109. QUITTING MY JOB - The Thought Behind Making A Change
I told my form on Friday that this would be my last year at the school. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but there also hadn’t really been a relevant opportunity to bring it up. As we discussed my possible involvement in an upcoming charity football match between staff and students, I had images of old movies flash before my eyes. The cop on their last week before retirement who gets shot before they make it out. I said I’m not breaking my leg with a poorly judged tackle in my last year at the school and the cat was out of the bag. I’m leaving.
Some of the form are also members of my Year 12 Philosophy class. “Can’t you wait another year and then leave?” one asked, realising that someone else - someone new - would be finishing up the course with them come September. Someone they might not like as much.
“I’ve already done that twice” I replied honestly. “There’s never a good time to leave.”
It was true. I’d first thought about leaving my current job in 2019. I’d started working there in 2011 and 2019 was the year after the cohort who joined in Year 7 with me in 2011 had all left the school and gone on to university. I was on duty in the playground one morning and looked around at all the new faces and thought: maybe I’ve stayed here too long? Colleagues had come and gone too. In fact, most of the group who joined the school with me in 2011 had long since moved to pastures new. Had I stayed too long in the same place?
As a philosopher the idea that you just should move from job to job after a certain period of time seemed bizarre to me. Why move just for the sake of moving? If I could do what I wanted to do professionally in my current position, what reason was there to do the same thing somewhere else just because it was different? By 2019, however, I realised it wasn’t about moving on because of some arbitrary date in the calendar. People moved because even doing something you love in the same place every day for too long can grow a bit stagnant.
By 2019, as Head of my department for seven years, I’d helped develop a curriculum I was really proud of. We tweaked the lessons every year. Changed a few things here or there. But why fix what isn’t broken? I’d supervised some amazing student EPQ projects, sent many off to university to study Philosophy, got some of the best GCSE results in the school year after year, and successfully introduced Philosophy at A-level… What I was feeling that day on the playground was not just the loss of the previous year’s Year 13s who I had seen through their entire life at the school, but the ennui that came from knowing exactly what the rest of the day, the week, the month, the term, would be like. I could teach these lessons in my sleep. Though each class of students was unique, similar questions would still be raised from whatever new and updated stimulus material we used. Similar responses would come to the questions we posed however we might frame them. It was always different…but it was different on a spectrum rather than anything radically new.
And then there are the institutional things. The things that started to bug me. When you start at a place new, the possibilities of what might happen are endless. You might even, as I did, attempt to be a force for change within the place where you work. By that point, in 2019, I had changed multiple aspects of school policy and even written a policy document or two. But I had also, by that point, seen the limits of potential change. The lines in the sand which would never be crossed. The specific external pressures which would always get in the way of anything too radical. The personalities who would never budge on certain issues. The litany of good ideas which had either died on the vine or withered away with a whimper after an ineffective roll-out or clash with staff morale. I had done a lot of good, but was starting to feel I had done as much good as I could in that particular environment. I was all too aware of what things would never change, and some of them meant there might always be a certain level of dissatisfaction with what could be achieved there for me. I realised that it wasn’t time to think about leaving in 2019 because I’d been there eight years, it was time to think about leaving because in those eight years I’d been there I might have done everything there was that was worth doing and could be done in that particular context. I had enjoyed my time there, but was growing bored of the repetition. I didn’t feel intellectually stimulated anymore.
But at the same time - what about my students?
Not the Year 11 or Year 13 students who I would have already done everything I could with to prepare for their eventual exams by the time my term of notice was served, but the Year 12 philosophy group who had just started with me and seemed so eager to learn and the Year 10 classes just beginning to embark properly on their GCSE. And then there was the Year 12 members of my form who I would be abandoning mid-UCAS if I left at the end of the year - a reference half-written and their advice for the future somewhat undercooked?
Whenever a teacher leaves a school there will be students their absence affects. Some, let’s be honest, for the good. We may be their least favourite teacher, the scourge of their educational experience, the person whose classroom they dread entering each week and for whom the news of their impending departure will be a cause to celebrate. But for many it will have an impact that’s negative. A loss of continuity amidst a two year exam course or sequence of lessons. There’s no good time to leave. Give your notice to leave at Christmas and you give your students a false start which then stutters to life again in January and is forced to pivot to a new regime. Leave at Easter and you abandon them just before their final exams. Leave at the end of the year, and those students you would normally take from beginning to end of an exam subject get left high and dry mid-way through their journey. There is no good time to leave.
