I loved my job – then I asked for time off for a funeral

As I stood in front of my first-year class trying to teach them about child protection laws, I could hear my voice shaking. 

It was 2017 and I was doing the best I could, but I couldn’t concentrate, overwhelmed by the feeling that I shouldn’t be there. 

Because where I should have been was at a relative’s funeral, saying my goodbyes and supporting my family. 

But when I had asked for a day’s leave to attend, the answer was a flat refusal. 

Not because they couldn’t cover my lessons but because they wouldn’t, they didn’t even try, they just sat before me and told me that as they weren’t considered an immediate member of my family I would not be allowed the day off.

I tried to negotiate a half day, and even when I requested it as unpaid leave I was again turned down.

I was shocked at the lack of empathy shown by my department head.

Teaching holds such bittersweet memories for me. It was a six year career at a further educational college I loved but unfortunately in the end, the negative experiences outweighed the positives. 

Not long after the funeral, I needed key hole surgery and I remember feeling pressured to give a date for my return to work before I even went under the knife. 

This meant that I returned too soon and worse still on my first day back at work, with fresh stitches and lots of pain – I had to stay an extra three hours for an opening evening, unpaid of course.

I left teaching in 2019 when things were already bad in the profession – and the picture now looks even bleaker. 

Education Support’s latest Teacher Wellbeing Index found that 76% of education staff feel stressed, 77% of early years teachers have experienced symptoms of poor mental health due to work, and a staggering 86% of senior leaders feel stressed.

I wish I was shocked. 

I didn’t go into teaching expecting it to be easy. I chose it because I loved the idea of helping young people build futures.

Watching students develop real passion, figure out their career paths, and eventually secure places at university to study nursing, midwifery, or even teaching, was the part of the job that made everything feel worthwhile. 

I loved the classroom. I loved the young people – their successes genuinely felt like my own and to this day I still miss that side of the job. 

But behind the scenes, the hours never really stopped. 

We were expected to arrive at work half an hour before our first lesson to set up, unpaid. 

We would still be there long after our last lesson finished, again unpaid. 

During the day, as it was a college, there was no set lunch hour, and because I worked across several departments, my ‘breaks’ were often just me speed-walking from one classroom to another.

Evenings and weekends disappeared into planning and marking. I missed out on so much with my own children. 

The turning point came in September 2018, after I had spent all summer writing three months’ worth of lesson plans and resources for a new subject I’d been asked to teach, a subject I was genuinely excited about. 

I spent hours perfecting those lessons, homework tasks and resources and uploaded everything as I’d been asked to do.

But on the day, I was told the lessons had been handed to a newly hired teacher, who would be using the resources I had created. 

I wouldn’t be teaching the course at all.

In that moment, something inside me cracked, it was soul destroying. 

From that moment on, my mental health deteriorated. 

I held on until Christmas, but the workload kept growing, and the support wasn’t there. I eventually reached a point where I had to seek help from my doctor. 

Even while I was off sick, the college contacted me repeatedly, and in the end, I realised I couldn’t go back at all. I left teaching heartbroken. 

Looking back now, I know what I’d do differently

I’d set clear boundaries. I’d push back when expectations were unreasonable. But at the time I didn’t feel like I had permission to do any of that. 

Teachers don’t want to let their students down, so they push themselves past the point of wellbeing, and sometimes past the point of safety. 

All today’s stats confirm again is that relentless workloads, pressure to achieve impossible targets, minimal downtime, and a lack of meaningful pastoral support aren’t sustainable. 

They take a real toll on mental health. And if nothing changes, more teachers will leave. 

Workloads will grow heavier for those who remain, stress levels will continue to skyrocket, and students will increasingly feel the impact of a system stretched beyond its limits. 

Protecting planning time, ensuring teachers have real breaks, offering genuine mental health support, creating fair cover systems, and treating teachers as professionals rather than endlessly available resources would make a real difference. 

I still miss my old career. 

I miss the energy of the classroom, the relationships, the excitement of watching young people discover their futures. Those were the parts that made the job beautiful. 

But the truth is, many teachers aren’t leaving because they don’t love teaching, they’re leaving because the system doesn’t support them. 

And if we want passionate, dedicated teachers to stay, that has to change. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jessica.aureli@metro.co.uk. 

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