Why I’m considering leaving public education two years into my “dream job”

It only took one and half years of being a school counselor for me to become completely jaded.

Not just jaded with school counseling, but public education, our Western society, and our world.

What got me here? I was beginning to wonder that myself.

It felt like some elaborate, cruel joke. I realized I had spent most of my adulthood thus far basically trying to answer only one question: What job can I do that makes me happy and pays well?

Being a school counselor seemed like the answer. I could get a respectable job in education with a decent salary, so I could support myself and be happy. I was always interested in psychology and mental health, so it seemed like school counseling would be a perfect fit. I can find fulfillment in this career, I thought.

I thought I was going to have a cushy little job with government benefits like good insurance and good retirement and a beautiful office that I could decorate any way I liked. In reality, the job was so busy and stressful that I didn’t bother using any of my energy into decorating my office much. I didn’t even have a frame for my degree yet, much less any appealing art for me and my students to look at until about a year and a half into my career.

Finally, I had reached this goal. The biggest goal in my life thus far: to become a school counselor, so I could help the kids of our future generations all while supporting myself and creating my own happy life.

So why was I going home every single day crying?

I was burnt out, and my struggles were quickly turning into resentment.

My mental health had absolutely deteriorated, yet I desperately couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t make sense with everything I already knew about human psychology. How can I know so much about behavior change but can’t consistently regulate my own behavior and mental health?

Everyone around me was telling me I was doing a good job. Maybe I was just being too hard on myself. (I have struggled with that my whole life. I had always been a perfectionist and pushed myself beyond my limits to a fault.) Maybe I just cared too much. I knew I was a good counselor, yet I felt completely ineffective. Not ineffective in my job description but in my ability to actually help the students.

I was effective in the role of a school counselor. But I felt in my heart and knew in my mind that these students didn’t need a school counselor as much as they needed a therapist. Schools desperately need school counselors, but they also desperately need mental health therapists.

These weren’t bad kids. Not at all. They had been dealt a bad hand and didn’t know how to cope in a traditional school environment. On top of that, all of the students had collectively experienced the trauma of COVID-19 during very sensitive stages of their development.

I felt helpless because I began to view every student’s behavior as a manifestation of the trauma they had unfortunately endured and hadn’t gotten the chance to heal. How could we blame these kids for their behaviors? In a quote from one of my favorite TV shows, The Good Place, “people improve when they get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don’t?”

Sure, it’s not that we were literally blaming the kids for their behaviors. They’re kids.

Yet I felt like we were collectively trying to hold kids accountable to standards they were incapable of ever reaching due to their current development and poor mental health.

No wonder students ended up in my office every day with over-the-top responses to seemingly minor issues.

What good did it do to call students’ parents to tell them their child is suicidal if they don’t think that’s the problem, don’t know how to get them help, or worse don’t care. Was I actually doing more harm than good when I had to call home and tell these parents they had to take their child from school to be evaluated psychologically?

To me, mental health services were so clearly the answer. Yet, the need was so high that kids constantly had to be waitlisted. There were so many barriers to getting them the mental health support they desperately needed: parental hesitance or blatant refusal for mental health services, lack of insurance, transportation issues, etc. These barriers all pointed to larger issues out of my control. How could I possibly get to the existential work I wanted to do with students if I had so many barriers preventing me from even seeing them face-to-face?

I just knew that therapy was the answer for most of these “problem” kiddos. If they could just get the mental health help they needed and support from their parents, then everything else would fall into place, i.e. their failing grades, their discipline referrals, their social skills and coping abilities, etc.

In my mind, I knew it wasn’t that simple either. Complex, pervasive, systemic issues like generational poverty and trauma require multi-faceted solutions.

Instead of being proactive to students’ needs, I felt solely reactive. And it was completely draining me. People seemed constantly upset that I couldn’t do more. Teachers seemed disappointed because attendance and grades continued to plummet despite their referrals to counseling. Parents seemed frustrated with me and the entire school system for issues that were out of our control. What frustrated me even more is that many parents did not seem to be taking accountability for their role in their students’ success.

Everything was my fault. (It wasn’t, but parents wanted someone else to blame, whether it was me, teachers, or the entire district.) Parents were not taking accountability. Even worse, some parents were unknowingly contributing to the behaviors they were yelling to me about.

Teachers were emailing me and calling me with their concerns inquiring about failing grades and lack of attendance. But I didn’t know how to answer them when all I could think about was how the students were fighting their own invisible demons.

Grades, attendance, and extracurriculars were the visible markers of educational success. But who cares about passing Algebra when battling psychological and physical abuse at home? School becomes an escape from the terrors of home instead of a means to gain an education. Who cares about showing up for school when the family expects you to earn your keep and maintain a full-time job in fast food in order to keep a roof over your siblings’ heads? A high school diploma loses its value, and the thought of postsecondary education becomes a pipe dream in the midst of survival.

