No Job Is Gonna Own Me

This week’s interview comes from Jessica Battles in Alabama. When I joined one of the big teacher transition FB groups, I started seeing Jessica pop up a lot. Her comments were always bold, opinionated, and unapologetic (remind you of anyone?), so knew I wanted to hear her story. Thank you, Jessica! Wishing you all the best.

Introduce yourself! Give your name, location, the number of years and subject you taught, and the number of years since you've left teaching.

My name is Jessica Battles. I am located in Birmingham, Alabama. I taught secondary math for ten years, seventh grade all the way up to eleventh grade. I taught nine years in public school, and then one year in a private school. I just recently left. May of 2024 was my last hurrah with teaching.

What brought you to teaching?

I was never one of those people who was like, “My life goal is to be a teacher.” I was never that, and I probably should have stayed with that. 

My first degree was in political science. I wanted to go to law school and was interning with the Justice Center. And I realized that my whole interest was in working with people. I wanted to work with a disadvantaged population to help people become successful.

I saw in the court system when I was interning that there were all of these things going on. And I'm like, “Well, where does this start? It's education. Maybe I can help these kids take a different path in life, in the education system.” So that's how I started out, with: “How can I help people be successful?” I felt like I could do the best work when they were children.

So I went back to school, got another bachelor's degree in math, and then started teaching.

What did you like about teaching?

I've always liked working with the kids. I love their stories and I love to get to know them. 

It’s hard to do whenever you teach math because it's just not a subject where you can sit and have a dialogue. It's very impersonal. So I still made sure that I could get to know the kids on a personal level. I always liked to get to know their background, their stories.

Teaching math was secondary to me. My first passion was getting to know the kids. I taught at a high school level. At this point, they're driving. They're smoking. They're having sex. They think that they're adults. So it's interesting to get to know them on that level, because you can be like, “Okay, well, what do you want to do? What do you like? You say that you don't need Algebra 2? Okay, what do you want to do? Because I want you to graduate. I want you to be successful.” 

Working with kids to get to know them personally was my favorite thing. 

Beyond that, nothing.

What did you find challenging or unfulfilling?

As a math person, I want results. I want to see that my efforts mean something. That's so important to me. I don't even think you have to be a math person to want to see the fruits of your labor. I saw none of that ever. Ever. It didn't matter whether I worked 60 hours a week, or if I took off half the week and sat at home—it didn't matter. I was still getting the same crap results. 

The biggest thing was being so isolated. I always worked in schools that were underfunded. They were not affluent schools, and I chose them on purpose, because of my reasons for going into education. But there was never training. We rarely had professional development. I never had math coaches. I never had anyone at the district level come in and see what I was doing to help me. There was none of that ever. There was no collaboration. It was just me and what I was figuring out on the internet. 

The school I was at this past year, the ACT scores were terrible. Obviously—there's no support. And that's just general education. On top of that, you have special education, which is becoming more and more prevalent in the school system, regardless of where you are. There was just absolutely no support. It was just like, “Here, go, teach that; we wish you the best.” But they’re also wondering why our ACT scores are terrible.

So what brought you to the breaking point? What pushed you to leave?

So I actually have two different experiences with leaving.

Three years ago, I left on my own. I was living in another part of the state, and I was completely done. I was fed up with it. I had been at this school for five years, and there was a change in leadership. The micromanaging was so bad that I would have extreme anxiety anytime I saw the principal. She would come into the room and undermine the teacher’s authority. It was just terrible leadership. 

So Alabama has incentivized math and science teachers. They’ll pay you $15,000 more to be a math and science teacher, because they can't find anybody. So I was receiving really good money. And still, I was like, “It's not worth it. I don't care what you're paying me. It is not worth it.”

But during this time, it was the most money I'd ever made in my life. I was saving all of that because I was planning on moving back to Birmingham, where I'm from. I'm a single mother, and I was living down [in Auburn, Alabama] by myself, and finally, I was like, “I've done this for long enough. I need to be near my family.” I was getting burned out with the teaching, so I took a year off. I resigned from that position and started working in my daughter's private school, just [as a secretary part-time.]

When we moved up to Birmingham, I was like, “You know, they're paying me so much money, I might as well just try it one more time.” So I tried it one more time, and of course, it was terrible, just like I knew it would be. But I was making great money, so I was like, “I'm going to prepare for not coming back.” That's basically how I've been for the past three to four years: “This will probably be my last year, so I'm preparing financially.”

