They Left Teaching in Search of a Better Life. Did They Find It?
为了更美好的生活，他们离开了教学岗位。他们找到了吗？
The breaking point for Julie Sherlock was a literal one.
朱莉·夏洛克 (Julie Sherlock) 达成字面意义上的突破点。
The elementary music teacher was burned out and so very tired, following years of feeling increasingly overburdened and bulldozed by students and administrators alike. But it wasn’t until she broke her leg last spring that she knew it was time to call it quits.
这位小学音乐教师已经精疲力竭，非常疲惫，多年来她感到负担越来越沉重，学生和行政人员都欺负她。去年春天她摔断了腿，她意识到是时候退出了。
Sherlock was walking down the school hallway, carrying her heated-up lunch back to her classroom to eat, when a student called out to her with a question. The teacher, then 61 years old, turned to respond and wound up on the ground.
夏洛克走在学校走廊上，将加热的午餐带回教室吃饭，这时一个学生问了她一个问题。这位61岁的老师转身想要回复，却不小心倒地受伤了。
“I said, ‘This is it. I can’t do this anymore,’” Sherlock recalls about that clarifying moment and the many difficult weeks that followed, traversing school hallways and hauling around musical instruments on crutches.
“我说，'行了，我不能再这样做了，'“夏洛克回忆起那个清晰的时刻和之后经历的许多艰难的星期，穿过学校的走廊，拄着拐杖拖着乐器。
She meant it, too. That was Sherlock’s last year in the classroom. Several months after her injury, in August 2022, she started a new job as a grants coordinator for a community mental health agency in Northern Michigan, where she lives.
她是认真的。那是夏洛克在教室里的最后一年。她受伤几个月后，在2022年8月开始了新的工作，担任她所居住的密歇根州北部社区精神卫生机构的赠款协调员。
“I knew I had a lot of good, productive years still in me, but that I couldn’t do it teaching,” says Sherlock, now 62.
“我知道我还有很多美好的、生机勃勃的时光，但我不能教书，” 现年62岁的夏洛克说。
It’s a sentiment shared by many teachers, at a time when adequately staffing classrooms is already a challenge: Tens of thousands of teaching positions sit vacant this school year, and multiples more are filled by “underqualified” educators.
这是许多教师的共同心声，而此时为教室配备足够的人员已经是一个挑战：本学年有数万个教师职位空缺，还有更多的职位由 "不合格 "的教育工作者填补。
In January 2022, a National Education Association survey found that 55 percent of educators were thinking of leaving the profession earlier than planned, nearly double the number of teachers who said the same in July 2020. The next month, a Gallup poll revealed that K-12 staff suffer higher burnout rates than any other segment of the U.S. labor force, at 44 percent.
在2022年1月，国家教育协会的一项调查发现，有55% 的教育工作者正在考虑提前离开该行业，这几乎是在2020年7月中持同样观点的教师人数的两倍。下个月，盖洛普 (Gallup) 的一项民意调查显示，基础教育员工的倦怠率高于美国职业的任何其他部门，为44%。
Most educators have not left, and many never will. But some are following through; they’re walking out of their classrooms and away from the careers they thought they’d have for life.
大多数教育者没有离开，许多人永远不会离开。但是有些人正在跟进；他们走出教室，走出他们认为自己一生都会工作的职业。
Then what?
然后呢？
To find out what happens after teachers put in their notice, as they transition into their next acts, EdSurge talked with six former classroom teachers who resigned at the end of the last school year, after that NEA survey was conducted. Is life on the other side everything they hoped and expected — and are they happy now?
为了查明在教师发出通知后，过渡到下一个行为时会发生什么，教育媒体EdSurge与六名前一线老师进行了交谈，他们在上个学年结束后辞职，之后进行了全国教育协会的调查。不做老师的生活是他们所希望的一切吗？他们现在幸福吗？
‘Unsustainable’ Asks
“难以持续” 的要求
Why teachers leave has been well-documented, including by EdSurge. It comes down to feeling underpaid, underappreciated and undersupported while being overworked and overwhelmed.
