Is There Life After Teaching?

Can a band teacher really quit the profession and then get back into it? How hard is it for a teacher to leave the profession he or she loves?

After seven years teaching band I turned in my resignation. I did not do it because I wanted to. In truth I always thought I would be there until I retired. Instead I made the move for the betterment of my family. We are going to be moving to another city where my wife has been offered what can only be described as her perfect dream job. But while she has a contract for next year I don't. To top it all off I am getting more and more concerned in the fact that there have been so few band director vacancies in the area of the state we are moving to. I think I am going to turn my site blog into a band director in limbo blog for a while. I hope it will help me to think things through a little bit more and who knows, maybe it will help some of you as well.

As for me, I can't see myself doing anything other than teaching. I love it, and the thought of working behind a desk doing the same thing every day scares me. Plus, over the last several months I have done so much to improve my knowledge in my content area that I have started writing to share my knowledge and experiences so that others might not make the same mistakes that I have in the past. I even started a web site to house all of my new found knowledge and share it with other teachers and music students. Of course, at the moment no one is looking at it, but that will change in time I hope.

So to use a line from Evita, so what happens now? Everything will work out I am sure, but in the meantime I think I will be using this blog as a place to vent my frustrations as well as tout my successes. I have had plenty of both, but I must admit that the good tends to outweigh the bad.