Treat Teaching As Something You Need To Heal From

Erin Crosby-Eckstine on how she went from high school English teacher to full-time writer

I’ll admit to mildly stalking Erin Crosby-Eckstine since I first came across her column about teaching in Catapult (RIP). Her education writing was some of the most insightful and honest I’ve encountered. So I wasn’t surprised when I heard she’d scored a two-book deal with a major publisher. Or that she’s represented by my dream agency. (She’s basically living my vision.) While Erin’s situation may be not replicable for all of us, I knew she’d have important insights to share about the profession and her recovery from it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Erin! I’ve pre-ordered my copy of her debut novel Junie, and you should too.

Introduce yourself. Give your name, your location, the number of years you spent teaching, and then the number of years since you've been out.

My name is Erin Crosby-Eckstein. I was a teacher for a grand total of six years. I've been out for one full school year. I live in Brooklyn, New York.

What brought you to teaching?

I always really loved working with teenagers. That was kind of what started it. When I was in college, I got a job working as a camp counselor at my old summer camp. I honestly found myself being pretty surprised by how much I adored working with kids and teenagers.

I went to Barnard here in New York and studied English, which I also loved. I got a job working in PR right out of college. Because I didn't know what else to do with my English degree, and they were gonna hire me. The whole time I was there, I found myself missing the type of connection I felt when I worked as a camp counselor. People had told me my whole life that they thought I would make a great English teacher. At the same time, everyone was like, “You'll make no money. It's terrible. Your life will suck. Don't be a teacher.”

People had told me my whole life that they thought I would make a great English teacher. At the same time, everyone was like, “You'll make no money. It's terrible. Your life will suck. Don't be a teacher.”

But at a certain point, I was like so done with being in PR that I was like, “Whatever, I'm making no money working in PR to begin with. I might as well go work at a job where I make no money, and I'm happy.” So I left PR. I went to get my Master's in Education at Stanford. 

It was immediately obvious to me that I'd made the right decision. I instantly loved being in the classroom. I was like, “Oh, yeah, this is very difficult, but it's like a million times more fulfilling to me than what I was previously doing.”  

What was your experience teaching like the kind of schools you taught in?

I only ever taught in one school. I was really lucky, as far as the stories I've heard. 

I taught at a charter school here in Brooklyn. It's a unique charter school that's all focused on heterogeneous classroom design and racial diversity. So it didn't function like a lot of the other charters like KIPP or Success. 

I was allowed to have a lot of very frank and open conversations about a whole bunch of different topics with students around sexuality, race gender, whatever. I felt very lucky to be in a school like that, particularly as the years wore on and the climate for a lot of teachers in other places got to be so incredibly censored and restricted.

New York is known for actually having the most segregated school system in the country, if you can believe it. The reason I gravitated toward that school was that I really wanted to teach in a heterogeneous classroom. They didn't do honors classes. It was just everybody, all levels going to be in the same classroom [including IEPs and 504s]. The curriculum was therefore geared towards, “How can we make everything accessible to everyone?”

And I really love that about my job. I was at the same school for six years. The first year I taught middle school, and I taught ninth the rest of the time I was there.

What did you like about teaching?

The school. The people were great. I was really lucky in terms of having coworkers I genuinely really liked as people. We had a really supportive community. It felt like everyone had pretty good intentions, and everyone was on the same mission. And I had great students. I know teachers always say the students are the thing that they love the most, but they really were great kids. 

I also just got a lot of flexibility in terms of what I was allowed to do. I made my own curriculum. My boss was really cool. She pretty much let me do whatever I wanted as long as it was within reason and the requirements. I taught Sing Unburied, Sing every year of ninth grade, which is a book that most schools would not let you teach. Same thing with twelfth grade. We did a whole unit on the movie Moonlight, which once again, a lot of places would not let you do that. 

I would still be teaching right now if I hadn’t gotten my book deal.

My school was very socially progressive. I was allowed to have a lot of very frank and open conversations about a whole bunch of different topics with students around sexuality, race gender, whatever. I felt very lucky to be in a school like that, particularly as the years wore on and the climate for a lot of teachers in other places got to be so incredibly censored and restricted.

Most days, I was happy to be there. Obviously, going to work is going to work. Sometimes you don't want to wake up early. You don't want to deal with nonsense. But in general, I was really happy. I would still be teaching right now if I hadn’t gotten my book deal. I only left because of that.

So that’s what brought you to the decision to leave?