教师为什么离开已有据可查，包括EdSurge提供的数据。原因有在过度劳累和不堪重负的同时感到薪水不足，受到低估，支持不足。
Many teachers cite problems that emerged or were exacerbated by the pandemic, but none blames the pandemic alone for their departures. At most, they say, it expedited a process that was already underway.
许多老师列举了疫情而出现或加剧的问题，但没有人把他们的离开仅仅归咎于疫情。他们说，疫情最多只是加快了这个已在进行的离职过程。
“COVID was a tipping point,” Sherlock says. “But things were present before COVID.”
“疫情是一个转折点，” 夏洛克说，“但是问题在疫情之前就已经存在了。”
“I think, eventually, I would have left anyway,” admits John Stepp, a former fifth grade teacher who now sells real estate in Frankfurt, Kentucky. “I always thought, ‘What other options are out there?’”
“我想，最终我还是会离开的，” 约翰·斯特普承认，他曾是一名五年级老师，现在在肯塔基州法兰克福出售房地产，“我一直在想，'外面还有什么其他选择？'”
The word that comes up again and again is unsustainable.
一次又一次出现的词是难以持续。
The pay is unsustainable. The workload is unsustainable. The emotional toll is unsustainable. The impact on physical and mental health is unsustainable.
工资难以持续；工作量难以持续；情感上的损失难以持续；对身体和心理健康的影响难以持续。
“For a long time, I lived and breathed teaching,” says Elizabeth Neilson, a former high school English teacher who lives in Minneapolis. “I wanted to be good at it. I wanted to serve my students well. But it came at the cost of my mental health.”
居住在明尼阿波利斯的前高中英语老师伊丽莎白·尼尔森 (Elizabeth Neilson) 说: “很长一段时间，我一直在教书。我希望我能做好，我想好好对待我的学生，但这以我的心理健康为代价。”
Neilson, 36, adds: “I was at a fork in the road. I could stay and be Mrs. Neilson. But all of Elizabeth had disappeared. Things I liked to do — make art, write poetry — had disappeared in favor of being a teacher. I didn’t have time for myself anymore. It got to the point where I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’ve lost who I am entirely. Who I am is gone.’”
36岁的尼尔森补充道: “我当时在一个岔路口。我可以留下来做尼尔森老师。但是所有的我——伊丽莎白都消失了。我喜欢做的事情，创作艺术，写诗，消失了，转而成为一名教师。我再也没有时间做我自己了。是时候实现所想了，我不能再这样做了，我完全失去了自己，我究竟是谁已经不重要了。'”
For Cami Heredia, a former high school English teacher turned technical recruiter, it was partly about the money and partly about the mental exhaustion.
对于前高中英语老师转变为技术招聘人员的卡米·埃雷迪亚 (Cami Heredia) 来说，原因部分与金钱有关，部分与精神疲惫有关。
“I would come home absolutely drained, with no energy to hang out with my husband or go to the gym or make dinner,” explains Heredia, 25, who lives in Jacksonville, North Carolina. “I started to feel very discouraged. … I was to the point that I was like, ‘I don’t care. I'll be a bartender. I’ll be a cashier. Anything has to be better than this.’”
住在北卡罗来纳州杰克逊维尔的25岁的埃雷迪亚解释说："我回到家时已经完全精疲力竭，没有精力和我丈夫一起出去闲逛，也没有精力去健身房或做晚饭。"我开始闷闷不乐......我已经到了这样的地步——我不在乎了。我会成为酒保，成为一名收银员。任何事情都绝对比这更好。"
‘Am I Even Qualified?’
“我有资格吗？”
In a private Facebook group with more than 76,000 members, called Life After Teaching, current and recovering educators seek counsel, share progress reports and offer words of encouragement. They also ask, over and over, some variation of the question: What am I even qualified for besides teaching?