Some might say we should ignore this. It is, after all, our lives, not theirs, and we must prioritise ourselves over others and do what is best for us. But to be honest you probably don’t get into teaching if you’re someone who puts themselves first. I haven’t lost every weeknight and most of my weekends for over a decade now because I do what’s best for me. Perhaps we should prioritise ourselves more, but we can’t help it. We do worry about our students. So the impact on them can’t be ignored. However, there is some weight to the argument that moral consideration of the impact of our decisions must only be that: consideration. It must be considered, but it can’t be the only thing we take account of. And other aspects might take priority or be more compelling. Furthermore, if every possible moment of departure is conceivably bad for a group of students then, it could be argued, that makes the decision to leave more morally permissible at any available time. Unless we are to be in our posts for life - which it is already accepted that we are not - then we simply have to accept that when we choose to leave there will always be some negative outcomes for some students along with any possible positive ones. They are unavoidable and therefore morally neutral so long as they are acknowledged and mitigated for as much as possible. (It is also worth pointing out that those same impacts happen when we stay in our jobs but accept promotions which cut our classroom contact time with students, and few seem to balk too much at doing that). We owe our students something, but not everything.
But all these thoughts became moot when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March of 2020. The week before the first lockdown I was actually looking at other jobs. I had started to think seriously that it might be time to return full time to academia. Higher education. Philosophy divorced from teaching Religious Studies and time and space to research the things which actually interested me. But then came lockdown and suddenly the old arguments about nothing being new anymore went right out the door. Almost overnight we had to reinvent the entire profession. I had to redesign my entire curriculum for online delivery and reimagine the possibilities of education beyond the structure of the school day and the physical restrictions of geography. The whole period was pretty scary, but professionally it was thrilling as a raft of new possibilities began to show themselves.
I don’t think those possibilities ever lived up to their promise, for a variety of reasons, but by the time schools were re-opened in September of 2020 a new consideration of impact was added to my thoughts of leaving. A sense of abandoning ship at a time of crisis. As we returned to the physical classroom, masked and as distanced as we could be, trying to once again transform our approach to lessons to make them “covid safe” it felt like all hands were needed on deck. It also felt like we were lucky to still have a job at a time of such economic uncertainty. If I were to leave then, would there even be a job market to enter?
And then our Headteacher died unexpectedly before Christmas and a further sense of turmoil was added to the equation. Abandoning the ship at a time of plague was bad timing; abandoning it at a time of collective tragedy was just bad taste. Besides, as various lockdowns and isolations were enacted across the school year, that sense of something odd and different persisted. I could no longer say every day was feeling the same. Some days I would come into school not even knowing if my afternoon classes would still be in the building by lunchtime. I would always be on my toes.
The work had become fulfilling, but fulfilling in a different way. Meeting the daily challenge of teaching during covid. Showing up and overcoming whatever obstacles the day hurled at me. But it was not an intellectual fulfilment, and all the talk of “lost learning” and “catching up” for exams that no longer seemed necessary to me was anathema to the new educational horizons that had shown their possibilities in the rubble of a system destroyed by the year before. At home I was doing academic research again. Reading and writing about topics of genuine philosophical interest. Thinking about things that simply felt more important than how best to calculate a teacher-assessed-grade for my exam classes or how we might respond if Ofsted decided to visit the school and ask us about the intent, implementation and impact of our curriculum. I ended the year feeling much the same way I had that day in the playground in 2019 and spent most of the summer thinking about my future.
September 2021 gave me the perfect opportunity to reassess my thoughts. Despite all evidence to the contrary in the rest of the universe, schools in Britain decided to treat the start of the new term as if the pandemic were over. School was back to as “normal” as possible. We also had a brand new Headteacher, so it was a great opportunity to take stock. See how teaching there felt without the context of the pandemic to distort it, or the aftermath of tragedy to make me feel like leaving the place would be some sort of abdication of duty.
