#1 – Why I’m blogging this

I haven’t taught in a classroom since May, 2011.  People still ask me why I quit and when I am going to go back.  I still miss teaching every day and I miss teaching and making music.  It’s still hard for me to talk about: my experiences, all the screwed up experiences, getting the ‘I can’t believe that’ look from other teachers and having to assure them I couldn’t make this up if I tried, nor would I want to.  Explaining that I was in the union and I tried to get help standing up for myself, how every union agreed I wasn’t in the wrong, and how every union ended up being worthless because the leaders weren’t willing to stand up to whoever was perpetrating the situation because they weren’t the victim themselves, how the union left me out in the cold to grieve actions on my own, to fight against unfair labor practices, to fight a RIF that was in clear violation of our contract, to fight slander at the hands of a colleague and my superintendent…

I wasn’t perfect.  I never learned how to play politics.  I didn’t always do or say the right thing 100% of the time.   What I did & said was always a reflection of what I felt was right for my students and my program.  When push came to shove, I was damn good at my job.  Unfortunately, when you are good at something, sometimes that puts a target on your back.  When you are passionate about something that you’re good at, it always puts a target on your back.

There is a lot of self-loathing in education, apparently.

I’m a big girl:  If I didn’t want to do the job anymore, I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t make things up to get a reaction.  It’s not that I didn’t want to do the job – it was everything else.  I had a really screwed up experience.  I’m still angry about it.

My hope is that by putting this down, right out there in the open, it will be cathartic and maybe I can just leave it here.  Maybe it will help someone else.  Maybe it will cause someone else to see it could be worse.  Maybe eventually, we’ll all know that it does get better.

The most broad and the most boiled-down reason I quit teaching is this:  After realizing I was caught up in and then successfully getting out of an abusive marriage, I wasn’t willing to spend another 30 years in a system that perpetuates, and in some cases promotes, emotional abuse.

Woah, I know.  Let that sink in.

I wasn’t willing to spend another 30 years in a system that perpetuates, and in some cases promotes, emotional abuse.

I realized that my profession had primed me to walk right into an abusive relationship.  Abuse for 2 years in the classroom, 3 years in the classroom and at home, another year in the classroom and getting out of the abusive relationship and getting RIF’ed all at the same time, followed by another 2 years of unhealthy working environments was enough.

This still-in-the-trenches teacher explained this so well, it still brings tears to my eyes.  Please read her excellent post about how public education is abusive to the people who are on the front lines, trying to make it a safe place for anyone.