The Pressure of Being “Teacher Me” All the Time
author: submitted by anonymous teacher
Do I have to be the perfect embodiment of a teacher 24/7?
Teacher pressure, to me, feels like living in two versions of myself at once. There’s “Teacher Me," the version people expect: kind, bubbly, upbeat, positive. The one who has unlimited energy and dresses professionally even when buying groceries. You know the type: somewhere between Miss Honey and Ms. Frizzle.
And then there’s just… me. I love my job, but I’m also a person who says "bad words," listens to loud rock music in the car, and occasionally shows up to Walmart in sweatpants covered in paint and yesterday’s hair because I am renovating my house. It's taken years of learning to try to be okay with that... To stop trying to live up to a version of "perfect teacher" that doesn’t actually exist.
The pressure gets heavier when you live in the community you teach in. It’s hard to ever fully clock out. A simple trip to the store in July might turn into a parent meet and greet, and then I'm left panicking: How do they perceive me based on what I was wearing and the 3 bags of chips and 2 candy bars in the cart? A neighborhood event might mean navigating conversations with students while also trying to unwind, wearing leggings and a T-shirt with a funny but questionable graphic. Even when I’m off the clock, I’m still "the teacher."
To me, it's always felt like there’s this unspoken expectation that you’re always supposed to look the part too. There have been moments where I’ve stood in front of my closet, wondering if what I want to wear is “teacher-y” enough in case I run into someone from school. It’s subtle, but it builds up: the sense that your whole identity has to orbit around your role in the classroom. I have advanced degrees and a professional title that sound impressive, and I guess they are, but sometimes it feels like those create an expectation that I must also be the perfect embodiment of a teacher 24/7. I don’t want to let people down, but I also just want to be allowed to exist as a regular person too.
What’s wild is that most of this pressure doesn’t come from my students, or the parents, or even my district, but rather it comes from the culture around teaching, and from within myself. Teachers want to be role models. We want to show up fully. But that doesn’t mean we stop being human. That doesn’t mean we should feel guilty for having a personal life, an edge, a style, a voice that doesn’t always sound like it belongs in a staff meeting.
Teaching is a beautiful, exhausting, meaningful career. But it can also feel like you’re walking a tightrope between who you are and who people think you should be. Over the years, I've begun to let those two versions of myself meet in the middle. Because being human, flawed, real, loud-music-loving, occasionally-sweary human, isn’t a failure of the job. It’s what makes me better at it.
