Why I Quit My Teaching Job and Why I'm Going Back

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I wasn't clinically diagnosed with autism until I was 59. Throughout most of my adult life, I've been in education. I was an elementary teacher for 17 years. After burning out, I went to culinary school since all things related to Culinary Arts have always been an interest of mine.

After graduating with honors from culinary school, I worked in the food service/hospitality management industry for four years. I returned to education in 2007 as a high school Culinary Arts instructor.

Things went well until Covid. When all schools in my state were forced to shut down, the district purchased Chromebooks for all of the students using Federal covid funds. Teachers were given one week to adapt what we were teaching to virtual classes. Sadly, no instruction was provided on how to do this.

Since I have long been tech oriented, I figured out how to do this via YouTube. After setting up my classes, I helped colleagues set up theirs.

Although I thought I would enjoy virtual education since I have never enjoyed interacting with anyone face to face, I was wrong. Virtual education was awful. Students ditched my classes. If they logged on, they wouldn't turn on the video feed. I had no idea if they were actually listening or if they were doing something else.

Most of my students wound up failing because they didn't do quizzes or exams.

When the lockdown was lifted and in-person teaching resumed, the students were different. Since so many of them had ditched classes across all subject areas, admin bungled by socially promoting these kids. The students in question wound up being in classes for which they didn't have the academic prerequisites to succeed because they had ditched most of the previous year's classes. This led to frustration and students began acting out.

To make everything worse, the district decided to adopt "social justice reform". Instead of disciplining students via lunch detention, after school detention, and suspensions; admin made teachers "talk" to students about why they were behaving the way they were behaving.

This created problems for me because I'm not a trained counselor. Since I'm autistic (level 1), I don't have particularly good social skills the more I'm distanced from teaching Culinary Arts. On top of everything else, I also really didn't care why students were misbehaving. I simply wanted them to STOP so that I could get about teaching what I needed to teach.

This past year was particularly bad. A group of students discovered one or more of my social media accounts. Having realized that I was autistic, these students conspired to drive me into a meltdown. They began poking me during class and wouldn't stop touching me. They began taking pencils and paper on my desk that I had provided for students to use for when they needed to take notes. They would then snap these pencils and wad up the paper to throw around the room. They would then complain that I was out of paper and pencil even though I had started the week with a brand new box of pencils and a ream of paper.

They interrupted me with nonsensical questions.

"Do you wear clogs?"

"Do you wear crocs?"

"Given a choice would you prefer clogs or crocs?"

They began flicking the lights off and on and off and on to create this annoying strobing effect. When asked to stop, they refused.

When I tried to talk to them about their behavior, they laughed at me.

When I asked admin for help, I found that students were misbehaving throughout the school. Since we only have a certain number of administrators, they were doing what might be termed as disciplinary triage where they prioritized their attention towards students who had brought drugs to campus or who had physically assaulted one or more of their classmates.

My immediate supervisor told me to step up my class management or to leave and find another job. In retrospect, I think I may have made a mistake in quitting. My literal mindset tripped me up and it wasn't until a month after I had quit that I realized that I could have gone over her head to speak to the assistant principal or the principal. I could have called the union. Since the district knows that I'm autistic, I could have requested mediation support through the district's office of compliance and accommodations.

Since my immediate supervisor gave me a binary choice i.e. step up my class management or quit, I chose to quit.

I do not regret quitting. The moment I quit, I felt a huge relief because I knew that I would no longer have to tolerate the on-going bullying and disrespect.

The flip side is that I don't have much of a pension since I was only with this particular district for 10 years. Throughout most of my career, I never paid much attention to retirement because my father was quite wealthy and he told me that I would inherit when he passed.

Sadly this was not the case. When my father passed away last March, he left everything to my stepmother who doesn't care for me. Although she is supposed to leave everything to me when she passes, I doubt if this will happen. Once she inherited, the money became hers and she is not legally obligated to leave me anything.

My other problem is that I found myself dragging my heels in applying for other non-teaching jobs. Since so much of who and what I am was tied up with my masking teaching identity, I simply can't conceive of not teaching.

Having said this, I've been following the news with growing horror because the problems that faced me were not unique. Teachers throughout this country are leaving the profession at rates that outpace the replenishment offered by newly graduated teachers.

Since what happened to me at my last school could easily happen at another school, I have gone back to school and am currently retraining as a special education teacher with an endorsement for autism. I should qualify for a provisional (temporary) certificate by June. I will then reapply for a teaching job as a special education teacher.

It's fortunate that I have sufficient savings to last me for a few years if need be.

If I were to resume teaching in Nevada, I could then build upon my pension which I have yet to touch. Once I turn 64 in October, I will also qualify for full social security payments (as opposed to a partial payment) once I finally decide to retire.

While I am not thrilled about what happened, I have long since learned that ranting about unfairness won't change my reality. I can either pick up the metaphorical pieces and get on with my life, or run down my bank accounts and become homeless.

I know from once having been active on Reddit that there are many professionals who have burned out, have exhausted their savings, and have become homeless. Insofar as I enjoy my creature comforts, this is not an option that I would choose for myself. Since I have four cats, this is also not something that I would wish for them.

