Photo: TikTok
Sometimes, the educators who love their job the most are the ones who struggle the hardest.
By Jessica Bracken — Written on Apr 22, 2023
There have been countless stories of teachers in America quitting their jobs in recent years. In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that about 300,000 public school teachers left their jobs between February 2020 and May 2022, and McKinsey research published in March found that in a survey of US educators, school leaders, and school mental health professionals, one-third of respondents said they planned to leave their professions.
Circumstances such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, frequent school shootings, and the targeting of teachers over addressing issues like LGBTQ+ equality and racism have only exacerbated factors already driving teachers to quit–think low wages, insufficient support, safety concerns, and burnout. In these kinds of conditions, it’s no wonder that former teachers like Isabel Brown are pursuing other careers.
A woman on TikTok shared why she quit teaching to become a student advocate.
In a recent TikTok, Isabel Brown (@isetheadvocate) explained why she quit teaching to work in advocacy.
While she worked as a teacher, Isabel loved interacting with her students and refused to give up on any of them, doing her best to make her classroom a safe space. However, after six years of teaching, she felt that she had become overburdened, serving as both a teacher and a therapist to her students.
Despite loving teaching, Isabel quit her job to help students one-on-one through advocacy, as well as to take better care of herself.
In her video, Isabel spoke about how she loved teaching freshmen students and watching them grow. She would develop friendships with some of her students as they went through school, and cultivated a “safe space” by “never giving up on the ‘bad’ student,” taking students who “hated everything and everyone” and giving them “opportunity after opportunity” to grow, complimenting and engaging them in her classroom.
Isabel said that the burden of being 'a therapist alongside a teacher' became too much for her.
After her students left her class, though, Isabel described having to “watch their spirits be crushed” throughout the rest of their time in high school.
“It could be from issues at home, it could be friendship issues… it could be their other teachers, it could be school or the school system in general,” Isabel explained, “but after six years of trying my hardest and smiling and pushing through, I realized I cannot change the school system.”
Isabel said that it made her feel “useless” when she wasn’t able to help her students and that she “couldn’t keep watching the freshman have their creativity and uniqueness crushed.”
This feeling led her to create her own advocacy business, Brown Crayon Advocacy, where she now provides one-on-one services to help students, parents, and teachers with educational issues. As an advocacy coach, Isabel is now able to spend more time taking care of herself and her family.
Commenters on Isabel’s video expressed admiration for educators who tried their best to help students succeed.
The comments on Isabel’s TikTok were largely supportive, including appreciative messages from some of her former students. Other comments included students and parents expressing their gratitude for caring teachers like Isabel.
Many other commenters were former educators like Isabel who had similar experiences with the school system. “‘We can’t find good teachers!!!!’ THIS IS WHY!! The good ones leave [because] we can’t continue!” one user said.
In hashtags like “#teacherquittok,” videos of teachers explaining why they’ve had to leave their jobs have racked up millions of views. Countless teachers like Isabel have been forced to quit their jobs despite their love for teaching. “Teachers can’t be everything for everyone,” Isabel said, “no matter how bad we want to.”
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Jessica Bracken is a writer living in Davis, California. She covers entertainment and news for YourTango.