The Exit Interview: Why I Left the Classroom

Author’s Note: After leaving the classroom, I struggled with all the discomfort of unwanted transition. I split myself into both journalist and teacher to be able to process the grief of leaving the profession I love.

The Biggest Misconception

Q: Many people outside of education think teachers leave because of the students or the pay. In your experience, what is the biggest misconception the public has about why teachers are actually resigning?

People believe that teachers are leaving the classroom over a single issue. In my experience, it is normally a collection of compounding issues and a future that looks bereft of solutions to a growing list of problems.

There are so many moving pieces in education. A well-resourced classroom teacher—one who is competitively paid and rigorously prepared—has to keep multiple gears turning in order for good instruction to occur. These gears are not one-and-done checkboxes, but cycles that happen all at once and all together. Daily cycles include, but are not limited to: lesson planning, contacting guardians, data analysis, behavior management, peer meetings, and mental wellness checks.

While teachers handle their daily cycles, schools with academic integrity have administrative teams who are also capable of juggling many high-stakes factors at once. Strong school leaders handle site operations, school culture, and community partnerships while acting as a buffer between their site’s current reality and their district’s initiatives. If any of these gears malfunction or stop working, good instruction becomes more difficult to approach and students learn less.

There are a host of variables that we don’t have control over as educators—the mental health challenges of students and peers while managing our own mental states, the rising costs of living, and the constant pivots in curriculum and instructional initiatives. Regardless of the external challenges, the expectation is always that the teacher will continue to teach well, but the teacher is rarely resourced enough to meet the ever-changing expectations.

Our current reality is that teachers are paid for two minutes per student each week to plan, grade, and communicate with parents (National Council on Teacher Quality, 2023). Many teachers are inundated with data points they don’t understand or don’t know how to utilize (Forefront Education, 2025). Not enough teachers understand the difference between behavior management, that requires teachers to proactively minimize stress, and the prevalent reactionary discipline that damages relationships with their students (National Council on Teacher Quality, 2015). There is a widening knowledge gap between “veteran” (3–5 years) and novice teachers that the veterans are too overworked to properly fill. Teachers reported experiencing “poor well-being on every indicator” at a higher rate than their similarly educated peers in other professional areas, with more teachers reporting symptoms of depression than professionals of similar status (RAND American Educator Panels, 2022). Classroom Educators are realizing, within five years of entering the profession, that the balance of their relationship with the education system will never weigh in their favor.

The Hidden Workload

Q: Can you walk us through a typical day in your life as a teacher? Specifically, how many hours were spent on actual instruction versus compliance, data entry, and administrative tasks?

A good day starts between 5:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. with grading, finalizing lessons, and pre-planning for potential problems. I’m out the door by 8:15 a.m. and by 8:45 a.m. I am standing by my door with a speaker jamming, greeting students and loudly giving directions for a smooth morning check-in.

*The rest of the day is outlined below. The daily workload is organized into tasks. Each period is about 45–50 minutes.

1st Period (Planning): This block is the jumpstart to the day and it is important that the following things happen:

• Finish breakfast and coffee if that didn’t already happen.

• Update white-boards for two subjects or two grade levels.

• Step-by-step instructions for what work to turn in, where to get today’s materials, where to sit, and how to start today’s activity.

• Objectives, deadlines, dates, and homework.

• Make copies and staple packets.

• Arrange desks to match the expectations of the day (i.e., grouping for collaborative work or “cheat-proof” testing arrangements).

• Provide materials and writing utensils to match the lesson. I ensure each student has exactly what they need to approach each lesson. Sometimes that means counting the exact amount of paperclips and Post-it notes students will need that day.

• Check in with my grade-level team to make sure everyone has the emotional support they will need for the day.

• Make any parent contacts I may have missed from the day before.

• Check the group chat for the inevitable, poorly communicated schedule shift.

• Check and send emails.

• Check to make sure all technology for the day is working and charged.

