Teaching Broke My (Literal) Heart

I wasn’t the kid who grew up dreaming of becoming a teacher. In fact, I hated school. I loved science, tinkering with things, and in high school, I showed a natural talent for computer science and engineering. Everyone expected me to follow that path.

But in college, something changed, and I found myself, for better or worse, drawn to teaching. Cognitive neuroscience became my passion, particularly the science behind language and learning. To everyone's complete horror, I switched from a field that promised respect and a good income to, well, teaching.

Looking back twenty years later, there’s a part of me that wants to shake my 20-year-old self. Don’t do it! Stick with STEM. Stay far, far away from education. Save yourself. But another part knows that, in my heart, I chose the right path. For most of these twenty years, teaching has been my passion. It brought me joy. It earned me respect. And I never cared about the money.

Then something changed.

That “something” is felt nationwide: teachers are leaving in unprecedented numbers, and the teacher shortage is deeper than we’ve ever seen. It’s hard—if not impossible—to point to one or two things we can fix or pivot away from to make it better. To put it simply, teaching became impossibly hard.

Impossibly hard to the point that it broke my (literal) heart.

For many of us, the job has shifted to a level that borders on toxic. Instead of focusing on what we love—educating students—we’re overwhelmed by impossible caseloads, large classes, and hours filled with administrative tasks.  Supports have been pulled back to the point that even well-intentioned policies seem out of reach. Some days, it feels like no matter how much time or effort we put in, the expectations pile up faster than we can meet them.

Curriculums are handed down from above, often without input from the very people who will implement them. Worse yet, many are poorly designed, requiring us to rewrite large portions of lessons just to make them meaningful. Yet we’re still expected to implement these curriculums “with fidelity,” even as we juggle a dozen other pressing demands. The result is a bizarre reality where teachers are simultaneously building, teaching, and rewriting lessons on the fly—all under the pressure of performance metrics that never seem to reflect what’s actually happening in the classroom.
I spent time today reviewing some notes I took last year describing the year and what made it so hard it nearly drove me to quit. My jaw dropped. Why didn't I? Why didn't I just leave? What made me stay in that level of toxic waste?

The kids. I loved my class, as I have loved my class every year. And in the moment it felt impossibly hard to leave them. But I probably should have.

Last year, and the mounting pressures that continue might have be enough to (literally) break a person's heart but it's the out of the world stories I have, the ones that had an ER doctor respond with, "What the actual f*ck." its those realities the public refuses to acknowledge are real... its that lack of reality, the lack of needed support, the putting the weight of the world on one teacher's shoulders and then turning our backs on them when they ask for help. That is what is driving teachers away.

And that is what is breaking our hearts.

It’s hard not to feel that some days read like the start of a Dateline mystery. There are stories that no one on the outside would believe. And on top of those stories we are also covering multiple classes in a day because of sub shortages to supporting students through crises with little more than a quick debrief and a “keep going” attitude. Through it all, we’re left wondering: is anyone listening? Does anyone really understand the weight we carry each day?

No. If you aren't in the profession, ignorance is bliss... or at least it is until you stop and listen and have no words aside from, "What the actual f*ck"

Teaching was never supposed to be easy, but it was never supposed to be this hard. It was never supposed to be hard enough to break our literal hearts.