Yeah. The main reason I left was because I wrote my debut novel, which is coming out in February. I wrote the majority of it while I was teaching from home during Covid because I was locked in my house with me and my cat. There was not a whole lot else to do.

I'd been working for several years on polishing it with my agent, and then we went out and sold it. I really just lucked out and ended up in a position where I’m able to live on being a writer for a little bit and see how that goes. 

I frankly wanted to see what life was like when I could choose when to go to the bathroom. I wanted to know what life would be like when I could eat regular meals, and not run myself into the ground.

I frankly wanted to see what life was like when I could choose when to go to the bathroom. I wanted to know what life would be like when I could eat regular meals, and not run myself into the ground. I wanted basic stuff that other adults get to experience in their lives, that when you're a teacher, you just don't have.

My thought process was, “Look, if it doesn't work out, I'll just go back to being a teacher. I'm highly qualified; it won't be hard for me to get another teaching job.” Because I love being a teacher. Yeah, there's a bunch of hard stuff about it, but at the end of the day, I really like being an English teacher. 

So I'll go back if I have to. But in the interim, I was like, “If I’m afforded the opportunity to rest and take a break and live by my own schedule for a bit, I should take that opportunity, just for my own physical health, my insanity.” Because as much as I love being a teacher, there were so many days when I would not eat until I got home from school at the end of the day. I would be coasting on coffee or weird snacks all day long. 

The other thing is that my book deal was around a two-book deal. So I knew I was gonna have to write a second book. It was gonna be too hard for me to balance full-time teaching with trying to write a book. It was one thing to do it during the Covid lockdown, when I was locked in my apartment. But I knew that when you're teaching in person, it's so physically exhausting that I knew I was not going to be able to meet that expectation. 

I didn't leave out of being horrifically disgruntled or hating my job, or anything like that. It really came down to, “There's another opportunity, and I have to pick between doing this thing or teaching.”

So I actually did try to stay on part-time, because once again, I just really like teaching. But schools are just not really that flexible on schedules and they couldn't do anything for me that made sense.

So I didn't leave out of being horrifically disgruntled or hating my job, or anything like that. It really came down to, “There's another opportunity, and I have to pick between doing this thing or teaching.”

What feelings came up around leaving teaching?

There's definitely a sense of lost identity. Just because I think as a teacher, you end up identifying so much with that. Being a high school teacher was part of who I was. That not being the case anymore for me is a little bit strange.

And just a sadness around walking away. I do miss the daily interaction with my students. I miss a lot of the camaraderie I had with some of my coworkers. Sometimes I even miss the routine nature of it. I sometimes miss the fact that every second of my day was so planned that there was no openness to anything. Just because I flipped such a 180, now working for myself. 

When you're a teacher, you're responsible for so many people all of the time—for the bodily and mental safety of like 120 teenagers every day. It's really nice to not be in that situation anymore, to just be like, “Oh, I'm actually just responsible for myself.”

But at the same time, there's also a bit of relief. When you're a teacher, you're responsible for so many people all of the time—for the bodily and mental safety of like 120 teenagers every day. It's really nice to not be in that situation anymore, to just be like, “Oh, I'm actually just responsible for myself.” 

Of course, I don't miss the drama of being a teacher, admin switching stuff up on you, or parents doing wild stuff. It's nice that I'm not forced to adhere to the school schedule. I've visited my family more since I quit teaching than I did like the whole time I was a teacher, getting my time off during the most expensive times to travel. 

What has this first year out of the classroom been like?

I feel like my first year out of the classroom has been relatively anticlimactic. I've been writing. That's been pretty much the focus: polishing up my novel, getting it ready for publication, and then working on additional projects. It's been very, very low-key, which I think was probably necessary.

I think it's taken a full year for my adrenal glands to calm down from being a teacher. It's taken that long for my brain and body to come down to a place of like, “Okay, we don't need to be that amped all of the time.”

I think it's taken a full year for my adrenal glands to calm down from being a teacher.

So I'm interested to see this next year. The book is coming out which I'm so excited about and that's gonna change what my career as a full-time writer looks like in a big way. 

I am actually thinking about ways to get back into the classroom, but to do it in more sustainable, different ways. So exploring like, “What does higher ed look like? What does teaching more specifically creative writing look like?” Or just figuring out alternative ways that I can still be a teacher and I can still use that skill because I do love it so much. But in ways that allow me to have a writing career and to live in a more sustainable, calm fashion. 

What if anything could lure you back into full-time teaching?

