I was teaching full-time for the last 6 years – 1 year in England and 5 years in Canada. I spent the last decade of my life dedicated to this career, including getting 2 degrees at once in university.
The pay and benefits in Canada are not horrible if you can land a full-time permanent position (some teachers are stuck supply teaching for many years). The issue was that the working conditions compared to 10 years ago are much worse with greater expectations and workloads placed on teachers. We also have our provincial leader and Education Minister hellbent on destroying healthcare and education. We had a strike and picketed outside right before lockdowns in -25 degree Celsius weather.
When lockdowns started, I started my own art business as a way to escape teaching online with no resources (literally, no laptops no nothing and we had to buy our own things and spend hours making our own online lessons). I didn’t create art for 7+ years due to focusing on teaching and stressors like this.
Then I got shingles… in my 20s. I went to the ER at 5am and got diagnosed after extreme pain for a week. After picking up medication, I logged in and taught for the week because it would’ve been more work to leave detailed lesson plans for my online class.
I taught online for another year and took the scary leap of resigning in June of this year to focus on my art.
I was really scared and the sunken cost fallacy isn’t fun. I am fortunate enough to have saved some money just in case while I run my business and study to try shifting to a career in a creative field or education outside of public education structures. I networked and got a job offer to managing Marketing for an experiential education company but I had pre-scheduled things during their peak times; however it IS possible to seek other alternatives in education.
There’s a lot more to this but this was the gist of how I realized that I needed a change. I love teaching but not in the traditional classroom with how things are shifting even further politically. Feel free to ask questions – I know a lot other teachers are looking for alternative jobs.