Never a bad song to rock out to by Daft Punk. It’s already 17 years old, which is on the “ugh” scale, but it was also the first in a series of videos that told a story. That’s my fact for today. Enjoy it! 🙂
#randomfactman
You know it!
However, that is not today’s topic.
Yesterday, I received an email from the Iowa Department of Education with my updated teaching licence attached.
The last one I’ll ever need to apply for in my career.
Holy ****!!
They are five-year licences, and right now I’m planning to be gainfully unemployed in five years.
As I thought about it, I’ve been in education since 1994. This means that I’ve been in education in four different decades. FOUR DIFFERENT DECADES! That’s a lot of freaking years!
I love what I do. I love teaching. I love coaching. I love the people that I work with. And of course, I love working with the kids. However, in those years, teaching has become increasingly unsustainable. The workload, the behaviors, and the public being told about how awful we all are, even thought 99.9% of us have their children’s best interests at heart.
No, I will not be renewing my teaching licence again, and I’m quite content that the light is visible at the end of the tunnel (even if it might be a train barreling at me!).
The Life of a Conflicted Teacher 
March 4, 2026 at 10:19 pm
What a milestone! I’ve got 6 years left & for years I figured I’d teach forever, but now… well, I’m looking down that tunnel, too. You’ve voiced many of my own thoughts here. Congratulations on your last teaching license!
March 5, 2026 at 9:48 am
There are days were that tunnel looks so long, but seeing my teaching certificate with that expires by date on it certainly shortened it right up! 🙂 My career has crossed four decades, that the part that just blow my mind! 🙂
March 4, 2026 at 11:20 pm
That must be quite a good feeling! I’ve got three years left technically, and am also renewing my 5 year license for probably the last time this summer. Whether or not I will be able to retire in 2029 is still an open question. I remember being fairly early in my career and the teacher next door to me sighing after a 12 hour parent conference day followed by a teaching day, followed by another parent conference day and saying, “I am too old for this. I don’t recover any more and this is too exhausting.” She was younger than I am now. I find myself thinking of her quite often now. Teaching is definitely not like it was in the 90s! And in the 1990s, I was surrounded by boomers telling me that teaching was not like it had been in the 70s and 80s!
March 5, 2026 at 9:45 am
LOL!! I agree, I have former students who are now teachers telling me that this “isn’t what school was like,” and I agree. School shouldn’t be static, but it also shouldn’t be getting harder, the older we get. However, I will agree, my recovery time is MUCH longer than it used to be on long days/night, then teaching the next day! 🙂
March 5, 2026 at 4:24 am
My husband was a teacher in the dental college of our university and loved teaching. But many of his students who are teachers tell him with a sigh that teaching now is not what it had been in my husband’s time. He retired in 2017. One student even said that he had retired at the correct time !!! All the best for the next stage in your life.
March 5, 2026 at 9:44 am
I have a couple of former students in my building who say the same thing: This isn’t what school was like when they were kids! It shouldn’t be either, but it also wasn’t this hard! 🙂 Thank you for your comment today!