So when I got hired this past year, I was expecting it to be my last year. And it was fantastic. I loved the school and the principal. Then my principal left midyear and the person they hired to replace him was the assistant principal. She had no high school experience. So then she's coming in and she's running the high school like she runs the elementary school, and she's micromanaging everything. The anxiety started coming back and it was the worst of my entire life. I was not eating. I could not sleep. I lost weight. I was having GI issues. I would throw up. I was absolutely miserable. 

And I was still trying to do a decent job. I was still trying to manage chaos and teach these people. I was the only one in the building offering tutoring to these kids. I would let them come in during study hall. I was going above and beyond what the average teacher at that school was doing, and the principal knew it, and I still got non-renewed.

That’s the thing with this incentive program I signed up for with the higher pay: if you choose to take the money, then you forfeit your tenure. As long as I chose this type of contract, I would never receive tenure for the rest of my career. It's literally a year-to-year contract.

So I already knew that every single year, my job was up. I would never have the security. It didn't matter how good of a job I did, I could still be non-renewed. I literally was trying my best with these kids, and it didn't matter. I was still non-renewed.

And so the funny thing is, I was replaced by a paraprofessional who has an agriculture degree, has never taught a day in her life, and is not certified to teach math. That's who she replaced me with.

You mentioned that you were saving up money. What other plans did you put in place before transitioning?

That's really the only plan! 

I see all of the people on the Facebook groups are like, “I’ve been upskilling for a year, and I've been applying,” while I'm like, “No.” I did not have enough time. I didn't have enough emotional brainpower. I was just on survival mode. I had no time for my child. Having to come home and help my daughter with homework—I was in a bad mood. I would snap at her, and I didn't want to do that. I'm like, “My kid is more important than them.” So I was just at my wit's end, and the only thing that I had control over in that misery was saving my money. And I'm really good at that.

[Saving] allowed me to be in the position where I'm gonna be working a part-time job, until I figure out the next full-time step. Because I really need the quality of life that I've just never had before.

What specific factors did you have to consider in your transition?

I guess this made it easy, because it was just me and my daughter. I'm not married. I don't have to answer to anybody except myself. I know that I'm doing the best thing for my kid, and honestly, I have freedom in financial stability. I'm able to live like this because of what I've saved. It's not because my parents have helped me out; I've been saving like a bear in hibernation for years. When I took the year off and was working part-time at my daughter's school, I was using some of my savings to live during that time. So that time was like a test of, “Can I do it?” And I can.

I also have the mindset of, nothing, especially a job, is going to own me. I am in control of my life, not the job. And so, if I'm miserable, I will leave and figure something out. If it’s not enough money, I will figure out a solution to my life. I will not be a slave to my circumstances. I've always lived like that. Because it's freedom, knowing that I don't have to live that way. And having the financial security of savings has allowed me to think that way. I know that not everybody has that luxury, but I was able to prepare for a long time, because I knew this would eventually happen.

What feelings and emotions have come up in this transition, and how have you moved through those?

It really is a grief process. I think it's taken years. When I moved up here [to Birmingham], I was like, “Oh, I'll give it another try.” I still wasn't completely done. But I knew in the back of my head that this was not long-term. We have to work for 30 years to retire here. I knew I couldn’t do that. There's no way. I would literally die if I did this for 30 years. So I was just putting off the inevitable, because I was scared.

I was scared of my image, of my pride. It was nobody else's [influence]. Because I'm not married. I don't have anybody to impress. My parents fully support my decisions, so it's not like I was fearful of what they would say. So it was literally me.

I've been taught as a child, “You must be successful. You must have this type of job to be successful. People go to college to be successful.” And it's just lies. I have all of these degrees and nothing to show for it anymore. I have a Master's degree and I'm gonna be working a part-time job for $12 an hour at the State Park. That’s a huge hit to my pride.

It's hard to come to grips with, especially when people in your social circle or your age range are not dealing with any of this stuff. They're not dealing with a change of career; they're not dealing with an identity crisis. They're they're not applying for jobs that are part-time for $15 an hour. It's all of these things that the average person is not dealing with, and you feel alone. So then you start questioning your own reality, like, “Well, maybe I just need to deal with it and go back to teaching.”

And then I go, “Nope. I'm not going to be a slave to that. So I'm not dealing with it.”