2nd Period (PLC): Our Professional Learning Community this year was grouped by grade level and included our guidance counselors, therapists, instructional coaches, and administration. During these meetings, we were expected to present our latest assessment data, which for me included a slide presentation, student samples, an in-depth analysis and review, plus an intervention plan for four levels of students. Behavior and attendance issues were consistently addressed with real-time solutions and an “all-hands-on-deck” approach. This time is also used for district training, school-wide data drives or culture initiatives, and event planning for our students.

3rd & 4th Hour: We are in learning mode. I advocated to double-block my students so we could actually dive deeply and get the intervention they needed. For an hour and forty minutes, I am keeping 25–33 students entertained, engaged, activated, challenged, and mentally stable throughout.

12:24 – 1:15 p.m. (5th Hour): This is the time I get to “eat lunch” while the students go to the cafeteria and recess. During this time, I’m checking in with teammates and counselors, providing support, monitoring the hallways, and trying to “wooh-saah” enough to take care of my own biological needs. I will also use this time to reset the desks and materials for the next class. If we had a great day of learning, the room will look like it was turned every way but loose. We had an “Advisory” mini-class after recess that served as time to cover administrative things with students, wind down from recess, and take care of the students’ biological and emotional needs.

6th & 7th Hour: Round two of students—and this is where it gets hard. They are sleepy or hyper from lunch, managing whatever drama happened at lunch or recess, and groaning at the idea that they have three more hours of brainwork to do. Whatever dog-and-pony show I put on in the morning has to have double the razzle-dazzle for the afternoon crowd.

8th Hour: This class was for tutoring, intervention, and remediation. In order to be prepared for this class, I’ve done a data analysis on the last few assessments, prepared instructional materials and quick assessments for four sets of students, grouped students by their individual needs, made a lesson plan for each group, and created a strict internal timeline of which groups and students needed my one-on-one attention.

4:00 p.m. – 4:20 p.m. Bus Duty: I will get the rest of my steps in here, check in with students who might need emotional support, and check in with my Administrators and Peers.

4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.: Two to three times per week, this time block is filled with meetings. Teachers are encouraged to participate in groups and organizations within the school and spearhead the execution of school-wide and district initiatives. Some of this participation is paid; some is voluntary. It depends on how much money your Principal gets allocated for staff enrichment.

5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.: This is the time I have to do “life stuff” and decompress. I play with my dog, catch up on texts/emails (work and personal), and figure out dinner.

7:00 p.m. – Until: Laptop is back open and I’ve got something streaming in the background. This time block is integral to the success of the next school day. I grade work and update the grade-book. Students are regrouped by their most updated data and I’m contacting parents about all the things. The next day’s lesson plans get adjusted and I make/source the next day’s materials (slideshows, videos, online lessons, worksheets). After the student-facing work is complete, I tackle the administrative tasks by making sure I have responded to emails, updated my calendar, and met site and district deadlines.

Normally, I am spending at least three to four hours outside of the school day, off-site, doing school-related tasks. That is an additional fifteen to twenty hours of work, at minimum, and an additional $1,300–$1,700 a month in unpaid labor.

The Breaking Point of Motivation

Q: Education often relies on the “do it for the kids” narrative to fill gaps in resources. At what point did that sentiment stop feeling like a motivation and start feeling like an exploitation?

I have spent considerable time in therapy and, through that journey, I vowed to never stay in an abusive relationship. Eventually, I realized that the last relationship I had not dealt with was my relationship with the public school system.

To help me decide, I went old school and wrote a “pros vs. cons” list. When I looked at the mutual benefit and compared it to what it cost me to “feel accomplished,” I realized this relationship was a ridiculously unfair one.

The system relies on the good-naturedness of kind people who have a high tolerance for stress and who would sacrifice themselves to save the world. What we have normalized in schools for educators would not be acceptable in other professional spaces without generous compensation (and a well-paid legal team).

Remaining in the classroom would have meant sacrificing my mental and physical health and setting my future self up for a life of poverty. I was unwilling to continue doing that.

Professional Agency vs. Scripted Lessons

Q: As a trained professional, how much agency did you actually have over your classroom? Did you feel like an expert educator or a facilitator of a prepackaged curriculum?

I am lucky to have had administrators who allowed me to prove myself as a trustworthy teammate. They found the time to listen to my ideas, they found the dollars to support the initiatives I led, and I understand how vital that support was in my success as an educator. In my experience, I was given room to do what was best for my students and the outcomes were positive.

However, when I first started in the charter school system, I did not feel that autonomy. There, I learned it’s okay to “sit back” on your bright ideas for a year or two to actually learn how to teach. I learned to use the framework you’re given as soil to plant and grow your own practice.

I believe in handing first-year teachers scripted lessons to learn pacing and checklists to live by—but there has to be a human component. You need a mentor teacher to help you bridge what’s on the paper to the lived experience in the room. You need a peer group to grumble and grow with. From your school leadership, you have got to get the same thing you are expected to give your students—clear expectations, scaffolds to success, checks for understanding, and multiple chances to achieve mastery. Unfortunately, what you get is some district-provided videos, two reams of paper, whiteboard markers, and a “thumbs up.”

The Canary in the Coal Mine

Q: Was there a specific moment where you realized that staying was no longer a viable option for your health?

The first time I left the classroom was after the Teacher’s Strike in 2018. I reached the same conclusion I came to in 2025: being paid fairly was not going to happen. In 2024, my wages were garnished due to a district “overpayment” error. Entering the profession during the second semester doesn’t count towards your pay step, putting my pay one year behind a school year I had worked. Nothing was done, and I had to repay all the money I had earned that was over my pay-step back to the district. When I realized I was choosing to buy paper for my classroom, so my students could have printed grade reports, over buying groceries for myself, it was confirmed that nothing was going to change at this pace.

I chose to be an educator, and it felt like I was being punished for that choice. This profession is sacred, holy, powerful work. The children we care for are gifts. In January of 2024, after losing my dad and my brother within two weeks of each other, I needed the rhythm of the classroom and the love of those babies to help me return to myself. But I also needed a paycheck that affirmed my humanity. I needed a savings account that would afford me travel expenses to spend time with my grieving mother. What I got was challenges, and I buried my needs in my ability to meet those challenges until I couldn’t any longer.

Leadership and Burnout

Q: When you raised concerns about burnout or safety, what was the standard response? Did you feel heard or were you met with toxic positivity?

Did I feel heard? Absolutely. I have had great relationships with my administrative teams. Did they have the power to give me a raise? No. And if there was money that could have been a stipend, it wasn’t allocated to me. So they lost a good teacher and leader, and that sucks for my students and my teammates who had to adjust.

The Systemic Fix

Q: If you were sitting across from a school board or a state legislator, what is the one systemic change—not a pizza party or a bonus—that would have kept you in the classroom?

We keep having a conversation about teacher pay. I made $22 an hour at the end of my last stint in the classroom. If I had been paid for all the hours I spent doing schoolwork outside of the classroom, I would be taking home at least an additional $12,000. In what other profession does one pay to work (teacher certification exams, unpaid training), have to buy all the supplies to do their jobs, then is expected to do an additional $12,000 or more in labor just to be labeled an “effective” employee?

It’s not a wild thought to pay teachers hourly for the work they do outside of the instructional day. Districts are already tracking our laptop usage, so they should run a study on how much time is spent on school tasks outside the building. Educators also deserve compensation for the administrative tasks they do, outside of instruction, that make a school site run well and require additional emotional and physical labor. Everywhere else, people call it “overtime.”

The main thing will always be the main thing: Pay educators the professional wages they deserve for all the time they spend doing the work of educating.

About the Author Precious Jenkins is a certified K-12 teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with over a decade of classroom experience. As the founder of Spark.Ed, she bridges the gap between research-based solutions and the realities of the modern classroom. She is committed to operationalizing research based best practices to ensure academic equity for the next generation.