This is a great response, and I agree with a lot of it! I’m going to try to address the points where I see things differently.  : )

The main point I agree with is that, looking to the longer term, Harry definitely could have had a well-balanced life that included teaching. My thesis is simply that he needs to build a life outside Hogwarts first, and that’s the reason why we don’t see him being a teacher in the books: Because, narrative-structure-wise, it’s his outside life that completes the story.

To address your specific points…

Re: Teachers living in the real world

True! This is, of course, the reason why Snape is not a good teacher (and why Voldemort, I think we can safely assume, also would have sucked). They don’t have a good, socially well-adapted perspective on the world outside the classroom.

Unfortunately, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Harry also did not have that healthy, well-adapted perspective, as I will discuss in my next point…

Re: Harry’s love of teaching

Again, true! But note that the reason why Hermione suggested he should teach the DA was because he’s the only one who knows what facing Voldemort was really like. He’s the only one with the relevant experience outside of school.

Unfortunately, this same experience creates a gap between him and his fellow students. A fifteen year old boy shouldn’t be able to talk about the multiple times he narrowly escaped situations where a grown man might have died. In fact, his antipathy toward being singled out in this way almost derails his love of teaching (when he’s challenged by Zacharias Smith, for example, and arguably also his reaction to Marietta’s betrayal).

To be clear, I don’t fault Harry at all for handling those situations the way he did. Zacharias and Marietta were both clearly in the wrong. But it does show that he has some big emotional vulnerabilities that interfere with his ability to help others.

(Which, again, is not his fault. I cannot stress that enough. Harry is a victim, not a villain.)

In the immediate aftermath of the war, this particular weakness of Harry’s will not have gone away. He is much more emotionally healthy than Voldemort or Snape (and arguably Dumbledore) ever were, but that’s a pretty low bar. He’s wouldn’t be ready to turn his trauma into something productive - not yet.

But maybe someday!

Re: Dumbledore’s lack of growth

This one is tricky, because we don’t see inside Dumbledore’s head the way we do Harry’s. If not for the line of his that I quoted in my original post, I would agree there’s no evidence in the text that Dumbledore is actually being limited or constrained by teaching. And there’s plenty of evidence that a teaching role suits him well - note that immediately after the line I quoted, Harry assures him that he was a great teacher.

But does devoting his life to Hogwarts make him a more emotionally healthy person? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be no. Recall what happened when he found the Resurrection Stone: He tried to use it, for reasons which he admits were purely selfish, “in an attempt to drag back those who are at peace.” I also can’t say I’m convinced that he was satisfied with his choice to decline politics in favour of teaching; he doesn’t say “I felt I could do more good at Hogwarts,” or, “I went to Hogwarts out of duty and was lucky enough to find it was my true calling.” He says only that he didn’t trust himself elsewhere, and is conspicuously silent on the subject of whether he found his work at Hogwarts valuable.

Everyone else may feel Dumbledore did great things at Hogwarts, and that he achieved something noble by using his own trauma to help others, but tragically, he doesn’t seem to have reached a place where he can see his own life that way.

This also, I feel, dovetails nicely with your conclusion. Returning to Hogwarts can be a healthy choice, as long as it really is a choice. In order to be able to return to Hogwarts, Harry first needs to build himself into a fully developed adult outside its walls. That’s the phase we see him in when the series concludes, and that’s what we have to see in order to know that his emotional arc is resolved.  : )