在一个拥有76,000多名成员的私人脸书小组中，名为 “教学后生活”，一线的和正在恢复的教育工作者寻求咨询，分享进展，互相鼓励。他们一遍又一遍地问着： 除了教书，我还能做什么？
This is a hesitation for many wannabe former teachers. If teaching is all they’ve known, it’s difficult to imagine a spot for themselves in the corporate world, seated behind a computer screen all day. Many teachers don’t have LinkedIn accounts, because they never needed one. And they don’t make a habit of keeping their resumes up-to-date.
对于许多想离开教师岗位的人来说，他们很犹豫。如果他们只知道教学，很难想象自己在公司有一个整天坐在电脑屏幕前的工位。许多老师没有领英帐户，他们也从来不需要，而且他们没有养成更新简历的习惯。
Sherlock, the 62-year-old from Michigan, found teaching later in life than most. She divorced at 40 and went back to school, becoming a music teacher at 44.
来自密歇根州的62岁的夏洛克开始教书比大多数人晚。她40岁离婚，回到学校，44岁时才成为一名音乐老师。
“I poured 175 percent of myself into it for 17 years,” Sherlock says, leaving 0 percent left for years 18 and beyond.
她说：“17年来，我投入了175% 的心血，18年来甚至更久都不曾离开。
So when it came time to look for something else, she was self-conscious, worrying that her credentials would be an impediment to future opportunities. She hadn’t sent out a resume or interviewed for a new position in years, she says.
因此，在需要寻找其他工作时，她很愧疚，担心自己的资历会成为未来机会的障碍。她说，她已经好几年没有投过简历，也没有面试过新的职位。
Others found themselves in the same situation, searching exhaustively for an alternative path that both sounded appealing and for which they would be qualified.
其他老师也处于同样的境地，努力寻找一条听起来有吸引力的，自己也有资格参与的道路来代替老师的工作。
Yet those who have landed new positions — as all six former teachers interviewed for this story have — have been pleasantly surprised to learn their classroom skills are, in fact, quite transferable to other roles and industries.
然而，那些已经获得新工作的人，就像接受这个故事采访的所有六位前老师一样，惊讶地发现他们的课堂技能实际上可以转移到其他角色和行业。
Sherlock had written and won grants for her music classroom before. Knowing that was something she could do elsewhere, she began applying to foundations and nonprofits.
夏洛克以前曾为她的音乐教室写过书并获得过资助。她意识到这是她可以在其他领域做的事情，便开始向基金会和非营利组织申请资金。
Once she was settled into her new position as a grants coordinator, she saw how similar grant proposals and project plans are to writing and evaluating a lesson plan for a class.
当她获得了新的资助协调员职位，她意识到资助提案和项目计划与编写和评估班级的课程计划是多么相似。
There have been adjustments, to be sure, Sherlock adds. She had to learn how to speak “a completely different language” practically overnight, noting that corporate jargon and mental health terminology both were relatively unfamiliar to her.
夏洛克补充说，当然也有一些调整。她不得不在一夜之间学会如何说 "一种完全不同的语言"，她指出，企业术语和心理健康术语对她来说都是相对陌生的。
“There were moments when I was overwhelmed,” Sherlock notes, “but it was also invigorating.”
“有时候我不知所措，” 夏洛克指出，“但这也令我振奋。”
Tim Wright, a 27-year-old living in Western Michigan, says that his new job as a mortgage loan officer draws on the skills he developed and honed in the classroom: time management, multitasking, working independently — and even instructing. He writes blogs and makes videos to educate clients about property values, interest rates and loans, he says.
现年27岁的蒂姆·赖特 (Tim Wright) 居住在密歇根州西部，他说，他抵押贷款官员的新工作借鉴了他在课堂上发展和磨练的技能：时间管理，多任务处理，独立工作甚至指导。他说，他还会写博客并制作视频，教育客户有关房地产价值，利率和贷款的知识。
“I never didn’t like teaching the kids. It was usually everything else around the public school system that bothered me,” Wright says. “It’s nice I still get to educate, just in a different way.”
“我从来不喜欢教孩子们。公立学校系统相关的一切都困扰着我，“赖特说，“我还能接受教育，只是方式不同而已。”
Erin Costello Wehring, 42, is now an administrative assistant for a department manager at an oil and gas company in the Houston area. She says the job requires organization and people skills, both of which she also needed to be a successful elementary school teacher.
