Seven Things I Wish I Knew Before Teaching 298

What would you tell the version of yourself who is trying so hard to do everything perfectly? I’m revisiting a Teacher Truth conversation I recorded years ago and adding what I’d tell myself now, with a clearer view of boundaries, identity, and what it really takes to stay well in this profession.

We talk about why teaching cannot be your whole personality and why staying late should never be a badge of honor. I share the painful reality many educators meet sooner or later: being shamed for work life balance, being “voluntold” into more responsibilities, and feeling like your time is never truly your own. If you’ve ever gone home carrying the weight of the day and wondered why it feels impossible to switch off, you’ll feel seen here.

We also get honest about the systems that can twist good intentions. Standardized testing and test score pressure can damage student confidence and leave teachers with moral distress, especially when kids feel ashamed or defeated. On top of that, we name the practical challenges that drive teacher burnout: low teacher pay, lack of professional respect, paying out of pocket for classroom supplies, and the way teaching can make you feel trapped when you try to transition to a different career.

This is a heavy one, but it’s meant to help you protect your heart and remember you’re not alone. If it resonates, subscribe, share it with a teacher friend, and leave a review so more educators can find this kind of honest support.

Transcript

The Question That Starts It

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What would you tell the version of yourself who is trying so hard to do everything perfectly? So today, welcome to One Tired Teacher. I'm Trina Deberie, and this is episode 298, Seven Things I Wish I Knew Before My First Year Teaching. So I actually recorded this episode several years ago, and I was, I kind of meant it as a tribute to my former self because I'd been so hard on myself when I left the classroom feeling like I was a failure, like I'd done something wrong that I was letting people down. And so we're gonna listen to some of those feelings and thoughts in just a moment, but I am gonna add to that. So hope you stick around.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Welcome to One Tired Teacher. And even though she may need a nap, this teacher is ready to wake up and speak her truth about the trials and treasures of teaching. Here she is, wide awake. Wait, she's not asleep right now, is she? She she is awake, right? Okay. From Trina Deborah Teaching and Learning, your host, Trina Debori.

Teaching Cannot Be Your Whole Self

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Hey, so this is these are my thoughts from uh several years ago. And today I'm gonna add a little bit to that because I think there's also some things that I would remind myself now at this age, at this time in life. And one of the things, and I'm not sure I talked about this a couple years ago, one of the things is that I would want to make sure that I didn't I didn't take my career or my job or my responsibility teaching as I would tell myself, don't make it everything, don't make it your whole entire personality, but don't uh own every single heavy thing and carry it around with you every day. Um, but you know, try not to put it before your family. It try to remember to put first things first. Those are things that I would definitely want to tell myself, and also it's okay if priorities shift, if there's different seasons of your life. Some seasons it might be really cathartic or desirable to stay until seven o'clock at night, or spend the night at school, or get there really early, or you know, work on the weekends. And then some seasons it's not. Some seasons your kids are little and they're only little once, or you are, you know, get to go on a trip and experience a different location or a different way of life. So you know, hold on to all the parts of yourself. Um, and that survival isn't the goal, being happy, being happy, being fulfilled, feeling good about what you're doing, it matters so much. I think I would just be a little kinder to myself and just remind myself that I don't have to be perfect, and I would hope that I could convince myself to really believe this version of myself. So if I if I could sit down next to the teacher I was in my first year, I don't I would definitely not hand her a better lesson plan. I tell her she doesn't have to disappear inside this job to be good at it.

Why These Truths Feel Triggering

SPEAKER_00 3:49

So today's episode is another one of those teacher truth episodes where it can be a bit triggering, it can be a bit difficult, it is really hard to talk about sometimes when you have been a teacher for, you know, more than several decades, and um and you feel compelled to to share with other people or people that are thinking about being a teacher and thinking about going into the classroom and thinking that that might be the profession for them. Because I think if we're honest with one another, we can help future teachers avoid some of the pitfalls that can occur when you're teaching. There are some beautiful, beautiful things about being a teacher and about spending most of your life inside of a school a school with children. There's some they're wonderful things. And actually next week I'm going to share the um I'm gonna share the positives. I'm gonna share the the seven things that I uh didn't know I would learn or something like that. Like uh I will give the flip side of this particular episode and um and then I also want to do another episode on interviewing. So what you can expect in an interview. So those are some things that that are coming down down the pike. Even though I think I said that I was going to take a break, I feel really compelled to to share these few episodes. So we'll be taking more of a more of that hiatus in July. And hopefully this gives you a little bit of food for thought over the summer.

