Eight years ago, I started my career as a public school teacher by enrolling in a teacher credential program and completing my student teaching. I was fresh out of graduate school in creative writing, and teaching English at the secondary level seemed like my best bet to combine my passions for writing and teaching and mentoring youth with my desire to earn at least a living wage. At the time, I knew from everyone I had shadowed or interviewed who worked in public education that finding a work-life balance, especially as an English teacher, would be difficult, if not a complete fantasy. However, I also had mentors who were still pursuing their hobbies and passions, whether it was horse-back riding, playing in a band, or writing novels while teaching English, so I knew that it was possible if you were truly committed to have a life and be a public school teacher.
In the past eight years, seven of which I’ve been teaching high school full-time, I’ve tested out that theory. It’s hard to not compare yourself to others, especially when you see on social media the successes of your acquaintances. I haven’t published a book or had a promotion in all of that time. I’ve just been steadily working on two things:
- Becoming a better English teacher
- Writing whenever I can— specifically, I’ve been writing the same novel for the past eight years (I’ve been on draft 3 for a little less than a year now), but I’ve also written numerous short stories, essays, and blog posts too.
I might not have that much to show for it. I’ve had quite a few essays and short stories published, though that has slowed to a trickle in the past few years because I’ve been too busy with work to send out many submissions, and some of the submissions that I’ve had accepted have yet to pan out (turns out you can get paid for a short story only to never have it published). I’ve had more success with fellowships to work on my writing and scholarships to writing conferences. Whenever I’ve been able to immerse myself in the writing world I’ve felt like I’m coming home for the first time in ages.
Teaching is one of those professions where there is infinite room for growth, yet little of that growth gets recognized in the conventional sense of moving up the career ladder. I find a lot of satisfaction in improving my teaching for the sake of becoming a better teacher for my students, and I love networking with other educators in K-12 and higher education, so even though my teaching accomplishments haven’t yielded much external rewards, I still find them meaningful. For example, when I joined the Bay Area Writing Project in 2023 (which is a chapter of the National Writing Project), I was on the verge of burning out as an educator. I had just found a job at another school, and I was daunted by the prospect of starting all over again teaching new classes in a new environment. The community and support I found through BAWP helped me stay in education throughout a challenging time, and it led to so many great friendships and opportunities. I never would have imagined that just a year later in 2024, I would be presenting at a national conference (NCTE) on teaching AI literacy. I also felt like I had finally found my “people”: writing teachers who live and breathe writing in their own lives.
I’ve also been finding my voice as an education writer through exploring the issues of teaching writing in the age of AI. I created a Substack called Prompt. Process. Purpose. focused on this topic, and if you read my personal blog, I would like to invite you to follow me to Substack. I will mostly be blogging on there going forward, though I will keep this website to use as my writing portfolio.
This year, I decided to take on a new and exciting adventure yet: I recently became a parent. Teaching while being pregnant was its own endurance challenge that I could write a whole blog post about (and I probably will at some point because it’s an experience that no one prepared me for). I also had to jump through numerous hoops to get some semblance of disability/ parental leave since educators in California currently don’t have access to paid leave even though private sector workers do. (Shoutout to Governor Gavin Newsom for finally including parental leave for educators in this year’s upcoming budget though he has vetoed this very proposal before. It’s too late for me, but I want this for all the other educator parents who come after me).
I currently have a four-week-old son who has brought a new level of joy into my life that I didn’t know existed before. I know how cliched that sounds, but it really feels that way. Since I’m navigating taking care of a newborn (with immense support from my partner and my family and friends), I haven’t really had a second to catch my breath and think about how I will continue my writing and teaching career. That’s OK for now, but I’m blogging because I want to make a public committment that I’m going to continue to find purpose in writing and teaching, all the while I learn how to parent. And I’m interesting in connecting with other parents who are doing the same thing.
Teaching while parenting in this age come with its own set of considerations: how can I make sure to use my time efficiently at work so that I can spend less time grading and lesson planning at home and be present with my family? How do I reset my own perfectionist expectations around teaching to make sure that I am doing a good enough job but I’m not making work my whole life? How will I still carve out time for myself, so I can do things that nourish my soul, such as writing, yoga, meditating, and connecting with friends?
I don’t have answers to these questions yet, but I know that in the past I’ve always turned to mentors and friends to see how they have faced similar challenges. So that’s what I will do. If you’re an educator who is hoping to start a family or already has one, or if you’re a writer who wants to know if teaching is a viable career path, or you simply just want to get glimpse into what the ELA classroom looks like in 2026 because it’s been years since you were in school yourself, then I hope you follow my Substack, where I’ll be tackling these issues and more.
Molly Montgomery 