After 20 Years of Teaching: Do I Still Enjoy It? Practical Truths for Teachers and Parents
8:12 a.m. last Tuesday, November, heater clicking so loud it competes with the kids yelling about the new playground slide, Mia knocked over her apple juice straight onto her new unicorn notebook. She squeezed her eyes shut, shoulders hunched up to her ears, like she was waiting for the yell. I was already late to pull up the morning meeting slide, the smart board was still blinking its loading screen, and I had a stack of permission slips to sort that were due that morning.
Twenty years ago, when I first stood in front of a 4th grade class, I would’ve sighed, reminded her to watch where she was going, handed her three rough paper towels, and hurried to clean up so we could get back on schedule. I cared a lot about schedules back then. I cared a lot about being the teacher who did everything right, who never ran behind, who had neat bulletin boards and every lesson planned out to the minute.
Today, I leaned my mop against the next desk, sat on the edge of Mia’s chair, and wiped a drop of juice off my own sleeve like I’d been the one who knocked it over. “I spill my coffee at least once a week,” I told her. “Last month I poured an entire mug all over my math lesson plans right before the principal came in for an observation.” She cracked one eye open, then huffed a little laugh. We fished the notebook out together, dabbed the pages dry, and propped it open on the heater vent to finish drying. We got to morning meeting three minutes late, and no one even cared.
People ask me all the time, now that I’ve hit 20 years in the classroom, do I still enjoy it? The implication is always that after two decades of the same bell schedule, the same age kids, the same annual curriculum changes, I must be checked out, or bored, or just counting down to retirement.
Last week, that question crossed my mind when I waited by my door after lunch for Javi, the new kid who won’t speak above a whisper in front of the class. Three months ago, he’d put his head down every time we called on him to read out loud, and I remembered what I would’ve done back in 2003: I would’ve knelt down next to his desk, told him it was okay, no one would laugh if he tried, and gently pushed him to read one paragraph anyway. I would’ve thought I was being kind, encouraging. What I was really doing was making him perform his discomfort for 27 other 9-year-olds.
This time, I heard him telling a friend about his new skateboard at recess, so I grabbed a beat-up skateboarding graphic novel from my closet of kid-donated books, left it on his desk with a sticky note that said, “If you ever want to read this to me when no one else is around, I have 10 minutes after lunch most days.” Three days later, he showed up at my door, hands in his hoodie pockets, and mumbled that he’d brought it. He read three whole pages to me, quiet as anything, standing by the cubby bin where no one could see him. Now he comes every Wednesday, reads one or two pages, and leaves. No grades, no big praise, just that.
That’s the thing no one tells you when you start teaching: the enjoyment shifts. It doesn’t go away, it just stops looking like what you thought it would. Twenty years ago, I got my joy from nailing a lesson, from getting a glowing observation, from all my kids acing their unit tests. Now, I get it from these small, unplanned moments that don’t show up on any evaluation. And the habits I’ve picked up to keep enjoying this job work just as well for parents, from what I’ve talked to my friends raising kids about.
The first is the 1-minute pause. When something goes wrong – spilled juice, a forgotten permission slip, a kid melting down over a bad grade – I stop for 60 seconds before I react. I don’t say anything, I just breathe and remind myself that this is not an emergency. It doesn’t matter if we’re three minutes late to morning meeting. It doesn’t matter if the notebook is a little crinkled. For parents, this works the same way: if your kid spills cereal all over the kitchen floor right before the bus comes, or forgets their soccer cleats the night before the game, that 60 second pause keeps you from snapping over something that won’t matter in a week.
The second is to lean into what they care about, not what you think they should care about. I don’t force Javi to read the grade-level chapter book everyone else is working through. I let him read his skateboarding book on his own terms. For parents, that means if your kid won’t pick up a classic novel but devours every cheat sheet for their favorite video game, that’s still reading. If they’d rather count the cars on the highway than do their math worksheet, you can meet them there first before pushing the worksheet. Small steps with their interests beat forced progress every time.
The third is that it’s okay to leave some things undone. I used to stay until 7 p.m. every night grading every paper, re-doing bulletin boards, prepping every craft for the next week. Now, some weeks the bulletin board has half-finished projects up for an extra few days. Some days we skip the worksheet and play math dice for 20 minutes because everyone’s restless after a rainy recess. For parents, that means it’s okay if you skip the reading log one night to eat popcorn and watch a silly cartoon. It’s okay if the birthday cake is store-bought instead of homemade. The small messy stuff doesn’t ruin anything.
That doesn’t mean I love every minute. I still hate grading 28 spelling tests every Friday. I still get annoyed when the copier breaks right before I need to print a test. I snapped at a group of kids throwing erasers last month after a two-hour after-school staff meeting, and I had to apologize the next morning. Some days I leave school exhausted and wonder why I’m still doing this.
After Mia went out to recess, she came back in with a crumpled drawing she’d made during art. It was two figures, one big one with a coffee cup, one small one with a unicorn notebook, and it said “My teacher spills coffee too.” I stuck it on my fridge at home, right next to a drawing a kid made me 18 years ago that’s still taped up there. Do I still enjoy teaching after 20 years? Yeah. Just not the way I thought I would when I started. I don’t need big perfect moments to feel it. It’s in the 1-minute pauses, the half-dry notebooks, the quiet readings by the cubbies. It’s messy, it’s unplanned, and that’s the point. It still works.
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