Any major life change can bring up self-doubt and fears, but leaving teaching can be especially challenging, especially if it’s the only career, you have ever known, perhaps the only one you ever dreamed of.
Uncertainty can be overwhelming at times. What if I miss teaching? What if I hate my new position? What if no one will hire me? What about insurance? Will my kids be sad that I can’t spend the whole summer with them anymore?
Our Big worry: What if I regret it?
That last question is, I think, at the heart of all the others. What if I take this huge, scary step, and then realize that I liked my life better the way it was before? In all honesty, I think it is sometimes the feeling of regret that we worry about more than anything else. What if I realize I made a mistake? What if I feel stupid?
It’s an understandable fear, isn’t it? We have a ton of proverbs and aphorisms that tell us to stay where we are. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” Out of the frying pan, into the fire.” “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
But never taking a chance is also a path to a ho-hum (or worse) life. And that’s not what you want, nor what I want for you.
If you are thinking about leaving teaching (or have already decided you need to), but are still plagued by these worries, I want to share a couple of guidelines with you that helped me stop worrying, and even better, kept me from regretting any well-informed decision I have made.
#1 I will make the best decision I can with the information I have now, and I will not expect myself to know the future.
Let me tell you a little story. As you know, we moved to Norway in 2019, and our kids were a huge reason why. We love the fact that our kids have more freedom, more safety, and less pressure in school (no standardized tests!) than we could have dreamed of in the US. We love the fact that as long as they live here, they will never, ever go bankrupt trying to pay for a medical procedure or have to choose between paying the rent and buying necessary medication. We love the fact that even if they don’t go to college, they can earn a living wage and have a good life. So it’s fair to say that we are pretty happy with the choice we made.
For the record, we didn’t rush into the decision, either. We spent over 2 years planning, researching, talking, and preparing. At one point, I could probably tell you more about apartment availability and food prices in Oslo than anyone who hadn’t lived there!
But you can’t research the future. So when Putin invaded Ukraine, and I was running around looking for iodine tablets for the kids in case – well, you know – I could have had an absolutely huge meltdown/guilt trip/beat up on myself extravaganza.
I’m going to be honest, decisions don’t get a lot more serious than that. Did I move to Norway trying to give my kids a better life, only to put them in proximity to a nuclear disaster? I don’t know. No one does. No one knows what will happen in the next year or two or ten.
You don’t know the problems that would have come from the decision you don’t take
But I also don’t know what would have happened if we had stayed in the US. Would one of the kids been injured or killed in a car wreck? (Traffic fatalities are exceedingly rare in Norway.) Would my daughter have had to learn not to make eye contact with men because they might catcall her? Would my child with test anxiety have spent their school years in a state of “quiet desperation” trying to pass state tests and compete for a place at a top university?
I don’t know. I don’t know how any of this will turn out. But I do know one thing: my partner and I made the best decision I could with the information I had at that time. And it was a LOT of information.
Knowing that, I’m going to be gentle with my present and former self. I’m not going to let myself – or anyone else – make me regret making the best decision I could with the information I had.
Even if the day should come when we do, indeed, need to leave Norway for safety or other reasons, I will always honor myself and the decision I made.
What does that do?
What that does is actually massive. It frees you from guilt and regret. As long as you have done your research and acted on it reasonably (Please note: we would NOT have moved to Ukraine in the middle of a war. That would not have been prudent!), you don’t have to feel bad. You shouldn’t feel bad.
Honor yourself and the decision you made with the information you had, knowing you made the best decision you could at the time.
#2 I will pursue this course of action until it no longer makes sense to do so.
This part came from one of my absolute favorite business coaches, Bevin Ferrand. If you have never heard of her, I highly recommend her “Take the Damn Chance” FB group. So good!
But here is the genius in guideline #2. You don’t HAVE to continue just because you have started. Now, granted, there are points at which it is a LOT easier to put on the breaks than others, and I highly recommend listening to your gut here. (I know a woman who cried herself to sleep the night before she got married. She knew it wasn’t going to work out, but she couldn’t back out because everything was arranged and paid for. Please. Don’t. Do. That.)
Let’s say you turn in your letter of resignation. You search for jobs outside of education – no luck. You have already crunched the numbers and know exactly how much you need to make each month. You can make that working part-time at Starbucks, so you start there. But you don’t love it. You miss teaching. There is no law that says you can’t apply for teaching jobs again, possibly at your former school, and possibly at a different district.
This is coming from a teacher who not once, but twice returned to a former school. So I know that of which I speak! But that’s another story.
So let’s say you leave teaching and you miss it horribly. There is nothing that says you can’t go back. True, it can be more difficult as you earn more. Schools don’t like to hire expensive teachers. But there is also a “teacher shortage” of epic proportions, so use it to your advantage.
The bottom line is, almost no decision is truly final. In most cases, you can pivot more easily than you think, especially if you can be flexible. And goodness knows, if the past two years have taught us anything, it’s to be flexible.
There you have it folks, two ideas that will help you manage your transition trepidation.
You have so totally got this!
All the best,
Jill