Why I Left Teaching (And Why I Never Really Stopped)

I thought I'd be a teacher forever.

I loved it. I always dreamed of changing lives and doing worthy work, and that is why I went into education.

So when somebody asks me why I left teaching, I never have a one-sentence answer. The honest version doesn't start with burnout. It starts with a girl who got talked into a career she swore she didn't want, fell hard for it, and then found out she could do that same work somewhere else.

Leaving the classroom and leaving teaching turned out to be two completely different things.

Why I Left Teaching — It Was Never About Loving It Less

My Ag teacher signed me up for a Teach Ag workshop at State FFA convention, and I told him there was no way I was doing it. He was right and I was wrong, which is pretty much always how it goes with Ag teachers!

I was so scared my first day, I had pretty much zero confidence in my abilities. And to be honest, I hated it at first. Then somewhere in my third year I finally nailed the ropes, it just clicked!

I started a program of my own. I brought another one back to life. Fair week one summer was fifty-four hours in four days with a food stand to run on top of it, and I'd do it again tomorrow, for the hugs and the excited stories and the relationships I built with those families!

Long days.

Late nights.

A summer that was never actually a "real summer".

Then I landed the DREAM job I'd wanted since I was a sophomore in high school, assistant supervisor of Ag education and FFA for North Dakota. One fall I visited eighteen new teachers and covered almost the whole state, which sounds impressive until you hear I came home to my first full week in my own house in over a month!

I was thankful God placed me in that role.

You Get Paid for Your Years, Not Your Effort

Here's the part I could never get around.

You don't get a raise for being good at it, you get one for being there longer. I was one of the first in most mornings and one of the last out most nights, and I made significantly less than people who gave it half of what I gave it, because they had more years clocked.

Not for the hours.

Not for the extra program.

Not for a class that doubled in size.

Our raises didn't keep up with inflation, and a fixed salary feels safe right up until your goals get bigger than your budget. That is when I stopped wanting security and started wanting options.

I wasn't unhappy. I was capped.

The Part That Actually Wore Me Down

It was never the kids, I want to say that plainly, because I know what a title like this sounds like.

I dreaded Sunday nights, I definitely got the Sunday scaries...

I hated asking permission to take time off.

I hated that my schedule and my husband's never lined up.

I always felt like his job was more flexible than mine, so he took the kids to appointments on his own, and my life belonged to a calendar somebody else controlled. The anxiety would start before the school year did, every single break, while I was supposedly resting (I was not resting, I was prepping and planning!).

I loved the work, I was worn thin by the results from It.

So I Started Building Anyway

I didn't quit anything. I added something.

Which, given what my life already looked like, was a lot! I was BUSY. Teaching fifty and sixty hour weeks, working on my Master's, pregnant AND chasing a toddler around the farm 😵‍💫. And I said yes to building something on the side, hoping for a few hundred extra dollars and maybe the chance to travel more (I love to travel, my husband is a homebody!).

It was slow and it was quiet, and it added up anyway. It got built in:

The couch.

My bed.

The car.

Fifteen minutes on a lunch break.

A few years in I went looking again, and I didn't say yes to the first thing that came along. I worked through around ten companies before I partnered with Bravenly, because I wasn't putting my name on something that didn't line up with what I already believed.

Six years in, it stopped being the thing I shoved into my free time and became the only job I had.

The Day I Didn't Go Back

When I finally resigned, it wasn't triumphant, it was bittersweet. I'd spent ten years being an "Aggie," the degree, then teaching, then the state job, and handing it back felt like handing back a piece of who I was (there truly were not words for it).

Was it scary to walk away from a guaranteed salary? Heck yes! It was a dang good salary.

It felt less like quitting and more like a shift in calling.

Then September came. The morning that was supposed to be my first day back after maternity leave, I was home instead. No 7:30 to 4:30. I was in charge of my own schedule!

That was when it got real.

I'm forever grateful Bravenly gave our family more choices and more options, because that scary yes is the reason any of this works.

A Final Thought

You don't have to stay where you are.

And it is completely okay to love what you do and still want something more out of it! Those two things have never once cancelled each other out, no matter how it feels on a Sunday night.

Outgrowing something you love is not the same as being ungrateful for it. It just means you got honest before you got comfortable.

I started as a teacher, and honestly, I still am. The only thing that changed is who is in the room. The part I loved most is the part I still get to do every day, which is watch somebody learn something and start believing in themselves.

This has been the most rewarding work I have done yet, and I would not trade a single year of the road that got me here. What about you? Is there something you love doing but Isn't giving you the freedom or financial stability that you dream of?

Love,

Breanna