BONUS: Why This Teacher Left Public School After 12 Years

In this S5E17 Schoolutions Teaching Strategies BONUS, I unpack Sarah Tesar's honest story about leaving public school kindergarten—not because of bad admin or paperwork, but because the emotional cost became unsustainable.

This isn't just about teacher burnout. It's about the empathy paradox: the same qualities that make someone great at student engagement and classroom belonging can become impossible to sustain without systemic support.

In This Episode, You'll Discover:
✅ Why self-care advice fails when classroom behavior needs are overwhelming
✅ The difference between individual problems and system problems in education
✅ How to create active learning through integrated, theme-based teaching tips
✅ Practical lesson planning strategies that boost student motivation and student participation
✅ The power of mixed-skill grouping for inclusive teaching and student success
✅ Why authentic purposes transform low engagement into inspired teaching moments
✅ How to rethink the school day structure for thriving students

Sarah's experience offers effective teaching insights on instructional strategies, professional development, and teacher support that every educator needs to hear. Whether you're struggling with attention in class, looking for innovative teaching methods, or seeking coaching strategies for teacher impact—this conversation will validate your experience and equip you with practical solutions.

This is education beyond the classroom—practical, try-it-tomorrow approaches for empowered educators who believe in equity in education and student motivation that lasts.

Ready to transform your teaching or school culture? Watch now and discover why sustainable teaching isn't built in isolation—it's built in community.

🚀📚 Watch the full S5E17  ⁨@schoolutionspodcast⁩ interview here (https://youtu.be/LHxZLWh36Z0)

Join our community of educators committed to cultivating student success, inspired teaching, and creating inclusive classrooms with a pro-kid mindset focused on the whole child.

📧 Connect: schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com
🎵 Music: Benjamin Wahl

Don't forget to  🔔SUBSCRIBE for more teaching tips, and 💬SHARE with fellow educators! 

Chapters
0:00 - Introduction: The Empathy Paradox
1:00 - Sarah's Story: 12 Years in Public School
2:00 - The Empathy Paradox Explained
3:00 - Individual vs. System Problems
4:00 - What Sarah Proposed to Her District
5:00 - Integrated, Theme-Based Learning
6:00 - Small Integration Strategies You Can Use
7:00 - Mixed-Skill Grouping in Action
8:00 - The 3-Hour School Day Question
9:00 - Rethinking School Day Structure
10:00 - Three Key Takeaways
11:00 - Your Invitation: Three Things to Write Down
12:00 - Building Sustainable Teaching in Community

#TeacherBurnout #StudentEngagement #EffectiveTeaching #InstructionalStrategies #TeacherSupport #ClassroomBelonging #ProfessionalDevelopment #EducationLeadership #CulturallyResponsiveTeaching #WholeChild #InnovativeTeaching #TeacherCoaching #StudentSuccess #EquityInEducation #ProKidMindset #InclusiveTeaching #LessonPlanning #ActiveLearning #SchoolCulture #EmpoweredEducators

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

[00:00:00] What if I told you that being an excellent teacher might require you to ignore some of the advice you've been given about self-care, that filling your cup isn't always possible when you're standing in front of 20 kindergartners with overwhelming needs? Sarah Tesar said something and our conversation that made me catch my breath, she said I couldn't stop myself from giving everything to the children that needed me so much. In today's bonus episode, I'm going to unpack the uncomfortable truth about teaching's emotional cost, and what we can do about it.

This is Schoolutions Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives [00:01:00] the support they need to thrive. 

Hey there, welcome to the Friday bonus episode of Schoolutions Teaching Strategies. I'm Olivia Wahl, and if you haven't listened to this week's full episode with Sarah Tsar yet, pause this right now. Go listen to that first season 5 episode 17. It's called Why This Teacher Left Public School, but Still Believes in It. It's right below this episode. Go listen to that and then come back to this bonus content. I'll wait for you. 

You heard Sarah's story 12 years as a public school kindergarten teacher doing everything right and still finding herself completely depleted. And here's what I cannot stop thinking about since we recorded, Sarah's decision wasn't about burnout in the traditional sense. It wasn't about admin or paperwork or even the long hours. It was about something much more fundamental. She said her cup was empty because she couldn't stop being exactly who her [00:02:00] students needed her to be. And I think we need to talk about that because I'm guessing some of you heard that and thought, yes, that is exactly it. 

So today I wanna dig into three big ideas from our conversation that I think deserve more attention. Let's start with what I'm calling the Empathy Paradox. Sarah described herself as an empath, and she said that in a kindergarten space where needs are so high, it was impossible to not give herself to students the way they needed it. Now, here's the paradox, though, the very quality that makes someone an excellent teacher. Deep empathy. The ability to attune to the children's emotional needs, the instinct to respond to those needs, that same quality can become unsustainable in certain settings. 

I wanna be really careful here because I'm not suggesting teachers should care less, but I think Sarah identified something crucial. There are some teaching contacts where the emotional needs are [00:03:00] so vast that no amount of boundary setting or self-care practices can actually keep your cup full. She tried therapy, she did all the things, and her cup was still empty. So then what do we do with that information? Because most of us listening are not in a position to leave public education or create a hybrid homeschool model.

Here's what I've been thinking. First, we need to stop treating this as an individual problem with individual solutions. When Sarah said she realized it wasn't about the system, it was about me. I both understood what she meant and wanted to push back a little. Because yes, it was about her capacity and her needs as a whole human, but it's also absolutely about systems that don't provide adequate social emotional support infrastructure.

Sarah actually proposed what I thought was a brilliant solution to her district. She [00:04:00] suggested that they storm kindergarten at the start of the year with the same intensity of intervention that they use for academics, but also focused on social emotional needs. The district said no, that there weren't enough resources. That is a system problem, not a Sarah problem. 

Second, I think we need to give ourselves permission to acknowledge that some teaching assignments in some contexts, at some phases of our lives, might not be sustainable, even if we're good at them, even if we love them, even if the kids need us. Sarah wasn't failing as a teacher.

She was actually succeeding so well that it was draining her capacity to be present with her own family. That's not a personal failure. That's information about what that particular role required and what she had to give. 

Okay, so shifting gears, let's talk about what Sarah is actually [00:05:00] doing now because there's so much here that translates directly into traditional classrooms. Sarah described building her curriculum around science and social studies themes, then weaving in literacy and math naturally. She gave the example of the apple stand. They wrote how two books about making muffins and applesauce. Then they actually made those things and sold them, handing out their books to customers, and she said something I loved.

They were more proud of those books than they were of the muffins. Of course they were, because the learning had purpose. It had a real audience. It connected to something tangible in their world. Now, I know some of you're thinking that's great for homeschooling, but I have standards to cover and pacing guides and curriculum mandates.

Sarah taught in public schools for 12 years. She did this work in her classroom too, and her advice is golden, make change within [00:06:00] your classroom. If your kids are having fun and learning, your results are going to be good, and they're not going to tell you to stop. I thought I'd give you some ways to start with small integration.

First, you could pick one topic from your science or social study standards for the month. Let's say it's life cycles and science. Now look at your literacy standards. Can you read books about lifecycles during read aloud? Can students write about lifecycles during writing workshop? Can you count and graph different stages during math? You're not abandoning your curriculum. You're organizing it around a coherent theme so learning connects instead of fragments. 

Second, think about authentic purposes for literacy. Sarah's daughters didn't just write how to books as a genre study. They wrote them to teach their customers something. What if your students wrote persuasive letters to the principal about a real issue in the school? What if they created informational [00:07:00] brochures about your science topic for the classroom next door. 

Third, and this is big considered mixed skill grouping. Sarah has kindergartners through fifth graders together, and she described this beautiful scaffolding where she'd ask, where are my word writers? Where are my sentence writers? Where are my paragraph writers? Everyone heard the progression. Everyone understood where they were and where they were going. You can do this in a single grade classroom too, because when you explicitly show the progression of skills and let students hear what writers at different levels are doing and working on, you remove so much shame and confusion.

The kindergartner who's still writing words isn't behind. They're exactly where they should be, and they can see what comes next. The third grader who's writing paragraphs might still learn a strategy from the word writer about how to spell an unknown word. This is what I would say is Vygotsky's zone of proximal [00:08:00] development in action, and it is available to all of us.

Here's the last thing I want to dig into, and it's probably the most provocative. Sarah mentioned that when her daughter was in a preschool program that only lasted three hours, she was blown away that her daughter was getting everything she needed in that compressed time, and Sarah asked herself, why can't kids learn in a shorter day? Then she answered her own question, that we all know why, because we live in a working society. Let's sit with that for a second. Our school days aren't six or seven hours long because that's the optimal learning time for children. They're that long because families need childcare while they work. 

Now, I'm not suggesting we can change this reality. Most families need school to function as childcare, and that's completely valid and understandable. I am suggesting that we think differently about how we use that time. [00:09:00] Sarah's hybrid program runs 12:15 to 3:15, 3 hours, and students are engaged the entire time because the learning is hands-on, integrated, purposeful, and scaffolded to their level.

What if we thought about the school day in chunks? What if we acknowledged that there are three to four hours of truly productive learning time, and then there's the rest of the day, which serves other important functions like socialization, physical activity, creative exploration, care, while families work, but it might not need to be packed with academic instruction.

I'm thinking about schools all over the world that have experimented with this and have actually implemented it. Intensive academic blocks in the morning when kids are fresh, and then afternoons that are more flexible, more exploratory, more student-directed, or even schools that build ingenious hour or passion projects where kids pursue their own interests [00:10:00] or schools that partner with community organizations to offer enrichment in the afternoons, like art, music, sports, coding, taught by specialists while classroom teachers have planning time.

The point is if we can't change the length of the school day, maybe we can change our expectations about what every minute of that day needs to accomplish. So here's what I'm taking from Sarah's story and from this reflection. 

One: the emotional cost of teaching is real, and it's not always solvable with individual self-care. We need systemic support, especially for social emotional needs. Two: Integration, authentic purpose and mixed skill. Scaffolding aren't just for alternative models. You can start small in your own classroom right now. And three: maybe the question isn't, how do I survive a seven hour school day? Maybe it's what do I really need to accomplish in those seven hours and how can I [00:11:00] structure the time differently?

Remember, you are doing important work every day. Taking care of yourself isn't selfish. It's how you sustain that work for the long haul. I'll see you on Monday for a brand new episode with Chrissy Beltran, Buzzing with Ms. B. Join us for our conversation about all things coaching to wrap 2025. 

Until then, take care. Schoolutions Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to solutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to. Never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Here's my invitation: Grab a piece of paper or open the notes app on your phone. I'm hoping you'll write down three things. First, what's one teaching practice or strategy from today that made you think I could try that? [00:12:00] Write it down. Make it specific. 

Second, what's one systemic support you need that you don't currently have? Not everything needs to change. Just one thing, write it down. And third, who's one person you could share both of those things with this week. A colleague, your admin, a teacher, friend, a partner. Write their name down then, and this is the hard part, actually share it with 'em. Because sustainable teaching isn't built in isolation, it's built in community with people who see you and support you and remind you that you're not in this alone. 

I would love if you share with me too, email me at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com and tell me what you wrote down. Tell me who you're going to talk to. Tell me what you need. I can't fix the system, but I can listen. I can affirm that [00:13:00] what you're feeling is real and I can keep creating content that hopefully makes you feel a little less alone and a little more equipped. You matter. Your wellbeing matters and the work you're doing, even on the hard days, especially on the hard days, it matters so much.