Now What?

I get a lot of questions about my future; I don't have answers. First, I have to make peace with the past.

I’m sitting in yet another empty classroom. At the end of another school year. Another contract, that I didn’t sign, was issued and is now gone. And I don’t know what is next.

17 years, not a continuous 17 years because of time taken off to try and spectacularly fail to do something different, but 17 years in education and here I am again. At the end. Or beginning? I’m not sure which one.

I hope it is the beginning. But first I have to address the end. I need some real closure. Something that I’m not currently getting and that I secretly fear will evade me in the long run.

When I graduated from college in 2007, I had an idea of what my teaching career would look like. I thought it would look like a movie. Maybe something like Mr. Holland’s Opus. I would get into my alma mater, inspire every student and fail nobody along the way, and eventually they would name a building after me for all I had accomplished. I could retire after a long successful run and my life would just be a great example of someone reaching for the stars and getting recognition for all they worked so hard for. I was told that was the path to success.

It didn’t take long for those visions to crash and burn. Don’t get me wrong, after making minimum wage for most of my life before signing my first teaching contract, I was ecstatic to see the $29,325 salary waiting for me. So many plans to bring to fruition with that kind of cash! And yes, that was the exact number for my first teaching contract. In 2007. And I was HAPPY to get it.

My first-year teaching was actually pretty amazing. I still look back on it with fondness. I connected with my students, had a great time designing and watching lesson plans come to fruition, made friends with people on staff, and established myself as a teacher students loved. Rolling into the second year, I moved to a new school building with a new room and newer teaching responsibilities. It was also a great year. Year 3 and 4 also occurred in the same building (I moved classrooms again though) and I was able to take 2 amazing trips to Washington D.C. with students that I still have very fond memories of. But all was not well.

I was happy to get my first teaching contract. By year 4, I was not so happy to get the same teaching contract for the same amount of money. Even though in 4 short years I had made myself a valuable staff member (at least I believed so in my head), I was told by my principal that there was literally nothing that could be done to get that number up. 4 years of a salary freeze thanks to the economic issues caused by the great recession. I believe he was telling me the truth. But that truth stood in stark contrast of what I had believed for so long - if people value you, they will show you. I was getting into my Jerry Maguire character, “Show me the money!”

Let’s take a minute for some clarity. Yes, I knew how bad teaching jobs paid. It is well documented and broadcast. Even my university professors warned me. My wife knew this when we started dating and got married. I have always been an idealist, I thought it was more important to do something that mattered than to acquire more matter. We also made the decision that she would not work when we had kids to raise. If she had worked, we would have spent all of our “extra” money on childcare and we really had a strong conviction that the raising of our children was our responsibility alone so we would have to live without more stuff (i.e. vacations, nice vehicles, expensive anything, going out to eat etc.).

My family had also grown. We had 2 babies at this point and just purchased a house (for $100,000 which is all we qualified for and thanks to the new homebuyer’s tax rebate we could actually get a down payment). So, daddy needed to figure out how to bring in some more bacon.

At that point a friend, who had left the school we worked at together, reached out to me to ask if I would be interested in switching over to a rival school he was now working at. He told me that I would more than likely be able to make more money by switching. It turns out that he was right. A $5,000 raise was sitting on the table if I could just pass an interview and get the job. My dream of staying at a school for my entire career was gone, so was my namesake building. But it was not even an emotional decision for me. The decision was pragmatic for me. My family needed better from me; I didn’t even feel like there was a choice to make. At that point I became a kind of mercenary - always chasing bigger contracts.

My next 6 years worked in a progression at the same school, and it felt like I was making progress into more and more responsibility and (minimal) financial gain. After 4 years in the classroom (trying to be the best teacher I could be - and succeeding), I applied for and was hired to an administrative position. The catch here is that I did not have a master's degree - and I have not taken a single college class since finishing up my bachelor’s degree. To be in administration, that was usually a prerequisite. My new administrative position was as a Dean of Students. So, I would still be paid on a teacher’s scale but would get to add 2 weeks to my contract (11 months total). It was more money, but not by much. Getting this opportunity without the degree was massively helpful to me, because in education there is only one ladder to climb, and this helped me take the next step.

I found the real kicker to be the time commitment and demands of the new job. I don’t know if any of you reading this know, but disciplining students sucks. Really bad. And dealing with the students’ parents can be even worse. Another part of the job was that I was also the Athletic Director. This carried a lot of responsibility as well but even more of a time commitment then I had originally thought. After a year and a half in this job my wife very politely took me aside and told me, “I am going to die in our bed from your job.” I’m glad she told me instead of just dying in bed, because the job was killing me too.

I wrote a resignation letter the next day and had zero plans for the future. Just the way everyone draws it up right?

My wife and I spent the next year-and-a-half trying to start a business and not exactly making it work. We did all the things that the “experts” tell you to do, but where it seemed everyone else succeeded, we just didn’t. It ended up putting us in an awful place financially and I was forced into a desperate search for work. I found it. It was 5 1/2 hours away on the Navajo Reservation, but it was a job - and the best paying teaching job so far! We moved everyone up to the remote north of Arizona (6 kids with one due the last week of school) and I got back into the classroom.

It was a difficult job at first. The students liked their long-term substitute (he really was a great guy) and I was a new face. But after a bumpy start, I did what always came best by endearing myself to the troublemaking boys, and I had a pretty great 7 months teaching. They offered me the biggest contract I had ever seen to stay, but I said no thanks and we moved back home because it was just too remote of a location for any of us to truly enjoy.

During this season of life, I completed close to 50 applications in places all over the U.S. I applied for teaching and non-teaching jobs in states that we felt we would like to live in. I made video introductions with hyperlinks for every place I applied to. I interviewed maybe 3 times. Everything came up empty. When the end of the summer rolled around, things were not looking great.

Let me sum up our life situation. It’s the summer of 2019. I’m unemployed. We have 7 children. My wife is having the most difficult recovery from childbirth yet (not physically but in other ways). We have major credit card debt on top of also not being able to pay even the mortgage. And desperation has totally set in.

This isn’t how life is supposed to happen. You graduate high school, go to college, get a job and be successful, climb the ladder, and come out on top. I did all of those things and was at the bottom. The most bottom I could think of. I mean, I applied for all kinds of jobs and for everything to come up empty just felt…cruel.

We had to ask for an extension on paying our mortgage, literally had no money for anything and bills were all coming due. I was desperate, so I applied for a teaching job at a small Christian school in town. They offered me a job teaching 5 different classes with little prep time, no classroom of my own, and a salary starting at…$33,000. Even if I had taken that job, I would have had to work another job on the side just to make payments on our debt! So, I reached out to a friend that had actually taken over the administrative job that I had previously left and asked if there was anything available at my second school of employment. She was shocked that I was asking but said that there was. I was back in, barely. Teaching 6th grade and even more new subjects but it didn’t matter. My family wouldn’t starve, and I wasn’t a total bum!

Of course, getting paid from a new job can sometimes take a month before it can come to pass. If not for the kindness of family (I didn’t ask anyone, but over $1500 dollars was given to us), food box donations, and the kindness of others from a church we barely started to attend, life could have become way, way worse. As it turned out we never missed a payment, and the even better thing is that we finally had some spiritual victories in the battle raging in my wife.

Then COVID-19 struck in the spring, and I decided to do what came naturally to me - I chased after a teaching job that could pay me more money. This job was going to be a good raise, and I would have a chance to work with special needs students exclusively which I was ready to try. I would also be working with a former colleague that I had a tremendous amount of respect and love for in a small team. On the side I was also given the opportunity to work with a new online program to develop curriculum and teach students online for extra money (as a teacher I have always had multiple jobs - this new job allowed me to work from home and paid more than any previous second jobs), things were definitely looking up.

I stuck it out for 3 years teaching in the private school and getting good compensation from my side gig. It doesn’t mean the work situation was totally fine. I experienced some crazy issues at this school even though I truly cared about the students. Our financial situation started to be alleviated, credit cards were getting paid off and we were able to feel more financially stable than we had in years. But my wife and I began to really feel the pull to move somewhere else, anywhere else. With that being said, I didn’t sign a contract for a 4th year and entered into another summer unemployed.

We put our house up for sale with a realtor at the beginning of June and began to get ourselves ready to move. But nothing happened. June went by. July passed. We showed our house only a few times but had gone into the summer thinking we would be moving soon. August brought a lot of stress because now, it looked like I was going to have to find work again - and soon. Those pesky bills never stop coming in and by now grocery prices were becoming suffocating for a family of 10 (up to 8 kids for those counting).

Out of nowhere my former principal called me and asked if I could fill in as an emergency substitute for a class in her new private school that had just started. I agreed because I knew it could be a while before I could get a job doing something else. While the 4 weeks of substitute teaching was going on, I was eventually offered the opportunity to be the teacher of an in-person high school group. I accepted. We showed our house 1 time during that substitute teaching gig, and it would be the last showing until our contract ran out with the realtor at the end of November. Once again, I was back in the classroom.

It started to become very obvious to me over the course of the next few months, however, that this job was not going to be something I would continue. We still wanted to move, and I was slowly accepting that I no longer wanted to teach. My well of idealism had definitely dried up. 17 years and it was time to walk away. The picture at the top of this post is from my last empty classroom. Funny enough, it was on the same school campus where the journey had begun 17 years before.

At the end of this journey, I’m not looking back with a lot of what-ifs or regrets in my head. I tried to focus on the students, create a classroom students wanted to come to, and I believe that I always pulled my weight and did above what was required. Did my students learn? I think so. Did they feel safe and valued in my classroom? I hope so. Can I at least walk away believing it was a job well done? Yes.

Teaching is not an easy profession. There are so many moving pieces and so many “most important” things to think about that the job can really wear on your mental well-being. Not to mention the concern that develops for your students and their lives/choices along the way. In the end our society believes that those who can’t do, teach - and it is shown by how teachers are treated, respected and compensated. I am only trying to speak from my experience, and I don’t think I speak for everyone. However, the days of laboring to help raise other people’s kids into adults is over for me.

But now what?