Feeling Stuck in Your Teaching Career? Here’s What to Try Next

Ah, the teaching life. I bet you have been there at least once during your teaching career. 

You started with stars in your eyes and a colour-coded planner clutched to your chest, determined to change the world one preposition at a time. Now, several years, 142 students' essays, and approximately 53 existential crises later, you’re wondering: Is this it? 

If the highlight of your week is laminating flashcards, it might be time to admit it: you’re stuck.

But fear not, fellow pedagogue! Before you hand in your dry-erase markers and disappear into the abyss of burnout, let’s explore a few ways to get unstuck — and maybe even fall back in love with teaching.

Sometimes, the brain just needs a little jolt. Reorganise your classroom. Hang some ridiculous memes above your whiteboard (bonus points if they involve Shakespeare or dangling participles). 

If you’re not ready for drastic changes, it’s okay — go small. Sometimes I like to take my laptop and go to the coffee shop, planning my classes. 

Now I’m thinking about buying a professional microphone so that my students can hear me better, and as a bonus, get an ASMR session.

You’re always teaching others, but when was the last time you were a student?

Sign up for that course on "Medieval Insults and Their Modern Applications." Learn Japanese calligraphy. Take a webinar on AI tools in language teaching (bonus: you’ll finally understand what your tech-savvy students are mumbling about).

Whenever you feel down or stuck, you gotta kick yourself out there and do something you have never done before. Again, it doesn’t have to be something major.

Spoiler: Your students will survive if you don’t plan every lesson down to the nanosecond. Stop tormenting yourself over that one student who still doesn’t know the past perfect. Teaching is messy, and that’s okay.

Try a "good enough" week: teach with fewer slides, more spontaneity, and a lot more patience (mostly with yourself). You might just discover that magic doesn’t live in perfectly formatted worksheets — it lives in real, messy, human connection.

If you’re feeling isolated, it’s probably because you are. Teaching can be an incredibly lonely job.

So, poke your head into another teacher’s classroom (metaphorically — don’t startle anyone mid-Present Continuous chant). Join some online communities of other teachers. 

Better yet, start a peer observation club, host a wine-fuelled lesson planning night, or join an online teacher community. Steal ideas, share your best flops, and remember: teaching is way more fun when it’s a team sport.

You’ve been teaching for years — why not package that experience into a side hustle? 

As for me, I started to write these articles, and I can tell — I genuinely enjoy it. I love bringing a little piece of information to other teachers and making their lives easier, since I’ve been a rookie myself.

Plus, nothing says "I’ve still got it" like waking up to a notification that someone just read your article 300 times. Take that, impostor syndrome!

This one might feel like cheating, but let’s be honest: you’ve earned it. 

Let the silence reset your brain. Let the boredom (gasp!) lead to new ideas. When you return, you might see your classroom not as a cage, but as a canvas again.

Being stuck doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re human, probably overworked, and maybe a little too good at your job. The trick is not to escape teaching — it’s to find the version of it that still lights you up.

So shake the dust off your whiteboard markers, try something bold (or just mildly ridiculous), and remember: your career is a journey, not a detention sentence.

Now, go on — reinvent yourself. Or at the very least, take a vacation.