I Quit

It’s true, I’ve resigned from my current teaching position. It was time.

I love my students—not in that weird way, but in the way teachers should and do. I care deeply about their learning and how they are progressing and whether they are ‘getting it’. I matters to me that they continue to grow as people, that is what learning is all about after all. It also matters to me that they feel seen and heard so that their confidence about who they are can grow.

I’m not leaving because of students; I work in a pleasant school filled with wonderful young people.

It’s me. I’m leaving because of me.

I need a new challenge, new things to think about, and the space to think about them. It’s the first day of school holidays today and before I got out of bed this morning I opened my computer and started writing my new curriculum.

I work for a multicampus school and am moving to another campus to create a new VCE English course. I’ll help them find their feet while having space to explore and experiment with my current teaching routines and patterns.

I feel the fire in me starting to flicker into flame.

Which is interesting, seeing as who I am at my school (in my eyes) finally burned to the ground a few weeks ago when a vindictive, unfounded accusation came my way. That said, my decision to go was made long before this ‘concern’ came in. I’ve known all year that after fifteen years, this would be my final year at this campus, maybe even my final year at the school. But it has worked out that there is a place for me in the wider school after all. In some ways, those who want to see me gone will get what they want, but not in the way they want. That is something for them to ruminate on, not me.

I’ve always hoped I was making a difference in my students’ lives and I believe, based on their feedback, I have and am. Many of the students who have spent time in my classrooms have touch base with me, letting me know where they are in life, and sharing memories of times we have shared. This fills me up. This is what I teach for. This is why I stepped out of leadership and went back into the classroom.

Shout out to those students, by the way. I am still SO proud of you.

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Teachers changed my life.

I don’t exaggerate one bit here. It was a series of teachers throughout my childhood that provided accountability and consistency in my life. They went out of their way for me. They spent their own money on me—the Principle of Neerim South Primary School, whose name I have long forgotten—bought me a photo of the staff because I loved them all so much and went to his office to ask for one. It didn’t occur to eight year old me that you couldn’t just have a photo. It was only years later that I came to understand he had payed for it himself and given it to me, an act of pure kindness.

I think he knew. I think they all did. Teachers know when something is up.

Teachers who are paying attention to their students get a feel for when things are tough. We don’t often know exactly what is going on but we know when extra encouragement is needed.

Kindness soothes the ragged edges of this life. Want to help someone feel better? Be kind to them. Smile at them. Notice something you like about them. Maybe even offer to share your playlunch with them.

I will miss my current students a great deal—they are easy to like—but I know they will be okay. All year I have been working toward helping them stand on their own two feet. The news that I am leaving has caused a little wobble, as I knew it would, but they are ready for that wobble and will recover to stand strong. I hope, no matter what, that they will remember just how much I believe in them.

Students are the future. They have amazing lives ahead of them full of joy and suffering. We don’t know when either will arrive for them. Some have already had more than their fair share of suffering and carry burdens too heavy for their young selves. And, yet, they stagger to their feet and keep on walking.

We are wired for struggle. It is our nature to try to take another step against all odds. And we are quietly repelled by those who give up. They sit in the shadow of death, a place we instinctively know will take us out if we stay there too long.

This is why teachers encourage students to try. Try to give that presentation in front of the class. Try to write that essay. Try that thing that is causing you anxiety.

When we let them opt out far too soon they settle into the shadows. Until, that is, something in them fights back. They can go two ways. Either they get angry and go down a path of bitterness and complaint, or they accept that they are limited and try anyway.

I spend my time in the classroom calling students to live their lives, asking them to try. I teach with enthusiasm, loving the English language and the books and plays and articles we read, and making fun of how much I love essays.

I don’t always.

Love essays, that is. And when I don’t, I remember that learning to say what you think is a powerful tool. It will change the world. Our young people deserve to have someone in their lives determined to help them learn to say what they think.

The thing is, students don’t believe that their thoughts matter all that much. The first step is to help them see that what they think matters to me, and if it matters to me, it will matter to someone else, and if it matters to someone else, maybe it will matter to the world at large.

Folks live their lives and die not knowing that their words are going to matter a great deal long after they are gone. Look at Sylvia Plath. She was in the early stages of her publishing career. She had no idea when depression became deadly—untreated depression can be fatal—that the collection of poetry she finished writing a few days earlier would become so important to so many. She didn’t know that what she had to say mattered.

The time has come for me to move on, to take on a new project, to explore who I am as a teacher and the new systems I can create around me to improve my teaching.

Improving my teaching is what drives me.

Sure, my teaching is already pretty solid, but there are things I can do to continue to improve. That’s why, first day of the holidays, I am here thinking about how to do what I do better.

So there we have it—change is here. Just as spring is and, along with it, an abundant number of Waratah flowers on the Shady Lady in my front yard, all reminding me that life is here to be lived—by both me and my students, past, present, and future.