Why I Quit Teaching
Michael McLeod
Why I Quit Teaching
Teaching was the natural path for me, but the career isn’t designed to sustain those who cannot give so much for so little.
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Published in
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9 min read
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Mar 6, 2025
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This is the first of two essays on my journey out of my career as an English teacher. This part covers my relationship with the job itself. Part II will explore the complexities of teaching as a gay man.
Teachers like to tell themselves that education is a vocation, a calling that spoke out to them over all the other glitzy, broey, financially affirming career paths. They choose this low-paying, admin-overloaded path out of some inherent instinct to serve. The calling sustains them through the recurring avalanches of marking and emails, the insistent and sometimes fabulously unaware parents, the corporatized pull to produce results, the teen snark. Most teachers feel that they are doing something vital and that the work in the classroom, is a unique service. It’s pastoral. It’s ministerial.
For most of my career as a high school English teacher, I believed in the vocation. It sustained me too — until it didn’t. When the propulsion to serve and connect and uplift vanished, there wasn’t much left to keep me going. It was also a role that emerged from a time in my life when I was different. I’ll write in Part II about the role my identity and the politics…
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Posted Mar 14, 2025
This is the first of two essays on my journey out of my career as an English teacher. This part covers my relationship with the job itself. Part II will explor…
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