To feel broken by teaching, and need to know how to get out?

[SachaStark]

Name changed for obvious reasons.

I haven't slept all night after coming to the realisation yesterday that I'm finished with teaching. My school is unsupportive in every way imaginable, so I can't ask a colleague for help with figuring out what to do (it would all be fed back along to SLT), so can I please ask here?

How do you leave secondary school teaching when you're not going into another teaching role? Could I leave before the end of the school year? At this point, I don't even care if I don't have another job lined up, I just can't bear the thought of work.

How's it going?

Hope the doctor was helpful, OP.

I wouldn’t be so hesitant and try and get a job at another school or supply teaching. If at the next school you feel the same then yes.
A friend of mine felt the same until she moved schools and she’s been there ever since

Hello, sorry for the delayed reply, thank you for the well wishes for the doctors.

Doctor was very kind and helpful. Based on what I told her (I told her everything) and a survey she had me fill out, she diagnosed me with severe depression, which shocked me enough to make me burst into tears on the spot. I have never considered myself to be a person who could suffer from depression, and it hadn't crossed my mind that this was anything more than work-related stress, so it really caught me off guard.

She has referred me to a counselling service, though there is a very long wait, and has prescribed me with low dosage tablets to help me stay asleep at night. She offered to sign me off, but I asked not to be, but she says all I need to do is phone her if I need to and she will sign me off then. I just feel at the moment that if I were to take time off work, it would make everything worse, so I'm not ready to do that yet.

Also, I'm going back to see her again after exactly a week to review and see if the tablets have taken effect.

I'm a NQT and have spent most of the day in tears.

And everyone tells me it doesn't get any easier

This is so similar to me over the last couple of weeks. I also went to gp with very similar issues and thoughts to you. I didn't ask to be signed off but gp made me realise my health was more important and school don't actually care. I finally agreed to let her sign me off and was very shocked she had signed me off for 8 weeks!

I will not be there for my 3 year 11 classes. I feel bad for this. But, it's making me ill. I've given them 9 years it's time teachers looked after themselves.

This thread really resonates with me as I am feeling similar. Can I PM you?

hesterton learning and development- delivering training

What is the God complex with some SLT?
Before I left my previous job I truly thought that I was a rubbish teacher after incessant bullying by SLT and no support for dealing with acknowledged difficult pupils.
FF 4 years-as my current job is working in the private sector and not 12 months a year,there are times I go back on supply.
Interestingly I was asked to supply at the school where I was forced out by SLT.
They have all gone.
One has retired (hurray) one has moved on to another school and the other was seconded to another local school where she ended up facing a tribunal and made to resign due to her bullying tactics.
The atmosphere at the school I returned to was completely different .
Take some time off OP and then re-assess.
There are options and life is too short to waste![wine

I left teaching 6 years ago and have never regretted my decision. I was on my knees with exhaustion due to sleepless nights with young children and depressed due to the stress of trying and failing to keep on top of the workload and managing the extreme behaviour unsupported.

Since then I have worked in supply, local council, retail and healthcare. None have paid me as much, but my work life balance is so much better and my family have my time and attention. I am happier.

It is not such a scary thing leaving, there are plenty of places willing to hire an educated person, they get more for their money. I wish you luck, life is too short to be miserable.

I did think very seriously about the signing off question, and I can admit that right now I am staying in work for the children (Year 11 and sixth form), and not in recognition of my own health. In my mind, if I can stay a little bit longer, I can get those groups into a much better position in the run up to the exams, and if I need to go then, I can go and feel much less guilty about it.

I have a secondary teacher friend and knew another primary teacher, both seemed to have crazy amounts of work to do, which obvs weren't paid.

I think both put in from 6am till 8/9pm plus time at weekends, so it's a professional that's more vocation wise, you need to have passion as not to burn out.

I really feel for teachers, I don't think parents presents really make up for the effort they put in. I don't think many parents get how bloomin' hard it is.

Yes you get decent holidays, what people don't see is you doing prep work for lessons during that time.

for all hard working professions

OP I want to hug you so hard right now. I've been where you are, same age range, same subject.

I had a horrid pregnancy with DC1 and was signed off for 6 weeks in my first trimester. I returned to no classroom, a timetable of problem classes other teachers had been dying to offload and 60 unmarked exam scripts in my in tray.

I struggled for 10-12 weeks and then, perhaps fortunately for me, my pregnancy issues got worse and my sympathic GP signed me off until the birth.

I never went back.

OP, I stashed a few month's wages then walked. Got some exam marking etc to tide me over and then calmly looked for another job without having the teaching stuff to do. I had the full support of DH. I also will say I was a science teacher with a Masters and PhD in my subject and I came to teaching from engineering, so I went back to that but in a different field.