As to why I am sharing this story, my therapist (who I acquired after quitting my job), has suggested that I need to "reach out" more since I am by nature, a reclusive introvert. One of the disadvantages of being a reclusive introvert is that when bad things happen, I don't have anyone to talk to about my on-going experiences. This is one reason why I sought out a therapist.

I will admit that I felt a bit lost in the days following my resignation. Now that I have a therapist and am enrolled with an online University to take special education classes so as to qualify for a special education endorsement, I am feeling much less uncertain regarding my future.

Even before the Covid pandemic, we had a national shortage of special education teachers. As with other teaching areas, special education has been hit hard. I don't think I will have any problems with finding another job once I hold a special education teaching certificate.

Teaching special education sounds like a great move.
I hope it works out for you.

Thank you.

You're probably not getting many replies because your post was quite long to read through, and it wasn't clear what kind of responses you were looking for. You could break it down - ask more specific job questions in this subforum, and for emotional support post in the Haven subforum.

I appreciate the constructive suggestion. Honestly, I just posted to vent. Since I am by nature, a reclusive introvert, my therapist said that she wanted me to join this site so that I could resume interacting with others even if we're not doing so in-person.

What I didn't initially tell my therapist was that this is my 2nd foray into this site. I was a member just a few years ago but quit after somebody PMed me to suggest that I was grossly exaggerating my experiences since he didn't believe that anyone on the spectrum could have had some of the experiences that I have had. He then condescendingly suggested that it was "okay" for me to tell these tall tales because I wasn't doing anyone any harm."

On top of this annoyance (since I have never lied at this or any other site), were the PMs I received from people whom I had tried to help. Instead of saying thank you, some of these people began telling me about why they couldn't implement the suggestions that I had made. I initially responded by writing other constructive suggestions but after each of these were shot down, I realized that these people weren't necessarily looking for help. They were using me as an echo chamber to validate and enable whatever reasons they had made for not improving the quality of their lives.

Since all of these negative attitudes were starting to impact upon my own mental health, I quit the site.

I am now back under a different user name. While I am willing to help others, I have disabled my PM and personal email to avoid the problems I had the last time around.

I am less willing to write about my own problems and only did so because my therapist encouraged me to do so.

While I would be happy to read replies, I don't necessarily need a reply. I wrote this post to fulfill a promise to my therapist. This is why it likely wasn't clear to you what I was looking for. The answer was that I wasn't looking for anything.

I was a teacher only very briefly after I graduated from college many years ago. I wasn't able to stay with it because I have ME/CFS (chronic fatigue) but I thought it was a nice job and it's something I would have stuck with, although even in my limited experience I did have some students who were bratty and difficult, and that was not easy for me to handle. It sounds like you are making a good choice by specializing in Special Ed. Best of luck to you.

I imagine that your therapist imagined that by reaching out you would also receive feedback and therefore have some interaction.

Thank you for your reply. Yes. I suppose you're right. The therapist likely expected me to interact with others.

I have chosen to do so largely by offering constructive advice.

ME/CFS sounds horrid. I had to google this. I understand that while there is no cure, it's possible to treat some of the symptoms.

About 20 years before I was diagnosed with autism, I was diagnosed with fatigue, chronic depression, and social anxiety disorder; all of which are symptoms of autism. I was stressed out because I was between jobs having just returned from having spent 8 years abroad teaching at American schools in the Middle East. I was depressed because I felt out of touch with everyone around me. While I have always felt this way, this time around it was particularly bad because I had been immersed in a Muslim society for 8 years and was now suffering from reverse culture shock. The fatigue was a symptom of depression.

While I will always have some degree of social anxiety, I was able to get over the depression and fatigue.

May I ask if you able to work as a result of your condition or if you're in the United States, are you on disability?

I fully read your post and replies underneath Its aweosme you have a place you feel comfortable socializing here online. Same goes for me for most of my life my best social experiences were online. Its awful how rude students can be, and you shouldnt have gone through that cruel behavior, same with your higher up. Its unfair! I wish everyone followed the golden rule of teach others how you want to be treatwd. I wish you the best on your next employment adventure!

I am not able to work. I applied for Social Security disability about 25 years ago but was turned down. (After that the credits I had earned by previously working (mostly at part time retail jobs) expired so I could not apply again. I could not apply for SSI because I have a rental property so I don't qualify.) Fortunately my family was able to help support me and I have a rental property so I receive rent money.

Bee33

I am sorry for your experience with social security. I thought about applying for social security after I quit my job 4 months ago but decided that I shouldn't.

After having looked at the prerequisites for disability, I decided that I probably wouldn't qualify insofar as I worked throughout most of my adult life without having even received an autism diagnosis. The insurance industry would have described this as a preexisting condition.

Given my age, I'm a year away from being able to apply for social security in full. If I am working as a special education teacher, I won't apply for social security until I finally retire.

I had rental income to supplement my teacher's pay until just before I quit. Part of the reason why I am unconcerned over my current lack of employment is because I am living off of the rather substantial fund that was generated when I sold my condo.

I'm glad that selling your condo gave you a cushion of security so you don't have to rush into anything. Teaching Special Ed sounds like a great idea. Best of everything to you!