68. Evaluating Your Teaching Contract

It’s contract season! Have you received your teacher contract for next year yet? If not, it will likely be coming soon and regardless of if you are staying or not, you may be feeling a lot of emotions. If you are on the fence about staying in your current position or leaving, I strongly suggest you think through it in a neutral way without letting fear or exhaustion make the decision for you. One way to do this is to look closely through your teacher contract and determine if it best serves you in this season.

Being a teacher these past few years has been incredibly challenging which has led many teachers to question whether they should return to teaching next year, stay in their current position, or try switching schools. When I left teaching in early 2020, I too had to make tough decisions and one thing that helped to make my decision to leave was looking through my contract. If you are unsure what to do next year, I want to help you by talking you through four things to consider when evaluating your teacher contract. Today, we are taking a close look at requirements vs. expectations, school and district culture, financial implications, and considering where you are in your current season of life.

We have been covering some hard topics lately and I would love to be able to give us all a much-needed laugh, but I need YOUR help! For Teacher Appreciation Week, I would love to do an episode on Teacher Appreciation Week gone wrong. Please DM or send me a voice recording about a time when you received a “gift” or “treat” for Teacher Appreciation Week that we just wouldn’t believe. I’ll be giving away five $10 TpT gift cards to people who share with us. I can’t wait to hear all your stories!

Resources Mentioned:

• Send me a voice recording for the “Teacher Appreciation Week Gone Wrong episode
• Join the Secondary Science Simplified virtual professional development course waitlist
• Send me a DM on Instagram:@its.not.rocket.science
• Send me an email: rebecca@itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com 
• Grab your Classroom Reset Challenge
• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts.

Check out the show notes for all resources mentioned in this episode: https://itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/episode68