I Left Teaching. I Didn’t Leave Behind the Teacher in Me.
Finding purpose beyond the dream you've always known.
I Left Teaching After Two Years. Here's What I Learned About Starting Over.
Ten years ago, I left teaching after just two years in the classroom.
Before I say anything else, I want to make one thing very clear: I loved those kids.
And they loved me.
I still keep up with many of them today. Somehow, some of those baby-faced fifth graders who sat in my classroom now have children of their own. I haven't personally verified the math on how this is possible, but I feel fairly certain there should have been more time between those two events.
I didn't leave because I hated teaching, and I certainly didn't leave because I didn't love my students. I left because, somewhere deep down, I knew it wasn't where I was supposed to stay forever.
Admitting that came with a lot more shame than I expected.
For me, teaching wasn't just a career I randomly picked when it was time to choose a college major. I had been saying I wanted to be a teacher since I was in first grade.
I wanted to be just like Mrs. Connie.
She was my first-grade teacher, and I adored her. From the moment I sat in her classroom, that was it. When someone asked little Amber what she wanted to be when she grew up, I had an answer: a teacher, just like Mrs. Connie.
Six-year-old me had a career plan. Current me is honestly impressed by her confidence.
Mrs. Connie knew, too. She knew the impact she'd had on me and that she was the reason I wanted to become a teacher.
Then, while I was in college studying to do exactly that, Mrs. Connie passed away. She had become a close family friend, and her passing hit me hard. It happened around the same time I first started hearing this quiet little voice in the back of my mind telling me that maybe I didn't actually want to do this forever.
Talk about timing.
Suddenly, questioning my career didn't just feel like changing my mind. In some strange way, it felt like I was letting her down.
She knew I wanted to be a teacher because of her. She had been part of this dream I'd carried with me since I was six years old. After she was gone, there was a part of me that felt like I had to see it through, almost as if I'd made her a promise—even though, of course, I hadn't.
So I became a teacher.
And I'm really glad I did.
For two years, I had a classroom of my own. I got to love my students the way Mrs. Connie had loved hers. And maybe, if I'm really lucky, I got to be someone's Mrs. Connie.
That alone makes those two years worth it.
Eventually, though, I had to accept something I couldn't understand at the time: Honoring the person who inspired you doesn't mean you have to become them, and achieving your childhood dream doesn't mean you're required to live inside that dream forever.
Maybe Mrs. Connie didn't just inspire me to become a teacher. Maybe she inspired the teacher in me.
There's a difference.
It took me a long time to see that. At the time, I mostly just felt guilty.
The Guilt of Leaving
Teaching is one of those careers that has a way of becoming your identity. You don't just work as a teacher. You are a teacher.
Those are your kids. That's your classroom. You decorate it. You spend your own money on it. A truly alarming amount of your own money, actually.
You think about your students when you're at home. You worry about them. You celebrate them. You lose sleep over them. You somehow develop the ability to hear a whispered conversation happening three rows away while simultaneously teaching long division, answering a question, confiscating something no child should have brought to school, and determining from across the room that, yes, someone is absolutely about to throw up.
It's a very specific skill set.
You pour so much of yourself into the job that deciding to leave can feel less like changing careers and more like abandoning people you care about. And when I decided to leave, that guilt was reinforced in ways I still remember.
I was even told that my leaving was "really going to let down the kids who were looking forward to being in my class the following year."
That one hurt.
I already felt guilty. I already wondered if leaving meant I was selfish or if I was giving up too soon. But I also knew myself well enough to know where the road could eventually lead.
I could see a version of myself years down the road. She was tired and frustrated. She'd lost the excitement she once had. She was counting down the years instead of looking forward to them.
She was the grumpy, bitter teacher who probably should have left years ago but stayed until she had tenure, stayed until she had too many years invested, stayed until leaving felt impossible. The teacher who had somehow been saying, "I only have 14 more years," for the last three years.
I didn't want to become her.
More importantly, my students didn't deserve that version of me.
Leaving didn't mean I didn't care about my students. In a strange way, I think the opposite was true.
I left while I still loved them.
I left while I could still look back at my time in the classroom with love instead of resentment.
Ten years later, I'm incredibly grateful I did.
I Didn't Know What I Didn't Know
I grew up in a small town, and I think that played a bigger role in my career path than I realized at the time. I simply didn't understand how many career opportunities existed in the world.
I knew about the careers I could see: teacher, nurse, doctor, lawyer, banker.
That was basically the career fair.
You chose from the menu you knew existed.
Nobody pulled me aside at 17 and said, "Amber, have you considered a future explaining ERISA regulations to business owners?" Which, in hindsight, feels like a real missed opportunity.
I didn't know there were entire industries filled with jobs I'd never heard of. I certainly didn't know that one day I'd build a career around 401(k) plans. Try explaining that career path to six-year-old me.
Actually, try explaining it to most 34-year-olds.
I didn't know about all the careers tucked inside financial services, retirement planning, technology, consulting, sales, relationship management, or corporate America in general. There was this enormous world of possibilities out there that I didn't even know existed.
And yet, we're supposed to answer this gigantic question when we're teenagers: What do you want to be when you grow up?
At 18, I could barely be trusted to make decisions about my eyebrows. But sure. Let's pick a career for the next 45 years.
How are you supposed to choose from options you don't even know you have?
I chose what I knew.
I became a teacher.
Then I eventually realized I wanted something different.
What I couldn't see at the time was that leaving the classroom wasn't the end of my career story. Honestly, it was just getting started.