I could so clearly see all of the problems that were affecting my students in their daily lives: complex, abstract, overlapping problems like privilege, generational poverty, history of trauma, mental health issues, depression, anxiety, corporate greed, unethical business practices, environmental issues, etc. Basically all of the inherent and man-made evils in this world. The list goes on and on and daily impacts them. These students are living in a daily crisis mode. 

And it was my job to help them deescalate from this daily crisis mode and help them find a will to live. The stress destroyed my mental and physical health, yet I was convinced something else was wrong with me. I’ve always struggled with anxiety and had hypochondriac tendencies. I began rapidly searching Google for my symptoms: headaches, depression, sleep problems, high blood pressure, etc. The real problem was chronic stress.

I became resentful. On top of that, I felt guilty for feeling resentful. After all, I was the one who chose this career. I had worked the last 10 years to get here because I thought it was my dream job.

How did I get here?

Suddenly I was sitting on top of a mountain of stress and debt reaching down to my students to help them up, but they were too far away. I felt guilty for feeling unhappy with my career choice because at least I was privileged enough to reach this career goal I had set for myself. My students didn’t seem to have a fraction of the same privilege.

But all the problems were out of my control. What was even more discouraging was how common and widespread these issues are. They are systemic and pervasive.

My coworkers are wonderful. They remind me what is in my control and to focus on that instead of what is out of my control. This is what we tell the students. But it is so discouraging and difficult to remain positive when you think you know what would actually help these students, yet you are powerless to create real change due to so many barriers.

My own chosen career began to feel like an impossible and fruitless daily effort that I had willingly pursued only out of my own selfishness and ego. Suddenly, I no longer believed in the field itself nor my ability to make an impact. It is difficult to not become jaded when you believe you see the root cause of an issue yet feel like you are just putting a band-aid on top of a cancerous tumor that may explode or kill them at any moment.

The metaphor of this tumor “killing them” is not an exagerration due to the heartbreaking amount of students who admit suicidal thoughts in response to their circumstances. And that only accounts for the students who are brave enough to speak of their distressing thoughts and seek help. How many more students are walking around the school building battling suicidal thoughts in silence?

I was one of those students. I walked the halls of high school unknowingly battling anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts in silence. On the outside, I showed all the visible markers of educational success. I showed up to school every day. I pushed myself. I made all A’s. I participated in a few extracurricular activities. Who would have guessed I considered methods for ending my own life?

It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I had a great childhood, great parents, good friends, went to church, was successful. For whatever reason, my genetics and psychology sometimes worked against me. The bright side of my struggle was how it inspired me to help others who were struggling. But it feels like I can’t.

I can’t get to the true work I need to do with students, that I show up for work every day to do, that I studied and worked 3 years to earn the necessary piece of paper required by the state to perform such work because I am too busy and bogged down with the manifestations of the underlying issues. It feels like I am constantly putting out fires that everyone else is pouring gas on.

I am continually discouraged and frustrated with my inability to promote positive change in my students’ lives because of the various hindrances within the public education system itself. I feel like ramming my head into a wall because I hear all these other voices telling me what I should be doing and how I should be doing it to support students and decrease behaviors but I am powerless to make any effective change without the process of fidelity.

What is fidelity? Consistency.

Basic psychology already tells us that human behavior can only be modified if consistency is present. In the absence of consistency, an undesired behavior can actually increase.

Educators are expected to fulfill the impossible task of making up for poor parenting and/or environmental factors such as trauma which could be ongoing. How are we expected to implement a process with fidelity if the interventions themselves are directly contradicted by parents or other environmental factors out of our control?

True behavior change cannot occur without consistency from all of the adults involved in children’s lives. And if consistency cannot even be guaranteed within the school building, how could I possibly bridge the gap to get parents on board? To some parents, I was the enemy.

It feels like a losing battle because behavior change in children can only be possible if all adults in that child’s life are communicating consistent messages regarding appropriate behavior. Educators have absolutely no control over the behavior messages children receive from home, other educators, other adults, or other factors in their environments. I’m just one person in each student’s world.

My whole life, I’ve never really believed the idea that one person could make a difference.

Sure, maybe exceptions can be made for the few greats: Jesus Christ, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Kendrick Lamar, Dolly Parton, etc.… but only those few. Most of the time, life just is the way it is, and one person cannot possibly “make a difference.” Helping a student felt like only a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of problems they were facing on a daily basis.

So where do I go from here? Well, find a new job, of course.

So how could I figure out which job would ultimately lead to my greatest happiness and success? Obviously, I had failed in that endeavor because I was miserable in this job.

Yet I felt a deeper pain and curiosity in my soul.

Was finding a new job really the answer? The problem was more complex than that. So, do I leave my job for the sake of my mental health and pursue another career, or do I keep fighting the good fight and risk next school year being even worse than the one before?

Is the true risk walking away from stable employment with insurance benefits and the highest salary I’ve made thus far (which is really not much to brag about although I am grateful), or is the risk losing my beliefs about human behavior, counseling, and life, which ultimately comprise my authentic self?

I have concluded that the public education system in the US has so many underlying and overarching issues that schools desperately need school counselors. Yet, I don’t know if that school counselor can continue to be me.