At this current juncture, the most practical one is health insurance. I'm married, so I get health insurance through my husband's job, which is great. I would not be able to do any of what I'm doing right now if that were not the case. But if something were to occur with my husband's health insurance, then I’d be going back to teaching a hundred percent. 

But I think I might be lured back if opportunities were available that would allow me more of an adult life and more flexibility. Like if I could maintain doing what I'm doing now as a writer and also teach teenagers, I would do that. 

A lot of people make out that it's like, “Oh, you can be a teacher and do a million things. You get so much time off.” Every teacher knows that that time off is not real. It's not the time off that everybody thinks it is.

But I just don't see that reality being likely in the future. A lot of people make out that it's like, “Oh, you can be a teacher and do a million things. You get so much time off.” Every teacher knows that that time off is not real. It's not the time off that everybody thinks it is. No, we get like a solid month, I would say, where they really don't mess with you as a teacher. But that month you're on a come down from ten months of insanity. It's not chill. 

Right now, it'd be really hard to make that logical decision to go back. There are a lot of things I miss about it on a purely emotional level, but I couldn't rationalize throwing myself back into that type of schedule. And the other thing is that I really lucked out in terms of the school I worked at. If I go back to teaching, the likelihood that I'm gonna end up in a job like that is not high. You're always rolling the dice on every new school.

What advice or wisdom would you give to a teacher who is considering transitioning, or who has the kind of opportunity that was handed to you?

I'm in a tough position because I didn't transition into another full-time employer-employee type job. So I think as a result, I don't have a great sense of what the transition looks like. 

What advice I could maybe give is, if you're transitioning into working for yourself, preparing yourself for the lack of schedule. As teachers, we're so used to our time being so full, and us all being the types of people who are go-go-go, needing to fill our time. At least for me, I found that when that was no longer externally provided to me, it was actually hard to figure out how to organize my time myself. 

As much as I loved it, it was important to find ways to very intentionally bring my stress levels down—that sort of chronic level of stress that you have as a teacher.

I also think it's useful to take time to very intentionally pick calming hobbies and activities when you come out of teaching. I started doing ceramics when I left teaching. I was like, “Well, I got all this time, and there's a ceramic studio down the street from my apartment, and I love doing this in high school—why don't I take a class?” And I found it to be super healing and restorative because it’s so hands-on and meditative and quiet.

I do think that was actually a really important healing process for me, coming out of teaching. As much as I loved it, it was important to find ways to very intentionally bring my stress levels down—that sort of chronic level of stress that you have as a teacher. Finding ways to be more present and in the moment, and to bring yourself down from that fight-or-flight state that I think you live in a lot as a teacher.

So I guess that'd be my advice: figuring out ways to fill your time, and then figuring out ways to very intentionally care for yourself and help bring your body into more of a state of rest.

That's definitely advice I need to hear, because I have not been doing that.

I do think it helps. You end up building up so much chronic stress. I don't think the human body is meant to be on that level at all times. You don't realize that because you get so used to it as a teacher. But as we all know, kids bring quite literally anything into that classroom. Anything can happen to you at any time, truly anything. You have no idea. Day to day, it's like, “Is that kid going to start a fight in the classroom today? Is that person crying?” God knows in America we have to worry about school shootings. And then there's the basics. My projector has caught on fire numerous times in my classroom. I've had kids have full-blown medical emergencies in my classroom. You have to be ready at a moment's notice to appropriately respond to anything that happens. 

You end up building up so much chronic stress. I don't think the human body is meant to be on that level at all times.

That's a level of stress humans are not meant to exist on for eight hours a day, every day. Most adults are not doing that. Most adults are going to their office job. And their work is pretty predictable. Teaching, I have no idea what a child's coming in with. Literally anything could be going down.

So I think that it's important to treat it as something that you need to heal from, coming out of teaching. Like, how can I intentionally reset myself? Because I've been existing under such extreme circumstances for a really long time. 

I had a hard time figuring out how to schedule myself as a writer. How do I do this every day? How do I find the times? And sometimes I'm hard on myself about the fact that I'm not writing every day, or I don't do things perfectly, or I don't follow a schedule.

How can I intentionally reset myself? Because I've been existing under such extreme circumstances for a really long time. 

But I think to that point, I was on executive functioning overload for six years. Not only extreme executive functioning for myself but also trying to scaffold the executive functioning of 120 children all day, every day. In this last year, it's taken me until very, very recently to be like, “Okay, I'm now in a place where I feel like I can examine what things look like for me.”

Order Erin’s debut novel Junie here.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.