I could not believe the joy I felt when I quit. I made the mistake of going from indie back to state due to a relocation and I really wish I hadn't. I'd probably still be teaching if I had stuck in indie, although I am very happy with my current job. I earn more than I did as a teacher (I was on UPS1 when I quit) and I am not allowed to take work home. Nobody treats me like shit, either.

I did some volunteer work ages ago, it was such an eye opener to how children behave nowadays.

I'm surprised they don't give you free hair dye with your monthly wages to hide the grey. Plus maybe a massage and facial.

It was rewarding don't get me wrong, but it was so much hard work. Especially since the school I was at seemed to have an awful SEN provision. It was totally shocking.

I feel like I'm lucky in that the kids are in no part a reason why I want to quit teaching. They are, without a doubt, the easiest and most enjoyable aspect of the job. But I understand that that is rare, and I work in a state school which has few real problems with behaviour. Even my most "difficult" class I look forward to teaching every week.

The doctor said I shouldn't be trying to make any career decisions whilst I am unwell, but I can say with confidence, and a great sense of relief, that whether I get a new job in a different school or not, I will NOT be in my current school in the new year in September. I am just not going to do that to myself.

Just read your whole thread Sacha. I was you a few years back. Once I had made up my mind to go, things felt easier, but I was still wobbly. However, I made it to the summer hols, and then six weeks later bumped into a colleague in the supermarket. His jaw was on his chest and apparently went into work the next week, telling everyone how amazingly well I looked - apparently leaving teaching had taken ten years off me!!

You sound like a lovely person and a great teacher. The kids and parents will lose out as you leave, but you will find something else and enjoy life so much more.

Thank you for your words of encouragement, FreshStart (how applicable your username is!). I am hopeful that leaving teaching will mean that I get my work/life balance back again.

My DH knows a woman who left teaching and started a cleaning business, cleaning local holiday apartments, and she messaged me this week to offer me a job working for her as a stop-gap between leaving teaching and finding something else, which is brilliant of her.

Don't hesitate to get signed off if you need to. You have to get well & having some breathing space can really help. It also means SLT Should Look at how to support you in coming back.

Some time out & a change of school to one with a better staff ethos may help. Consider independent sector as well. You could try some tutoring for a while perhaps? Have a look at Guardian jobs education section to get an idea of other ares where your experience might be valued?

OP, that's great. Do the cleaning! It'll be a nice brain rest. You can pick up exam marking, publishing, tutoring and if you want to, supply, to keep your hand in. I managed to pay myself a similar salary to M5 by doing that sort of ad hoc work until I got my current job. I also enjoyed working from home. I have no kids but I did get to have my dog's company!

I just wanted to add my support for you OP. I told my Head last Easter that I was going to leave teaching at the end of the year. Straight away the observations, book looks, lists of extra jobs because I was UPS3, etc etc stopped. The target on my back was removed and I was able to enjoy my last few months of teaching in a school that I had been in for 20 years.
Now I work on supply in Plymouth and in Cornwall and I love it. I still get to teach and meet fantastic young people every day, but I can walk out of the school gate before 7pm each evening and my weekends are my family time with my own children. My husband says I'm the Clotted Cream he fell in love with, not the angry, knackered shrew he lived with for so long.
Take care of yourself and put 'you' first before any loyalty to anyone else and believe me when I say you will not regret leaving.

Have been doing evening private tutoring for a few years, so will have more time to do that and expand to take some more students, perhaps. I'm gratified to hear that other people have left and found that it doesn't always mean a massive pay cut. It's easy in Cornwall, because we have such an awful lack of full-time, highly paid work, to feel afraid of giving up teaching because of the loss of money. But DH has convinced me that it's not like I'm giving up a six-figure Wall Street salary! It just feels like that because the last time I had to look for work in Cornwall I was a teenager without any professional qualifications.

Hi OP.
I could write a very similar post right now. Work is beyond shit and due to cuts and cuts and cuts, it certainly won't be getting better anytime soon.

I requested part time for next year (from September) but my head still cannot give me an answer on that front.

I spent most of today working, having pulled several 65+ hour weeks with a 3 year old DD who is testing me bigtime ATM. I spend half my life in tears and guilty that I'm not good enough or doing enough.

Have asked my hOF for a meeting tomorrow as I feel like I'm on the verge of another breakdown.

I apologise for not having read the whole thread. I left teaching after an inspection that left me wondering why I’d gone into teaching in the first place. Long story short I’m now back, but teaching at an independent school (which is something I swore I’d never do but I needed to earn money). Honestly - I’ve never been happier work wise. Different issues but nowhere near the same pressures.