I taught high school for 5 years and made the same decision. The biggest factor for me was how the schools were being administered; just a few examples: - Com

I taught high school for 5 years and made the same decision. The biggest factor for me was how the schools were being administered; just a few examples: - Competition among students, instead of being used as a motivator as piles of research suggests, was specifically DISALLOWED because it might make certain students feel bad. - When a student fell behind because they were slacking off in class, it was the teacher's responsibility to put in extra time and make sure they caught up, stopping just short of doing the work FOR the student. - Double standards, administrators demanding that classes be "rigorous", but then when students complain that the class is too hard, or students get bad grades because they can't hack it, that of course is the teacher's fault, and it is reflected in our official evaluations. - Turf wars among teachers who only care about protecting their own jobs. - I never had a full time job. Schools will hire for, say .6 FTE, or even .2 FTE, which no one can make a living on. I tried holding 3 teaching jobs at once to put together a full time salary and that worked for about 4 months before things fell apart. - Working hours of 60-70 hours per week during the school year leads to burnout. - I make 3x as much as a software engineer. If it was truly about the students, I'd still be teaching, But it's not.