I am a mother of two girls, divorced, now remarried. I taught school for ten years in a variety of settings, daycare, private school, finally public school for the last three years. I had no choice but to get out this Fall when the chaos and instability and diminished support and unreasonable, increased pressure of demands on me as a teacher caused me to crumble. I already had pre-existing mental health issues that made normal work stress pre-pandemic a challenge, but one I was able to handle well enough with therapy. What happened with schools pushed me so far beyond my ability to cope that I felt like doing something very bad and irreversible was my only way out and I nearly had to go to in-patient.
I got out. I ran. And it was the best decision I've ever made in my life.
My perspective changed drastically in the aftermath of this. I realized that there is so much utter bullshit that we are conditioned to accept as “normal” and “just what you do” if you're a responsible adult that is literally draining the life out of us, making us slaves.
I had daughters, but the percentage of my life that I actually was able to spend raising them was basically non-existent. We woke up at 6 am. Rushing out of the house in the dark, and in the cold, dropping them off at a daycare where they would be essentially like puppies in a huge kennel of 25-30 other children their age. Way too many children than anyone could adequately attend to. And as someone who spent seven years of my life working daycare, I know what it is like. Most of the time, you and those who work there are underqualified in a professional sense to know how to properly guide and help that many children develop. Everyone is overworked, underpaid, usually there even if they are sick because there is no insurance, no benefits, no paid time off. Kids are herded around, shouted at, mistreated by other children, and it is just awful. I love children, I loved working with them, but having so many all at once made it impossible to give them the individual attention they deserved. And all the kids were there because their parents had to drop them off so they could go be slaves at some business or another.
Not to mention… daycare is nightmarishly expensive, and none of the exorbitant tuition makes it adequately in compensation of the staff. The turnover rate is also high because of all of the aforementioned, and so the children rarely to never are able to form a secure attachment to an adult for any long period of time. Shit happens like my two year old ending up getting her leg broken at a daycare, coming home with a huge bruise on her forehead that neither hell nor high water was able to get me a direct answer as to how it happened, only a lot of sassy-ass attitude and denial from the people there. It is just all so abjectly fucked.
So I would leave my children, go spend the prime hours of the day working, pull up to the hellhole daycare to which the majority of my paycheck went so I could work to pay for them to go to daycare at sometimes 5-6 o'clock depending on what horseshit meetings they'd decided to keep us after school for, whatever work it was that I had to catch up on because there were never enough hours in the day to do it, especially when they started taking away our planning periods to cover classes for 12+ vacancies after so many staff dipped the fuck out and there were neither substitutes nor replacements.
So I dropped my daughters off in the dark of the early morning and returned home most times at the dark of the onset of evening. Time for food and then bed, basically. Just to get up and do it all over again.
Another reason I knew I could no longer abide in the public school was the fact that my eldest daughter entered middle school this year, the grade I was teaching. And there were just so many kids with such severe social and emotional issues, like even at a young age, that were beyond the pale, more than I could help, though I showed up every day and tried my best. Within a few weeks of school, a little boy in my class who looked like such a precious kid started telling me and everyone that he had a crush on my daughter. I thought this was adorable at first, until this same kid started lashing out at me without provocation. I was the teacher most kids called Mom. I had really good rapport with students, and thought I did with this boy, too. But this little fella just started coming unglued, trying to show off for his friends, I thought, but the defiance soon turned into cussing which turned into him throwing things and threatening me. I'm like, thinking, sweetheart? All I did was prompt you to take out your chromebook and stay on task. And somehow this requires you to call me a goddamn fucking bitch and throw a chair at me and threaten to kill me? And… you're wanting to be my daughter's boyfriend? I wrote referrals, tried to de-escalate, talk things through with him, help him build skills, I met with his family and I tried everything, but… something just seemed to be wrong somewhere.
Add to this, my daughter started to tell me that she was getting uncomfortable because he was beginning to stalk her, follow her everywhere, get in her space. I was beginning to sense that this little guy had some issues that could be problematic, so I took a look into his behavioral history and what I found broke my heart. Something had indeed gone wrong somewhere with this young man. He had a history going back to as young as 3rd grade where he was acting out inappropriately in a sexual way toward girls, and as he got older, he was becoming more and more sexually aggressive and he was trying to attack them, he was blowing up violently in classrooms, he had been expelled then readmitted several times… this poor child needed help. Someone clearly had hurt him. He needed some serious intervention before he hurt someone. Because there was a clear pattern of escalation as he was getting older.
And for whatever reason, he had decided to target my daughter in such a way that he also felt the need to tell me he was going to kill me to get to her, that was his last altercation with me… by the way, he was only 11 years old.
Okay. At that point, I realized I had enough. Enough of being a wage slave and causing the children I'd brought into this world to suffer in these horrible situations just so I could make money to purchase things and have the status of being a responsible adult. I really believe that my daughter and I both were potentially in danger from this child. And added to it all the rest of it… quality of life matters than quality of possessions.
My husband was a teacher as well and after he had a student turn around, shove him, call him the N-word, told him that they hated all N-words and declared that they were going to make up a story that he hit them so he would go to jail, he noped the fuck out, too.
My husband and I have re-evaluated everything. We pulled both our girls from public school and enrolled them in an online academy. I am now teaching from home through a third party. He got a job working for the gas company because the hours are much better, and he can clock in and clock out and spend his day listening to audiobooks and be at peace instead of being threatened by students and not supported by admin.
Our life is peaceful and livable. We're no longer slaves. This has come with sacrifice, however. But one we're glad to make because… we were breaking ourselves to make enough money to keep up with the middle class, basically. To have our five bedroom home in a status neighborhood, to have more disposable income, two cars, the whole bit… we've sold our home and we are giving up on being homeowners for a while. We found a townhouse to rent that is just enough room. We've gotten rid of a vehicle, we've downsized everything and we've decided that being able to live is more important than being able to have things and try to keep up with a status.
We have less money now. We have less to “show for” ourselves as adults. But at least we can know that our daughter isn't going to be attacked, that i'm not going to be attacked, that my husband isn't going to end up harmed in some way. I like that my daughters can wake up ten minutes before their homeroom and open their laptops and go to class and have breakfast in bed.
As a teacher, for years, I was obsessed with the need to try to save everyone else's children, but this was like holding out my arms trying to restrain the ocean. These poor children came in with problems that I did not cause, could not control, nor could I cure. I have given up on this, as heartbreaking as it has been… because there are two children that I brought into this world that I am responsible for and I am going to focus on saving them.
Thank goodness for the Great Resignation and how my eyes were opened.