It is the middle of the school holidays, and something strange is happening. Your jaw isn’t clenched. Your heart isn’t racing when you check your email. You’re sleeping through the night without dreaming of seating charts or looming inspections. For the first time in months, you are present—actually present—for your children, your partner, and yourself.

This is what a regulated nervous system feels like.

The “holiday version” of you is the real you; the “term-time version” is a person living in a constant state of fight-or-flight. While the world faces a global teacher shortage, the reality for those on the front lines is a mix of the “Pink Tax” and the “Caretaker’s Tax”—a systemic expectation that because teaching is a female-dominated profession, your labor, emotional energy, and overtime should be free.

If you are asking, “Why am I still doing this?” you aren’t alone. Here are seven evidence-based signs that it’s time to use this break to plan your exit.

1. Your Physical Health is Regulated Only During Breaks

In the UK, the Education Support Partnership found that 75% of all education staff report variety of stress-related health issues. If your chronic headaches, digestive issues, or skin flare-ups mysteriously vanish the moment term ends, your body is sending you a clear signal. This isn’t just “being tired”; it’s your nervous system being unable to find “homeostasis” (balance) during the school year. Living in a state of high cortisol for 40 weeks a year leads to long-term burnout that a two-week break cannot fix.

2. You Are Hitting the “Five-Year Wall”

The data is consistent across the globe: teaching is becoming a “revolving door” profession.

• USA: Approximately 44% of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years (National Center for Education Statistics).
• Australia: Research suggests up to 50% of teachers leave within five years.
• UK: Recent Department for Education figures show that 1 in 8 teachers leave the sector after just one year.

If you are approaching the five-year mark and feel like you’ve reached your limit, you aren’t a failure; you are a statistic of a system that fails to support its workforce.

3. The “Babysitter Math” No Longer Adds Up

Consider the financial disrespect of the modern teaching salary. If a babysitter in Australia or the US charges $25 per hour to watch two children, they are earning $12.50 per child. In a classroom of 30 students, if a teacher were paid just $5 per child, per hour, they would earn $150 per hour. Instead, when you factor in the 50-60 hours a week most teachers actually work, the hourly rate often falls near minimum wage. When the liability and workload are no longer compensated with a living wage, the “passion” for the job can no longer pay the bills.

4. You Are Suffering from “Decision Fatigue”

Teachers make an average of 1,500 decisions every single school day. This leads to a phenomenon called decision fatigue, which is why you might find it impossible to decide what to cook for dinner or how to manage your own children’s needs once you get home. If you feel like a “better mother, wife, or friend” during the holidays, it’s because your brain finally has the glucose and mental bandwidth to care for the people who actually matter most.

5. The “Pink Tax” of Emotional Labor

Teaching is a female-dominated industry (approx. 76% in the US and 72% in Australia), and with that comes the societal expectation of “martyrdom.” You are expected to be a social worker, a nurse, a surrogate parent, and an administrator, all while delivering a curriculum. This “Caretaker’s Tax” assumes that your empathy is an infinite resource. If you find you have “compassion fatigue”—where you no longer feel empathy for your students because you are simply too drained—it is a major psychological red flag.

6. Your Workload is Disproportionately Administrative

A 2023 study by the Grattan Institute (Australia) found that teachers are working 13% longer hours than the average professional, but much of that time is spent on “non-teaching” tasks. In the UK, the NASUWT union found that nearly 90% of teachers cited workload as their primary concern. When the joy of teaching is buried under data entry, evidence-gathering for inspections, and endless emails, the core reason you joined the profession has been hollowed out.

7. The Respect Gap has Become a Chasm

In many countries, teaching has transitioned from a respected profession to a service industry where “the parent is always right.” The lack of autonomy and the increase in verbal (and sometimes physical) aggression from stakeholders have made the environment toxic. If you find yourself staying only out of guilt for your “short-staffed” colleagues, remember: The system’s inability to staff a school is not your personal emergency.

The Hard Truth: Your school will post your job opening before your obituary is even printed. Your family, however, cannot replace you. If the holidays have shown you a version of yourself that is happier, healthier, and more present, listen to that person. Your nervous system is telling you the truth.

Love Rubie xoxo