42岁的艾琳-科斯特罗-韦琳（Erin Costello Wehring）现在是休斯顿地区一家石油和天然气公司部门经理的行政助理。她说，这份工作需要组织和人际交往能力，而成功的小学老师都兼备这几项能力。
“I felt really lost in the beginning,” she says of her job search. But she listened to podcasts about teachers who’d made the leap and bought a course that offered a roadmap for leaving.
“一开始我真的非常迷茫，” 她谈到自己的求职时说。但她听了关于那些已经跳出桎梏的教师的播客，购买了一门提供离职进程的课程。
“In the moment,” Costello Wehring acknowledges, “it felt really long and really hard.” But within just a few months, she, like so many others, had been offered a position — and with it, a ticket out.
“此刻，”科斯特罗-韦琳承认，“感觉真的很漫长，真的很艰难。” 但在短短几个月内，她和其他许多人一样，得到了一个职位，获得了“离开校园”的门票。
The New Balancing Act
新的平衡法案
One of the things that many former teachers craved, when they were looking for the exit ramp, was better work-life balance.
许多前教师在寻找出口时渴望的一件事是将工作与生活更好地进行平衡。
Teachers often put in evening and weekend work to do all of the tasks that pile up while they are instructing, from responding to parent emails to lesson planning and grading.
老师经常需要在晚上和周末工作，完成他们在指导学生时堆积的所有任务，回复父母的电子邮件，设计课程计划，评分等等。
In their new roles, none of the former teachers is regularly putting in extra hours. Two have actually been chided for doing work that goes beyond what is expected of them.
在新工作岗位，没有一位前老师要定期加班。而且有两个人因为所做的工作超出进程而受到责备。
“I was absolutely gobsmacked by this,” notes Neilson, recalling the time, early in her new role as an instructional designer for a financial company, when she sent an email after 5 p.m.
尼尔森回忆起当时作为一家金融公司的一个新教学设计师，当时她在下午5点后发送了一封电子邮件，说道: “我对此感到非常震惊。”
Her boss told her that that’s not how they operate, and that anything that happens after business hours “can wait.”
她的老板告诉她，这不是他们的工作方式，工作时间后发生的任何事情都“可以搁置”。
“My job starts at 8 and ends at 5, and all the time that remains is mine,” Neilson says. “I can do all of those things I couldn’t do teaching. I feel like I have my identity back — all those pieces I had to put away to become a teacher, all the things that make me who I am. It just feels a lot more balanced.”
尼尔森说: “我的工作从8点开始，到5点结束，剩下的所有时间都是我的。我能做所有这些我不能做的事情。我觉得我找回了我的身份——所有那些为了成为一名教师而不得不收起的东西，所有那些让我找回自我的东西。我感觉生活工作平衡了很多。”
Heredia, the North Carolinian who taught for three years before resigning, says her quality of life has improved since leaving the classroom, mainly because she has more autonomy over her time now.
北卡罗来纳州的埃雷迪亚在辞职前教了三年书，她说，自从离开教室以来，生活质量得也到了改善，因为她现在拥有更多的自主权。
Her position is remote, so she works from home full time. She wakes up in the morning and makes a hot breakfast. She takes a lunch break. She goes to workout classes and walks her dog.
她的位置偏远，所以她全职在家工作。她早上醒来，做了一顿热腾腾的早餐，她会午休，还去上健身课，遛狗。
“I get to eat lunch in silence and go to the bathroom whenever I want, so it’s great,” she says with a laugh. “I have energy at the end of the day. My work-life balance is 1,000 times better than it was as a teacher.”
“我可以安静地吃午饭，想什么时候去洗手间就什么时候去，所以很棒，” 她笑着说，“一天结束时我精力充沛。我的工作与生活平衡比当老师时要好1,000倍。”
But the better outlook on life comes from more than just reduced stress and a lighter schedule. Heredia and others say they have been relieved to find that the expectations placed on them in their new roles are within reason, and that they feel respected and appreciated by colleagues and clients.
