Is It Okay to Resent School Administration That Tells Staff to Pour Their Lives Into Kids?
Last Wednesday, I sat through the first back-to-school staff meeting of my seventh year teaching 4th grade, my left foot going numb on a cracked cafeteria folding chair dotted with old juice stains, a lukewarm iced coffee sweating through the dinosaur notebook my 4-year-old made me. Our principal leaned against the front table, clicker in hand, and said the line I’ve heard every opening week since student teaching: “This work isn’t a 9-to-5. We need every single one of you to pour your lives into these kids. They deserve every part of you.”
The room nodded the tired, automatic nod most teachers give that line. A first-year 2nd grade teacher near me scribbled it in her notes, like it was a rule she had to follow to keep her job. Twenty minutes later, when the meeting adjourned, I stopped to help her haul new math workbooks to her room—her classroom AC had been broken for three days, and maintenance still hadn’t put in a ticket. By the time we got back to the main hallway, the entire admin team clustered by the principal’s private office: our principal, both assistant principals, the district achievement coach who visited my classroom exactly twice all last year. They hefted a pre-made charcuterie platter and a case of seltzer between them, and I caught one line about the group beach trip they’d all taken the week before pre-planning, a trip no certified teacher had been told about, much less invited on. The door clicked shut behind them, laughter bubbling through the wood before I turned toward my own classroom.
I checked my phone on the way out. My son’s after-care sends a reminder 45 minutes before closing, and the $1 per minute late fee eats through my classroom supply budget faster than crayons break in September. I had 22 reading response journals in my tote, 47 permission slips to log into the school’s clunky system, and a promise of chocolate chip pancakes if I picked him up on time. For a minute, I felt that hot, tight twist of resentment I’ve gotten so used to, followed immediately by guilt: Am I a bad teacher for feeling this way? If I really care about kids, shouldn’t I be happy to give extra time, no strings attached?
I get why that line gets repeated. Parents say versions of it too, when they drop off cookies during teacher appreciation week and call us saints for what we do. Everyone wants kids to have adults who show up fully. But what rarely gets said is that this demand for total self-sacrifice only applies to people who work directly with kids. The same leaders who tell us to give every last minute never hold themselves to that standard, and the tight, exclusive social circle most admin teams run with makes the double standard impossible to miss.
Last year, one assistant principal got three weeks paid off in mid-October to tour Italy, approved before the end of the school day with a sub lined up by Friday. Three months later, our 1st grade lead teacher, a single mom whose daughter needed a scheduled tonsillectomy, asked for two paid days off to stay home. Admin made her write a two-page justification, noted the absence would count against her evaluation, and said she was “modeling poor priorities for students” by putting her own child’s health first. That same semester, they sent a whole-staff email at 9:27 pm reminding everyone 12-page lesson plans were due by 7 am Friday, then posted photos to the school Instagram of their mid-week admin golf retreat, catered by a local barbecue spot, held during school hours.
It’s not that administrators can’t be friends. I’m close with half the teaching staff at my school; we bring each other soup when someone’s sick, carpool, and pass down leftover supplies when classrooms run low. The problem is when that friendship hardens into a two-tier system: flexibility, extra pay, and time off flow freely to everyone in the in-group, while everyone else gets told their job is to give until there’s nothing left, no questions asked.
For years I bought into the myth that resentment meant I was bad at my job. I stayed until 7 pm three nights a week, spent $120 to $150 a month of my own money on winter coats, snacks, and replacement crayons, and answered parent emails at 10 pm while I watched TV. I thought that’s what “pouring your life in” looked like. What I got was a panic attack in my car after school one Tuesday, and less patience for the small, silly 9-year-old mishaps that are just part of the job. I was so burnt out I couldn’t even enjoy the parts of teaching I loved.
Over the past two years, I’ve made small, concrete changes that cut that resentment down to size, no big dramatic speech or job change required. I have a hard 5 pm stop time most days, unless it’s a pre-planned event like back-to-school night. I cap personal classroom spending at $25 a month; anything extra goes on a public Amazon wishlist I share with parents at the start of the year, and it always gets covered within a week. When admin pulls out the “pour your lives into the kids” line in a meeting, I don’t just nod along. I raise my hand and ask, plainly, what specific support comes with that expectation: extra pay, comp time, an extra planning period? Half the time they mumble something about “teamwork” and move on, but it lets every other teacher know no one’s getting compensated for that extra labor, so they don’t have to take it on out of guilt. My team also has a shared group chat where we flag unreasonable last-minute asks, so no one gets pressured into extra work alone after a one-on-one admin ask.
For parents who wonder why this dynamic matters for their kids, the impact is straightforward. You don’t get better teaching from someone working 60-hour weeks, stressed about their own bills, too tired to plan engaging activities. I never could have run our annual volcano science experiment, or stayed calm when a kid melted down after a rough morning at home, back when I gave away every spare minute. If you want to support teachers beyond the annual coffee gift, skip the generic praise and ask what unmet needs admin hasn’t covered this year. Show up to the occasional PTA budget meeting, and ask why admin retreats and leadership-only training get thousands in funding while classroom teachers get no annual supply stipend. If a teacher says they don’t answer emails after 6 pm, don’t complain to the principal—thank them. That boundary means they’ll be rested and present with your kid the next day.
I still feel that flicker of resentment sometimes, usually on Wednesdays when I’m rushing out with my son’s hand in mine and hear laughter through the admin office door. Just last week, a new assistant principal role opened up, and all three candidates are personal friends of our principal from her old job; none of our long-serving internal teacher leaders applied, because we all know the role is just another seat at the club table.
I’m not quitting this year, probably not next year either. Watching a kid who started the year two grade levels behind read a whole chapter book out loud still matters more than the frustration of bad leadership. I don’t waste much time feeling guilty for the resentment anymore, most days. It’s just a quiet signal that the line between caring about kids and giving your whole life away for free is drawn far too lopsided in a lot of schools. Some weeks it feels like the small changes we’ve made as a staff are actually shifting things. Other weeks I just count down to Friday, and make sure I leave on time for pancakes.
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