I needed some philosophical clarity to focus my thoughts. Essentially, the problem was this:
1) I have no pressing reason to leave my job. I love teaching, there is no new job lined up to go to, or any people telling me they want me to leave. In fact, I could stay in this job for the rest of my professional life.
2) The job gives financial security. We are still living through a pandemic and it is stupid to give up such security at a time where many don’t have that.
3) I have been lucky with this job to find a school where I have been able to teach so much Philosophy alongside the RE that is legally required. Not all schools would be so accommodating and only a handful do what I have managed to do here.
4) I have good colleagues at this job and some really nice classes that I teach. Leaving will possibly leave some of those classes - or colleagues - in the lurch or put them at a disadvantage.
BUT
5) I am no longer intellectually challenged by the job, and intellectual challenge is important to me.
6) The job, like all jobs, is not perfect. It asks a lot of me and for me to give what it asks of me I have to want to give it. After what is now a decade at the same place, I have perhaps given too much to this particular place without getting everything that was needed back from it. Though other jobs might be equally exploitative it is perhaps part of the dance of exploitation that we cannot be so aware of how much is taken for granted from us? Somewhere new, without the history, I think I could still believe that the trade of time and effort is worth it and hold hope without the expectation of disappointment for my efforts.
7) If I don’t explore my options now, when I can afford to do so without any financial dependents or overhanging burdens of debt, when will I explore them?
With that being the context, I started September of 2021 - my tenth year at the school - on a fact-finding mission. Given points 1, 2, 3 and 4, I would need to discover if:
a) it was possible to find the intellectual challenge I felt was lacking,
b) feel motivated to buy-in again fully to the institutional demands I had grown disillusioned with,
and
c) make peace with the idea of staying where I was instead of exploring my options.
With that intention, I began the new academic year in a positive frame of mind, looking for fulfilment, motivation and contentment. By Christmas, however, I realised that none of these three things could be found in a place where I had so much history. Even exciting new developments would feel somehow part of a continuing narrative rather than a departure from the past, and when I got home from work each day it was my academic research that was motivating me far more than another batch of marking the same old assessment pieces I had been marking year after year after year. Paperwork for paperwork’s sake, instrumental for keeping some imaginary accountability agency happy rather than having any intrinsic educational worth seemed to be taking up far more of my time than jobs I felt were actually worthwhile. Ultimately the logic was clear: if there were other options available where motivation and fulfilment were possible then why stay on a treadmill that left only discontent, even if it was the safe and comfortable thing to do?
On New Year’s Day I made a resolution. I emailed in my resignation and took a leap of faith. Considerate of my classes, and ensuring the school had sufficient time to plan for its future, I agreed to stay until the end of the year, but with no new job lined up to safely move into once my contract comes up and no clear path of what comes next - another school? A university? Stay where I live currently or move somewhere new? - I decided it was time to find my next chapter, whatever that next chapter might be.
Whenever I left there would be students and classes left behind. It is never convenient to move on and it is pretty terrifying to do so when your destination remains unknown. There will, too, probably still be that sense of abandoning ship even though the worst of the pandemic is behind us and the new Head - who I really like - is firmly ensconced and taking the school confidently into the future. I will likely always wonder what might have happened if I’d stayed.
But I would wonder far more what might have happened if I’d left had I stayed.
It’s not that the grass is always greener on the other side, but the grass is new grass on the other side. Different grass. A change of grass after sitting in the same field for so long. There is a reason that, be it Buddhist or Hindu notions of samsara, the Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence, or the Hollywood hell of Groundhog Day - endless repetition is something a diverse array of thinkers agree will eventually motivate us to break free.
Even philosophers can get confused, and grappling with what exactly “the good life” might be has caused many of us sleepless nights. For me though, I now know a little more than Socrates (who knew only that he knew nothing). I now know, at least, that thinking about those questions - having those sleepless nights - is what I want to do more of going forward, and that I would rather lose a night of sleep thinking about the big issues in Philosophy than worrying about how to make another day in the same old classroom teaching the same old lessons interesting again.
I will miss it dearly when I leave at the end of the year, but I will also be free.
Author: DaN McKee
My book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE and from all good booksellers. Read my Anarchist Studies journal paper on Anarchism and Character Education here. For everything else DaN McKee related: www.everythingdanmckee.com