但是，更美好的人生不仅仅来自减轻的压力和更为轻松的时间表。埃雷迪亚和其他人说，他们发现对新角色的期望得到了满足，受到了同事和客户的尊重和赞赏，他们深感欣慰。
“I put my best foot forward, work hard and do what I’m supposed to do,” Heredia says of her new job, “and if something outside my control changes the outcome, that’s what it is — outside my control. The expectation with teaching was I had to fix everything that was outside my control, too.”
“我全力以赴，努力工作，做我应该做的事情，” 埃雷迪亚谈到她的新工作时说，“如果我无法控制的事情改变了结果，那就是我无法控制的事情。可是对教学的期望是，我必须修复我无法控制的一切。”
Others echoed this, saying that in school, they were constantly putting out fires that weren’t theirs to extinguish. That was just how it went.
其他人对此表示赞同，他们说，在学校里，他们在不断灭火，尽管那不是他们需要扑灭的大火。事情就是这样。
“My husband says it’s like he’s married to a different person,” Sherlock says. “I do feel like a different person. I do. I feel more respected and smarter.”
“我丈夫说他好像娶了另一个人，” 夏洛克说，“我确实觉得自己发生了变化。我觉得自己更受尊重，也更聪明了。”
Wright, the mortgage officer in Western Michigan, says he didn’t feel very appreciated as a teacher.
密歇根州西部的抵押贷款官员赖特 (Wright) 说，作为一名教师，他并没有很感激。
“In this career I’m in now, when I work with my clients, they say ‘thank you,’” he notes. “I’ve probably heard more ‘thank yous’ in the last six or seven months than in my four years teaching.”
“在我现在的职业生涯中，当我和我的客户一起工作时，他们会说 '谢谢'，” 他说，“在过去的六七个月里，我听到的 '谢谢' 可能比我四年的教学生涯中还要更多。”
Paycheck Improvements
薪水改善
Beyond “thank you,” another way to show appreciation to employees is through compensation. Wright’s new job is commission-based, and while that comes with inherent risk, he likes that he is rewarded based on the value he brings to his company.
除了 “谢谢”，对员工表示赞赏的另一种方式是薪酬。赖特的新工作是以佣金为基础的，虽然这伴随着固有的风险，但他喜欢由自己为公司带来的价值而获得回报。
Stepp, the Kentucky realtor, feels that way too.
肯塔基州房地产经纪人斯特普也有这种感觉。
“I chose a career where I knew if I could bring value to my brokerage, to my clients … then that would be reflected in my income,” says Stepp, 36.
36岁的斯特普说: “我选择这个职业，我知道如果我能为我的经纪公司和客户等带来价值，这会反映在我的收入中。”
He likes knowing that if he wants to make more money, he can just work harder, instead of knowing that no matter how much effort he puts in, the numbers on his paycheck are going to look the same, as it was in teaching.
如果他想赚更多的钱，他可以更加努力地工作，他喜欢这种掌控感，不像在教学中，无论他付出多少努力，薪水上的数字都不会变。
Because of the way teacher salary schedules are designed, many former teachers calculate the bounty of their current incomes by measuring the number of additional years they would have had to teach to get there.
由于教师工资表的设计方式，许多前教师通过衡量他们必须再教多少年才能达到这个目标，来计算他们目前收入的丰厚程度。
Neilson, who taught for 10 years, would have had to teach for five more to get to the salary she was offered as an entry-level instructional designer.
尼尔森教了10年书，为了获得入门级教学设计师的薪水，她不得不再教5年书。
Heredia, who taught for three years, would have had to stay in her district for another decade to earn what she does now as a recruiter. “I grew, financially, more in six months than I would’ve in 10 years at the school district,” she explains.
埃雷迪亚教了三年书，她将不得不在自己的地区再呆十年，才能获得她现在作为招聘人员的收入。她解释说: “我在6个月内的经济增长比在学校10年的增长要多。”
Costello Wehring, who taught for 12 years, got a $10,000 raise when she left her teaching job to be an administrative assistant. She would’ve had to work another 15 years in her district to get to her current pay.