Tell me about these first few months. What's been going on and what have you learned?

During the summer, I was like, “Oh, this is fantastic!” I did not apply to anything during the summer. I knew that it would probably be my last summer with my daughter, if I'm going to be working full-time all year long somewhere. So I was just gonna enjoy it. I was still getting paid through August, so I still wasn't financially strapped.

It didn’t really feel real until I had to take my kid back to school. But I've also never been able to take her to school before. I always had to rely on somebody else, or I've always been rushing, or I had to leave for school last year before she was even awake… [With teaching,] it was all of these logistical things like that. So not only was my job anxiety-driven, my home and my life were anxiety-driven.

So once August rolled around and my daughter was in school, then I was more persistent in applying for things. My biggest thing has been, I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what route I want to take. I was fearful that I'd be like, “Well, let me just go back and get another degree.” Because if I just go to school and get another degree, then I have a plan. It proves to everyone that I have a plan. But I didn't want to be in that type of desperate situation, doing something blindly and not having a clue what I was doing. Or getting into debt. I didn't want to do that. 

I just started applying. I made a spreadsheet and applied for five jobs, office administration-type roles. All stuff that would not require a lot of mental exertion. I applied to be a police dispatch, which I was actually very intrigued by. I made it to round three of their hiring process, but I eventually had to withdraw because they require you to do nights. But I was like, “This is something so out-of-the-box. It sounds fun.” 

Then my daughter and I were at the State Park down the road for Labor Day, and there was a little paper sign that said, “Now hiring.” And I'm like, “Yes! If they have a paper sign that means they probably have a paper application, and I'm all for that old school. So let's let's jump on board with that.”

They called me back for an interview, and the lady's like, “I'm looking for somebody to run this office when I'm not here.” And I'm like, “Well, I think I can do that.” She's like, “I think you can, too. I can tell from your personality.” 

That’s what I’m starting to understand about all these jobs: they think that their niches are special or difficult. I went on another interview for an office position, and the man was like, “You know, it's gonna be a lot of multitasking.” No, it's not. Compared to teaching, it’s not. The people outside of teaching–“those people”–the way they live and think is so different. Because I'm like, “Y'all are acting like this is a hard skill. I don't understand.” 

So I have the Oak Mountain State Park job. And then I met this lady at my Bible study last week, and she was like, “Have you thought about working for a church?” And I'm open to anything at this point. She called the guy who's over this department at the church on Tuesday, I interviewed on Wednesday, and I got the job on Thursday.

That was the quickest thing that's ever happened in my life! I had a two-hour interview with this man, and it's going to be the perfect setup because he respects me as a mother. He's like, “You can come in when you drop your kid off, and then you can go and leave whenever you need to. I don't look at a time clock. I want to make sure that you actually get the job done.” And that’s the level of respect I'm wanting.

I don't care what job I end up with. I don't care what it is. I could be a secretary for the rest of my life. I want to be able to pay my bills, have a savings account, and be respected as a human being. That's all I want.

What if anything could have kept you in the classroom? And what if anything could lure you back?

Nothing. Nothing could keep me in, and nothing would lure me back in. No amount of money.

You know, people talk about the level of disrespect with the kids. I could handle that. I just literally don't buy into public education anymore. I don't believe that what we do is valuable. I think that the model that we have set up is a waste of everyone's time. It's a waste of a professional's time—me, who has a math degree. It is a waste of the students' time, and the students know it. They know that they don't have to work. They know that they'll get passed along. Everyone knows these things, and I was tired of buying into something that I personally did not agree with anymore. On a moral level, I believe in working hard, and that model does not exist in public education. You do not have to work hard to be successful in school anymore. and that is a huge issue. 

What advice, tips, or wisdom would you give to a teacher who’s considering leaving?

Do it! Do not be scared. Do not live scared. I'm all about taking risks. I believe that you will receive rewards if you take risks. I am all for people not complaining for years and years, and doing nothing about it. Take action in your life.

I'm all for that. I'm also for the public education system getting disrupted. I want people to leave. I want there to be chaos in this, where something has to change. And that will affect our kids. My daughter will probably go to public school next year. That would create chaos in my own child's life, which I get. But it needs to happen. People need to know what's going on, and parents have no clue what's going on. They don't get it.

I'm all for the disruption. I like it.

So if it's best for your family, then you need to do it. Do not live scared.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.