Leaving. Again.

Four years ago I quit teaching.  I spent two years away, feeling strange every time the school year started without me.  Strange, but not bad.  Then, life happened, and I dove back in.  A new school – very different than the last.  For a year I was really happy.  It was hard, but it was great. That’s what I thought, but it didn’t take more than a few weeks into the second year before the uneasiness set it.  Five weeks in and I was desperately job searching.  In retrospect, it seems so odd.  I was so sure that first year back that I would stay, and then SO sure within weeks of starting the next year that I would never return.

So I’m leaving teaching. Again. It’s hard to give up something you’ve always wanted.  I think I’m a pretty decent teacher.  I LOVE the kids.  I love the interactions with them and the relationships I build with them.  I love watching all those light bulb moments.  I love seeing them learn to think in new ways.  I do not love the entitled parents.  I do not love the way administration bows down to those entitled parents.  I do not love the way society demands accountability and ties my evaluation to that via testing, and then opts out their child from that testing and completely screws me over.  I do not like the direction education is going.

I have enough time for a whole new career, so I’m going to take a huge leap of faith and try something new.  Again.

This is a terrifying thing.