科斯特洛·韦琳教了12年书，当她离开教学工作去做行政助理时，她加薪了10,000美元。她需要在自己的地区再工作15年才能达到目前的薪水。
“It’s awesome,” she says. “I am able to do things with my family now that, when I was teaching, there was no way.”
“太棒了，” 她说，“现在我可以和家人一起了，当我教书的时候，我根本没有办法和家人待在一起。”
The Pursuit of Happiness
追求幸福
So, are they happy? Was it worth it?
那么，他们开心吗？值得吗？
These questions are largely met with a resounding “yes” — with some caveats.
这些问题普遍得到了响亮的回答“是” ，不过还有一些警示。
Several teachers interviewed say that, if enough were to change in education, they would consider returning to the classroom. They feel like teaching was the career they were meant to have, and if things were different, they never would have left.
接受采访的几位老师说，如果足以改变教育，他们会考虑回到学校。他们觉得教书是他们本应拥有的职业，如果情况不同，他们永远不会离开。
“There are a lot of pieces about it that I miss,” says Neilson, calling out how much she enjoyed talking with her students, developing curricula, coaching the yearbook team and sitting down to help a teenager understand something. “But in the end, the cons outweighed the pros. The pros are there, and they are wonderful. But all of the cons — not enough money, no time to be who you are and do what you love, the need to give all of yourself to the children — if all of that went away, I’d go back.”
“有很多关于学校的事情让我怀念，” 尼尔森说，她非常喜欢和她的学生交谈，开发课程，指导年鉴团队，坐下来帮助孩子们理解一些东西。“但最终，弊大于利。优点是这些都很棒。但是所有的缺点——没有足够的钱，没有时间做你自己，做你喜欢的事情，需要把自己全部献给孩子们。如果所有这些缺点都消失了，我会回去的。"
For Costello Wehring, it’s more complicated.
对于韦琳来说，这更复杂。
“It really felt like it’s where I was supposed to be,” she says of the classroom. “Even where I am now, I enjoy my job, I have a fantastic boss and my mental health is much better. But I’m a teacher at heart.”
她在谈到学校时说: “这真的感觉就像是我应该去的地方。不管我现在身处何处，我也喜欢我的工作，我有一个很棒的老板，我的心理健康好多了。但我内心仍然是个老师。”
Yet Costello Wehring is not going back. She insists she’s done with teaching for good.
然而，科斯特洛·韦琳不会回头。她坚持认为自己已经较好地完成了教学工作。
Sherlock, too, misses the kids and the joy that came from being around them every day, “but really, that’s all,” she says. She doesn’t miss anything else, especially the “Sunday scaries” she used to get — that overwhelming sense of dread that precedes the start of a new workweek.
夏洛克也想念孩子们，也想念每天在他们身边带来的快乐。她说：“但真的，就这样吧”。她再也不会错过其他任何东西，尤其是她过去常常感到的“周日恐怖”——在新工作周开始之前，那种压倒一切的恐惧感。
Sherlock, like many of her peers who have left, didn’t turn her back on education, though. She continues to teach private music lessons and participate in workshops around the state.
不过，夏洛克与许多离开教师岗位的同龄人一样，并没有拒绝接受教育。她继续教授私人音乐课，并参加全州的讲习班。
“I still fill my teaching bucket,” she notes.
她说：“我仍然填满了我的教学任务。”
Heredia is happy now, and she doesn’t envision going back. But she wants to find an outlet for her teaching passion. Maybe a coaching gig or a summer camp opportunity.
埃雷迪亚现在很开心，她不打算回去。但是她想为自己的教学热情找到一个出路。也许是指导演出或夏令营。
Costello Wehring would like to run for a position on the school board some day, she thinks.
她认为，韦琳有一天可能会想要竞选学校董事会的职位。
“I’m focusing on my kids and myself now,” Costello Wehring says, “but I don’t want to just walk away.”
“我现在专注于我的孩子和自己，” 科斯特洛·韦琳说，“但我不想就这么离开。”
