And I was happy to share. As a natural storyteller and performer, I used to be proud I could give my friends some good laughs. I, too, would marvel at the unbelievable moments I witnessed each day.

The truth is, there can be a perverse delight in sharing and hearing painful experiences. That’s OK; after all, comedy is made of this: the honest, the unexpected, the vulnerable. And while I believe it’s possible to find the extraordinary almost anywhere, teaching was a wild endeavor every day.

As time passed, I grew increasingly weary and depressed. I eventually decided I did not want to be the “go-to” person for my friends who wanted to be wowed with stories. The cost of living through these experiences was starting to take a physical and emotional toll on me. Instead, I wanted to create a positive and energetic life that did not involve a recovery period of one week for every day I made it through. As cliched as it sounds, I wanted to "thrive," not just "survive."

I decided to leave classroom teaching.

But what about your purpose? people asked. What about the children? The children will be fine, I answered. They were fine before me and they will be fine after me. As for my purpose, well, when I was younger I used to believe I was “special” and there was some pre-ordained purpose that had already been set out for me. I just needed to find it! The problem with that approach is that it put the control outside of me. Someone else had decided things for me (a higher being? destiny? my parents?). I was just flailing about trying to get it “right.”

Now I believe that purpose is malleable. In fact, I believe that whatever your purpose is now doesn’t have to be your purpose forever (or even next week!). I get to decide my purpose at any moment for me. You get to decide your purpose at any moment for you. Purpose can be professional or personal. Heck, maybe you can get by fine without having a “purpose” at all. Some of the most content people I know are not bogged down by these kinds of questions.

What’s harder than purpose, I’ve discovered, is mindset. How do we think about ourselves and our abilities? What kind of thought patterns do we have? What kind of messages do we give ourselves? How do we take care of ourselves? How do we deal with failure and rejection? How do we put ourselves out in the world? These are important questions to consider at any time in one’s life, and especially during a life change like transitioning out of the classroom, a decision that can evoke feelings of guilt, shame, doubt, and fear.

It's understandable why we might lack the confidence to think we can be successful outside of teaching: the insular nature of the classroom can make us feel alone and lonely; negative feedback or bullying from students or admin or parents can make us feel bad; lack of professional support can make us feel uncertain; outdated school software can make us feel out of touch; an excessive workload and standardized testing pressures can make us feel tired and soul-less. And so on. Being an educator today can feel impossible, and, in fact, expectations for teachers are unrealistic.

However: we must not lose faith in our ability to succeed professionally outside of the classroom. We must not give up on ourselves and our ability to learn new skills. As former teachers, we will always be master students, capable of figuring things out. There are multiple, possible, positive outcomes. Just start by finding one of them.