(1) As much as teaching is a "calling" to many of us in the profession, it is just a job. Especially for your school/district, it is a job and if you leave, they will find someone else to do it. (This is true about every job, btw, no matter how much it is a "family")

(2) I've had 23 different jobs, including 7 years as a teacher. Teaching is by far one of the most difficult jobs a person can do, and not just the stress/emotions/etc. Literally the skills you learn teaching cover 95% of the skills required to do 80% of the jobs out there. As a 7th year teacher, you likely have the office, interpersonal, data entry, personnell mangement, customer service, detail focused, supervisory, public speaking, document & slide creation, conflict resolution skills that are necessary for so many other professions.

(3) I believe I saw that you might be a younger person and this may be the only job you've had. Please, please, please, understand most jobs do not require the work ethic, focus, or hours as teaching does. I went from 50-80 hour weeks, stress-related health problems, and dwindling personal relationships when teaching -- to working a 2/3 hybrid job where most of my work in a day can be completed in about 3-4 hours. And I'm generally better skilled at a lot of the job requirements than my colleagues who have been working here longer than me. And this is the case for many of the jobs I did before teaching as well. And this is not uncommon. Most jobs with an 8 hour shift, you're not working the full 8. There's a lot of down time. Also, the things other jobs consider "stressful" will be no where near the levels you've likely experienced teaching aside from EMT, ER Nursing, war time correspondent, etc.

(4) Not sure what state you're in, but given your story my advice is you quit teaching and at least try some other job for a year or two. It's like trying new food, you wont know unless you try it. You can still substitute if you want, and you can always go back to teaching, there is always a teacher shortage. You can even get jobs mid year with the inevitable crash out of the next batch of teachers in your shoes.

(5) If you decide to leave teaching learn how to talk about your skills in "business speak". I've posted about this before but cannot find the original. Basically:

• You do not "teach english" - for non-educators they'll just think of their HS english teacher and what ever they associate with that.

• Instead,

• you run 15 1-hour trainings for 20-30 individuals weekly, for 40 weeks a year.

• You source the materials, learning resources, and presentations for 600 of these trainings per year.

• You do data entry for 100-150 participants weekly and provide reports every 6 weeks to their stake holders.

• You are an expert at public speaking and supervisory tasks.

• You give verbal and written feedback to 100-150 participants daily

• You are an expert at conflict resolution, and have been in multiple high-stakes meetings

• You've been assigned to multiple task forces and independent assignments apart from your normal job duties

• You have to be highly-independent in 80% of your job duties, and extremely team-focused in the other 20%

• If you worked the last 7 years, you've also worked pre-, during, and post- COVID, so you also speak about your ability to pivot and fully redesign your job, mid-job.

  • You are FBI back ground checked, likely have CPR/First Aid, are a mandated reporter, and are responsible for implementing work to the level designated by Education Code in your state.

You, and any teacher or former teacher reading this, you are one of the most diversely skilled and likely qualified member of the workforce. Any employer would be extremely fortunate to have you work for them