There are so many ways to be a teacher though. This piece of writing talks solely about teaching in the American public school system, which is a different beast than teaching at a college or university, or even an international school, not to mention as a private tutor.

I felt kind of shitty about throwing in the towel (though I may someday pick it up again) on EFL teaching, but I think a huge part of that was that EFL isn't what I want to teach. I became an EFL teacher to learn more about my own grasp of the English language so that I could learn to write better and so that I could live abroad and travel. I don't really care about EFL at all and I certainly think that had an impact on my longevity in the profession.

Also, I think I learned that I don't want to be an academic; I want to be a practitioner, who may occasionally teach. For example, last year I gave a talk with another guest lecturer to an English 502 class at the local university about how to use writing skills outside of an academic environment and I loved it. Part of why I loved it, was that I was there to solely to teach, not to make sure that they learned or retained information, not to make sure that I was hitting any quotas or institutional goals.

I get annoyed that in the US a "teacher" is one thing and one thing only in the mind of the public.