One of the most difficult decisions a teacher can face is whether to stay in the profession or move on. For some, it’s prompted by workload or exhaustion. For others, it’s a quiet feeling that they’ve outgrown their current role or are simply curious about what else might be possible. Whatever has brought them to this point, the uncertainty can be excruciating because there doesn’t seem to be an obvious right answer.
One of the privileges of coaching teachers is that I get to listen to the conversations they have with themselves. Not just the conversations they have with me, but the ones that have been going on long before we meet. The quiet, relentless commentary that accompanies them on the drive to work, wakes them at three o’clock in the morning, or fills the silence when they’re walking the dog.
It often sounds something like this: “Should I leave teaching? Am I just exhausted? Would another school be different? Am I throwing away years of experience? What if I can’t earn enough? What if I make the biggest mistake of my life?”
Most of us assume that the way through uncertainty is to think harder. After all, if it’s an important decision, surely we need to analyse every option, weigh up every possibility and make absolutely certain we’ve chosen the right path. That seems like common sense – right?
Well… on the other hand, maybe not!
I’ve noticed something curious over the years. The teachers who eventually find clarity are rarely the ones who have spent the longest trying to work everything out. In fact, their breakthrough often arrives at an unexpected moment: while out for a walk, gardening, driving home or enjoying a weekend away when, for a little while, they had stopped trying to solve the problem altogether. That used to puzzle me. Surely clarity should arrive at the end of more thinking, not less.
I made more sense of all this when I came across the work of Sydney Banks, whose understanding has influenced many coaches and psychologists. He suggested that our experience of life is created from the inside out. We don’t simply experience our circumstances; we experience our thinking about those circumstances in the moment. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.
When our minds are busy with fearful thinking, the future can look uncertain and overwhelming. Every option appears to carry risk. Every decision feels as though it has the power to define the rest of our lives. In those moments it genuinely looks as though the problem is our career.
At other times, perhaps after a good night’s sleep or a weekend away, the very same career can look different. New possibilities appear. We remember what excites us. The future feels less threatening with more potential. The circumstances haven’t changed overnight. Our thinking has.
This isn’t an invitation to ignore practical realities or pretend that career decisions are easy. There will still be research to do, conversations to have and decisions to make. And maybe leaving teaching will feel the right way to go. But on the way to making that decision perhaps we can hold our thinking a little more lightly. Perhaps every anxious thought doesn’t deserve our attention simply because it has appeared. And perhaps the clarity we’re searching for isn’t something we have to manufacture through ever more analysis. Perhaps it emerges naturally when our minds become a little quieter.
I’ve come to believe that one of the most valuable roles I play as a coach isn’t helping people find the answer. It’s helping them create the space in which their own answer has the opportunity to appear.
If you’re standing at that crossroads, wondering whether to stay or leave teaching, you may not need to think any harder about the decision itself. You may simply need to notice that you’re thinking…
As your mind settles, something interesting often happens. What previously felt like an impossible decision begins to look a little simpler. One direction starts to feel more natural than the other. Not because you’ve analysed every possible outcome, but because the mental noise has quietened enough for your own wisdom to be heard.
That doesn’t mean the work is over! Once you’ve decided to stay, there may be important conversations to have, boundaries to reset or opportunities to explore. And if you’ve decided it’s time to move on, there will be a career-change process to follow, CVs to update, networking to do, applications to write and interviews to prepare for. Thought becomes a wonderful servant again, helping you make plans and take purposeful action.
Perhaps that’s the real distinction here. We don’t need our thinking to tell us which path is right when our minds are caught up in uncertainty. But once the direction becomes clear, our ability to think, plan and create becomes one of our greatest assets.
The decision comes from a quieter mind. The journey that follows is where thoughtful action really comes into its own.
Photo Credit: Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash