Teachers and others working in schools — do you feel safe? Or safe enough? Do you have enough support, both literal and figurative? Are there subs? Paraprofessionals? Do you have the supplies necessary to make classes work, including personal protective equipment? When COVID cases are identified, does your district policy protect you? Does it protect the children in your care? Is your administration listening to your concerns?

If no one seems to be listening to you, fellow teacher, if your situation genuinely feels hazardous, especially if you live in a rural area with limited healthcare options, consider quitting. Consider retiring. Consider seeking alternative employment. You won’t be the first person to quit in October. I am getting emails telling me about job fairs, job fairs for teachers in early autumn.

We are guaranteed a wild year of quarantines and closures. That wild year has become inevitable. We can’t put COVID back in the box because too many humans are now serving as disease vectors.

Eduhonesty: The short window when we might have extinguished COVID closed a long time ago. Only you, reader, can determine your risk profile and your risk tolerance. Only you can assess whether or not the stress of your daily work is causing you to crumble around the edges. Are you still having fun? Are you just holding together? How much glue, spit and bailing wire is it taking to keep you together? How much do you dread your morning drive? I am going to suggest you read the following article as you consider your personal emotional state:

Nine Ways Stress is More Dangerous Than You Think (healthline.com)

The decision to quit should factor in your retirement posture, available family and friends who might be asked for help, and any strategies which might get you through the school year. Walking away from your students should be a last resort.

But you CAN walk away. You don’t have to die on this hill. If your stomach lurches as you drive to work, if you are having panic attacks or just going on occasional drinking binges to forget the day — if you cry regularly, if you dread your email, if everything coming out of the front office feels like another five pounds added to a 75 pound backpack you are already carrying, if staff meetings are never fun now, if angry parents make you want to hide in your basement in your pajamas, watching Netflix while the world goes on without you…

The world will go on without you. That’s the big truth we teachers sometimes avoid while looking at all the good we are doing in our classrooms. Yes, if you quit, you will inconvenience and hurt people, but your administrators will replace you as quickly as possible and they may never even look back. Your students will be forced to process one more change in a stew of recent changes, but students regularly change teachers throughout their academic lives. Showing them they don’t have to put up with piles of crazy because it’s expected of them — that may be doing them a favor that will help them enormously down the line.

Despite today’s difficult conditions, I hope many readers are thinking, “Why would I ever leave teaching?” But reader, if you are taking Xanax just to get through the day or simply breaking into random tears, this post is probably for you. And happy or at least reconciled teachers? Please send a link to this post to colleagues who keep crying in the breakroom or who otherwise just don’t seem to be… making it.

Is it time to leave, reader? Why not go online and start planning an exit strategy? Stress makes people physically and mentally ill. PTSD is not only for soldiers who served in Afghanistan or other bloody global conflicts. See PTSD in Teachers: Yes, It’s Real! – The Educators Room.

How much stress is too much stress? Here’s the thing: You don’t want to find out by making yourself sick. This post is written in memory of a colleague who died on the table despite the best efforts of her surgeon. It’s written for all those teachers and ex-teachers who are discovering that PTSD is a chronic and fluctuating disorder. Every teacher who is struggling, struggling and struggling while trying to hit all the targets and simultaneously pacify all the stakeholders concerned with the classroom happy should actively read PTSD is a chronic, fluctuating disorder affecting the mental quality of life in older adults – PubMed (nih.gov).

You only have one heart. You only have one mind. Your inner child deserves your protection, as much as any other child anywhere. And if your inner child is hurting too badly, you need to carry that child to safety.