End Of Year Camp Unit Spotlight

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Hey, so before we get into this episode, which I again I want to warn you that it can be really challenging to talk about some of the things that we wish that we knew in ways that we can maybe save someone else some heartache. And so I just want to prepare you for that. But I do want you to know that this episode is being supported by one of my favorite resources, and that is my end-of-the-year camp unit. Now, some of the benefits and beautiful things about teaching is watching children learn and the light bulbs go off and the enthusiasm, the excitement. And we'll talk some more about that next week. But engaging activities and activities that help kids have fun and learning that feel more like play, that feel like, you know, fuels their creativity and fuels their enthusiasm, especially at the end of the year when it can be such an insane time and the behaviors can get out of control. And we ourselves are so busy, there's so much to be done at the end of the year that we often find ourselves feeling like we don't have enough energy or time to kind of deal with what the kids need. So it which is totally understandable because it's it's an all-consuming to-do list. So it does feel like a lot. So that's why I created this end-of-the-year camp unit, which is so much fun. It actually reviews skills that you re that you acquired through the year and reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and it's based on a camp theme. There's activities that can be done independently, there's activities that can be done with a partner, that can be done a whole class. You can get involved as little or as much as you want, and it really keeps the kids occupied, busy, engaged, happy, um, practicing skills. So you I feel like all those basis are covered. If you are still in school, this is a great unit to use for like your last week of school, and this may be your last week of school, or if you are out of school and you're teaching summer school, it can be a great um unit to include in a summer school program as well. And so I hope that you will find value in this. You can grab it for less than a trip to Target. I'll tell you that. It's even less than a filling up your tank. So that's much less than that. So hopefully it will be something that you can you find valuable in your classroom. You can find it on my shop on Trina Debris Teaching and Learning, and I'll link to this resource in the show notes. It's my end of the year camp theme unit. All right, so let's get on with the show. So

Why I See The System Differently

SPEAKER_00 8:19

I want to talk to you about things that I wish that I had known before I became a teacher. And it's not just me, actually. I reached out to several friends and asked their opinions as well, teachers, one of which is still in a school and has left the classroom, was a classroom teacher for over 20 years and is now in the media center. And she is amazing. And so when I when I ever I hear upsetting, you know, feeling disgruntled or feeling upset or feeling frustrated with a system from her, I think this is a you know master teacher, and she's saying these things, she's feeling upset. This is a huge problem because I used to think it was just me, that I just felt like whiny or angry. And and it didn't happen right away. I didn't feel this way in the beginning of my career. I didn't feel this way for a while, and I um didn't understand why other people did. Now, first of all, I feel like that was a lack of maturity on my part. I and I wasn't seeking first to understand. I was only seeing it from my one perspective and my young perspective, and it and honestly, as time went on, I I saw it in a completely different way. I also feel like a lot of things changed in the time that I've been in education, starting in 1997. So I think that I watched a lot of things change and a lot of things come and go, and I became more aware of some of the systemic issues. I've also had a wide variety of perspectives. I was a first and second grade teacher for a really long time. Then I left the classroom and became a student support specialist, which in that particular school was with my longtime principal, and it felt more like an administrative role, and I kind of got to see that side of the school system and what it looks like for the administrator and how difficult it can be sometimes. And I also, you know, experienced lots of behavior problems and things like that, but just a different perspective in that job. And then I went on to be a media specialist, which I saw the special area teacher's perspective and whoa, what that means and how that feels. And so I do feel like it's been a variety and also was heavily involved with having to, you know, to test kids for older, you know, upper grades. And also I worked with fourth and fifth graders in the media center and with, you know, remediation groups and book clubs and things like that. So I had a taste of what that feels like and the pressure of the test. So I feel like I have a wide variety of perspectives. I felt like I just needed to say that up front in the in this episode because it's not it's not um it's not without thought that I share some of these things and that I explain, you know, where this is coming from. So I want to share, I want to share some of the responses. And the first one was um, you know, what what would you wish that that someone would told you before you became

Betrayal And Work Life Balance Shame

SPEAKER_00 11:28

a teacher? And the first one was that I would feel I wish someone that would have told me that I would feel betrayed by this profession, that I would be taken advantage of and shamed and guilted for having a healthy work-life balance. This one makes me the most. I mean, there's so many that make me upset, but this real this one really bothers me a lot because I do feel like that's true. We judge one another if we're leaving, if people are leaving on time, on time, not early, on time. And and I am so guilty. I was so guilty of this looking at veteran teachers and thinking, how can they leave right now? There's so much work, more work to be done, as if it's a badge of honor to stay late and to make your family wait on you and have your kids at after school care for hours and you know, be the last kids to be picked up and all the other things that have to go on in our lives, just be people. And I think that that is really upsetting. It is something that is frowned upon. Even when we're in schools where they claim to put family first, they put other people, other families first, not their own families, of their own employees. And I think that's really hard and sad.

