Getting Beyond Elevator Stories

“Why did you leave teaching?” We know the question well. As teachers who left teaching in Kindergarten to Grade 12 classrooms, we have been asked this question often. People want to know why people who were at one time passionate about becoming teachers decided to leave teaching. After all, each of us had invested ourselves in becoming teachers. We had lived and told stories of wanting to teach, of wanting to make a difference in the lives of children and youth. And, yet, somehow we left.

Sometimes the question comes out of curiosity; people just want to know. Sometimes the question came with a sense of evaluation; other times with a hint of moral judgment. The question seems simple enough; surely there is a simple straightforward answer. Why did we leave a relatively well-paying job with ideal working conditions, that is, long vacations and short working hours? Had we not been able to cut it as teachers? Did we leave because we found no place where we could teach, that is, we were not “good enough” to be hired into a full time position? We learned to read the subtext of the question and to answer in different ways.