Why I Left Teaching at 24 to Solve the Very Problem That Drove Me Out

William Griffiths

I loved being in the classroom and I didn’t necessarily want to leave; I just had an itch that the Education System was driving out similar teachers to myself due to tasks outside of the classroom.

I wanted to be a teacher from an early age. I have a natural love for learning and wanted to inspire the awe and wonder I have regarding the world around us and to be that teacher who sparks it in the next generation. My goal was simple: inspire, create curiosity and help my students feel the joy of learning. Simple, right?

Then came my PGCE year. I was confronted with standards, checklists, observations and started to realise how constrained the profession had become. There seemed to be a set way to do teaching, yet everyone has their own opinion on how to do it right. Even during training, the job was outside the classroom, not in it.

Lacking confidence, I chose my route into teaching through supply, in hindsight, the best decision I could’ve made. I got the impression that supply teaching is a little looked down upon within staffrooms and teaching circles; however, it gave me the freedom to find my style without the pressure of observation, standards and results. It gave me room to experiment with what works and what does not. I got to experience a range of different approaches in a range of settings. I taught in over 30 schools, and a pattern emerged.

I did well on supply and found my teaching voice and style without being constrained by the weight of workload and the constant tug of war between work and life. My reputation grew and I was given more long-term contracts, often in difficult areas. In the 2023/34 academic year, I had two long-term contracts – with both teachers off long-term with stress. If that’s not a red flag, I don’t know what is.

The more staffrooms I entered, the more I understood the problem. It was a pattern that was too obvious to miss: teaching is unsustainable. The expectation was always to deliver exciting, engaging, progressive lessons, which is made next to impossible with the overriding shadow of non-teaching tasks. To deliver the lessons that had the biggest impact on my students meant the biggest sacrifices on myself.

As the workload builds up, you can’t help but reach for the didactic lessons that are less of a cognitive load when planning. You feel guilty knowing you could be doing better. When the guilt creeps in and with it, the burnout. Returning to my original reasons for wanting to be a teacher, I quickly realised that these values were being driven out. You naturally blame yourself.

I didn’t quit because I wasn’t capable. I left because I saw a bigger problem. The parts of the job which were rewarding, stimulating and incredibly enjoyable were eaten up by the pressures outside the classroom. It was often the daily task of marking that took the hit when things got busy. This ate at me daily, knowing the impact of feedback when given quickly.

The turning point came not in a moment of despair, but in a moment of opportunity. The AI wave came and crashed on my shore. I was intrinsically obsessed with AI. Teachers I spoke to would preach the risks and limitations of the new technology, but I couldn’t get over the potential applications. Where others saw a threat, I saw an opportunity.

I think a lot of teachers were blinded by the risks of AI, and I started to experiment aggressively with the hope of getting ahead. The logic was simple: I could become more efficient and less burned out compared to my colleagues. I used AI for morning starters to begin with and then expanded into higher stakes tasks such as help with lesson planning. The real light bulb moment happened after I put a few examples of work through as an experiment to test whether it could be used for assessment. I was quite honestly flabbergasted by the quality of outputs and the range of tasks it could do.

The stumbling block was the process of uploading a whole class’s work, slower than marking by hand – but even then, the quality of assessment was shockingly good.  A lot of the issues I heard teachers speak about; I found I could mitigate with good prompting. I knew straight away that this could be used to get me back aligned with my goals and to why I wanted to teach in the first place. This moment ultimately led to me founding Redpen AI.

I was lucky enough to personally know an AI developer, and we got the ball rolling. I was sure that I wasn’t the only teacher that may have lost that spark that pulled me into teaching in the first place, and I knew that many more teachers could benefit from the technology.

For the burnt-out teacher overwhelmed by the workload shadow I described earlier, for the teachers who are feeling misaligned with the very reasons they wanted to teach in the first place, for SLT who want to raise outcomes without killing staff morale, and for leadership that is battling staff retention problems; I closed the door on teaching and opened a new door.

This wasn’t just a personal fix for a personal burnout. It was something that could actually shift the way the system works. I want to get teachers closer to what matters. Focusing on their students, being on top form for the classroom, and having the breathing room to teach to the best of their ability.

That’s not a nice-to-have. It’s the only way we keep great teachers in the profession. Hopefully, teachers will now have the space for creativity, taking risks and building positive relationships with their students. The education sector of course must lean into this opportunity and for me the biggest worry regarding AI is not replacing, deskilling or overreliance, it is the widening of the digital divide.

My prediction: Schools that implement AI will be at an advantage over schools that do not. This divide is only going to further push teachers like myself out the profession and of course this will impact the students.

The parts I miss most about teaching: the connection, the learning, the penny dropping, are the parts of teaching that are the most important. I sometimes think about what I would tell myself right at the start of my career: Remember what brought you here. Focus on what matters. Don’t get caught in the noise. I would extend that advice to all teachers.

If teachers are given the room to explore, innovate and question norms, then quality of teaching and impact on learning will go up.

AI is not a gimmick. It’s a lever. And teachers deserve every tool we can give them. If we get this right, we don’t just save time. We save teachers. We meet students’ needs.

William Griffiths is the co-founder of Redpen AI