Testing And Twisted Good Intentions

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Another thing that I wish that I knew that my pure and honest intentions to help kids and make a positive difference would actually be twisted and manipulated into hurting them. And by this I'm referring to the over-testing, the standardized test, the fact that we are damaging their self-esteem in so many ways. And and this this is very personal to me. This this was the reason that I left the classroom. Now I stayed in education as those other positions in other areas of it, and I actually had to deal with it a lot as the media specialist, even as the SSS. And it was heartbreaking. And so that is what ultimately led to one of the reasons that I that I left the school system in general. And it was because I did feel like I loved kids so deeply. I cared so much about these little humans, and I cared about all of them, all parts of them, and not how well they did on tests, but all parts of them. And having that turned against me in such a horrific way, and then kids having to do things that made them cry and made them feel bad about themselves, it felt so wrong on so many levels. It was absolutely heartbreaking.

Pay Disrespect And Lost Dreams

SPEAKER_00 13:57

So another thing I wish that I knew before I was a teacher was that I wouldn't be compensated fairly and I wouldn't be treated as professional. And that is another upsetting thing. I couldn't, I personally couldn't do, and those were not mine, those were from someone from another teacher. I personally felt like I couldn't take care of my own, my own two children when I got divorced on the salary of a teacher. I also needed to have multiple other jobs in order to take care of them. And it we we are treated like they want us to go to higher education, but then they don't compensate us for that. And or they barely pay at all, or it's like a thousand dollars a year for the whole for you know having your masters, and then it's just such an insult. And and and you're not treated as a professional, you're treated as a second-class citizen, it feels like. You know, we initially got lots of support during the pandemic, but then it was like all of a sudden that was this movement to go against teachers, and people were calling teachers lazy and all kinds of other terrible things. So upsetting. Another thing that I wish that I knew was that I regret spending the time and money on getting my master's degree that I could have traveled and seen the world. And how heartbreaking is that. We're often asking teachers to put their own dreams and desires on hold and they're not valued and they're not prioritized, and other things are more, giving more, more, more is always the go-to.

Toxic Culture Feeling Trapped

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Um, I I personally said that I felt like all of these things were true, but that I wish that they had told me how toxic the relationship with school would be for me, and how one day I would realize that I was in an emotionally abusive relationship and I would think that it was just my marriage, but that I would go on to realize that it was also school. It was also school. It was also school. It was feeling like I was being gaslighted at school or feeling like I was being demoralized or spoken down to or thought less of. How how unbelievably unbelievably upsetting that was, especially in a place that felt like home and felt safe and felt like my my personal like refuge was no longer what I thought it was. I wish that they had told me that I you would you could work for people that really kind of thrived on a power trip and they would that that would make me feel worthless and trapped. And I wish that I I wish that they could have told us that that we that again, like that we wouldn't be able to care for our own families without having multiple jobs. And then I'm sorry that that you keep hearing that noise, but uh I I have my uh the chat open so that I can read it to you. And these are more comments that have come in. And my one friend says, I wish I knew how trapped teaching kind of makes you feel that the salary is not really enough for a person to live on with even one child, is also difficult to transition to other jobs. I wish I knew that I would have would I would have known how much of my own money that I would have to spend and how much the material they expected us to provide. And the expectation is that you come with a classroom library and a and decorated classrooms and it's Pinterest perfect and Instagram worthy and you provide a ton of extras for your kids. I wish I would have known how intensely people were going to look at test scores and how much of the job would be testing. I also wish that someone had explained how much falls on classroom teachers' shoulders and how exhausting it is for so much pressure to be on one person. I wish I would have known that sometimes your kind heart is turned against you. You are constantly asked and voluntold you need to do more, more, and more. I wish I would have known how mean and toxic other teachers could be. There are definitely awesome

Protect Your Heart And Closing Hope

SPEAKER_00 18:13

people and awesome teams. However, there are just as many nasty, toxic people and administrators, and I wish I would have known how competitive and cutthroat it really can be. Wow. Wow. And I wish I would have known a little about how much my time would not be respected, and that teachers are asked to spend hours on things, then the district changes their minds, and you have to do it over again multiple times. That was so much. And I'm sure you have something to add to that. And I'm sure you have moments uh or things that you wish that you had known in advance so that it would have prevented you, so you could protect your heart, so you would know how to protect your heart, so you would know how to protect your heart. The sad part of it is it's not really a job that you can just come do and leave and let go of. And if you can, then I wonder if that's the right person for the job anyway. We need empathetic people in our classrooms. We need kind, generous uh people in our classrooms, and we're not gonna be able to have that with the way that we are going with this system when we are running out excellent teachers and people that love and care and give and empathize, but then what are we left with? I know this was another hard teacher truth, and I I know that it's upsetting, and I'm sorry that that it is. I'm sorry that it is. I hope it isn't for everyone. I hope there are situations that there are places where people feel valued and treasured, and that all of you is valued, like all of your time and your interests beyond the classroom are also celebrated, and your role as a mom and your role as a daughter or a friend or a wife or a sister is also valued. I hope that you know that you are valued until next time. This one tired teacher is going to take a little bit of a nap. Sweet dreams and sleep tight.