Growing up, all I ever wanted to be was a teacher. For as long as I can remember, that was my answer whenever anybody asked me. For 25 years, teaching is all I wanted to do. I saw that path clear as day from Kindergarten straight through high school. I majored in Early Childhood and Special Education in undergrad. I went on to get my master’s in Special Education. I stepped into special education prepared and ready and I thought I would be in the classroom until I was old enough to retire.
This is the emotional end of that journey. And even knowing it is the right decision, it is one of the hardest things I have ever done.
And then, slowly, everything changed.
My First Years
My first year was hard. Really, truly hard. But I found my way. I changed what I was teaching a few times — from elementary to pre-K and back to elementary again. There were moments I loved and moments I hated. That is the honest truth about teaching. It is never all one thing.
Then COVID hit and the whole world changed in an instant.
I started teaching virtually — which, for the record, is not for me. Not even a little. But I still showed up. I delivered weekly care packages for my Head Start students to make sure they at least had something to eat and some soap and hand sanitizer to help keep them healthy. It was a new kind of hard. But it still filled my heart with joy.
As we returned to in-person school, though, teaching got harder and harder each year. Students came to us with less social skills. They came to us with less academic skills. Many had not been to preschool. Many had never learned how to learn in a classroom setting. We were teaching the very basics in first and second grade while also trying to teach the content. We were trying to make up over a year of instruction — and we were expected to do it all without skipping a beat.
More and More on Our Plates
After surviving all of that, the system added more and more to our plates. The way we teach reading has changed — for the better, but still a change. The way we teach math has changed — also for the better, but still a change. There is more and more paperwork every day. It is impossible to get everything done in a single day, and I refuse to take anything home with me. I always have. That boundary has kept me sane, but it has also meant living with the constant weight of knowing the list is never finished.
The job I fell in love with started to feel like something I didn’t fully recognize anymore.
The Wear
Until the last few years, I had never not wanted to return to school in the fall. Every summer, people would tell me the break would help me reset and I’d be back at full strength in August. And for a long time, they were right.
But the last few years have worn me thin in a way that summer couldn’t fix.
I have come back in the fall just as exhausted and drained as I was leaving in the spring. And each year wore me down more and more. The passion I had for the classroom — the passion that drove me to this career in the first place, that kept me coming back year after year — it started to fade. Teaching stopped bringing me the joy it once did.
I’ll say something here that is hard to admit out loud: I stopped looking forward to seeing my students each morning.
In fact, it became the opposite. I started dreading getting up each morning to come to school. Not in the I’m tired and I want to stay in bed way. More in the I cannot make myself do this for another day way. I can feel my mood change the moment I walk through the front door of the building. And when I leave at the end of the day, I have nothing left. Nothing left to give to my students, nothing left to give to my family, nothing left to give to myself.
And yet — every spring for the last few years — I told myself the same thing.
That’s it. This is the last year. I’m done.
And every fall, I came back anyway. Because the kids needed me. Because I wasn’t ready. Because walking away from the only thing I had ever wanted to do felt impossible. I kept hoping the next year would be different. That I would find my way back to the version of myself that couldn’t wait for August.
But this year is different. This year I know it in a way I haven’t known it before. The summer is not going to reset me this time. I am not coming back in the fall. And for the first time, saying that out loud doesn’t feel like giving up — it feels like finally telling the truth.
Those kids deserve someone who walks through that door ready to give everything. And I deserve to find my way back to a version of this work that fills me up instead of emptying me out.
What I Am Walking Toward
I want to be clear: I am not moving away from my work with children. I am not walking away from special education. I am just changing my role.
I am moving more toward research. I am going to figure out how to make assessment more equitable. I am going to figure out how to improve the system from a different side. The fight is not over. I am just fighting from a different place.
Packing Up for the Last Time
But as I pack up my classroom this year — knowing it is for good and not just until the fall — feelings hit differently.
Every other year, packing up has been temporary. Things go in boxes knowing they will come back out in August. There is comfort in that rhythm. But this year, I am packing for a teacher I haven’t even met. I am trying to prepare this space so that things are easily accessible and organized for another teacher to step in and take over. I am leaving behind a room that has been mine, for a person I will never know, to do a job I have loved.
I don’t know how to do that. I genuinely don’t know how to pack a classroom that isn’t coming back to me.
My heart and my mind are flooded with thoughts and emotions. Grief. Pride. Relief. Sadness. Gratitude. All of it at once, with no clean place to put any of it.
Since Kindergarten
Here is the thing that keeps stopping me cold as I pack up these boxes.
Since I started Kindergarten at five years old, I have never left a school year without preparing for the next one. Not once. For more than 25 years, the end of the school year has always pointed toward something — a new classroom, a new group of kids, a new fall to get ready for. The end was never really the end. It was always just a pause.
I don’t really know what to do with that feeling. I don’t know who I am at the end of a school year when I am not already becoming the next version of myself as a teacher.
I am about to find out.
It is the end of a journey I have been on since I was five years old. And even knowing it is the right decision — even knowing I am walking toward something meaningful — it is one of the hardest things I have ever done.
Some endings are also beginnings. I am trying to hold onto that.