There is a shift happening in our schools, and you can feel it.
You see it in the staffroom, in the parking lot, in the subtle ways younger teachers talk about their work. They draw clearer lines between school and home, speaking about boundaries and balance with an ease that still makes some of us older educators pause.
This is not about fault or nostalgia or about who is right and who is wrong. It is about understanding what is changing, what matters most and what might be at risk.
And I will admit it. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, when I started, that is not how it worked. I remember the pride I felt walking to my car after dark, convinced that more hours meant more impact.
But I am not advocating for a return to unhealthy expectations or performative exhaustion. That model burned plenty of people out. What I am wrestling with is simpler. Schools run on human connection, and connection takes time.
The Side Hustle Conversation
Last week, a teacher told me about a small online business they run in the evenings. They spoke with real enthusiasm about the creativity it offers, the extra income and the sense of fulfillment it brings.
My first instinct was to wonder why not channel that energy into coaching a team or running a club.
But then they said something that stayed with me. “This way, I can give my best to my students during the day and still have something that is mine.”
At a recent meeting, a principal named something many of us have quietly noticed. “Culture is built in the building, so if you are racing out at three o’clock, you are not part of it.”
That line lands differently depending on who hears it, but it surfaces an important truth about how culture actually forms.
School culture has always lived in the informal moments. The spontaneous problem solving. The hallway conversations. The shared laughs. The collective exhaustion that somehow turns into shared purpose. When more teachers leave the building right at dismissal, focused on side businesses or evening commitments, what happens to the culture we spent decades building?
And yet, I need to say this clearly.
I know phenomenal early career teachers who are all in. They coach, advise clubs, run events and show up for everything. They remind me that this is not simply generational. It is cultural, contextual and deeply personal.
A Continental Conversation
Across North America, the story feels remarkably consistent.
A superintendent in Ontario tells me it is getting harder to find coaches. A principal in Oregon now hires community members to run the drama program. A colleague in Manitoba describes newer teachers with firm boundaries and veteran teachers carrying more extracurricular load. This is not a West Vancouver story. It is a profession-wide renegotiation of expectations.
The Apprenticeship Question
Gary Vaynerchuk once said, “If I told you that in fifteen years you would have the perfect life, and all you had to do was work fifteen hours a day for the next ten years, all of you would do it.”
When I think about teaching, it resonates.
Those of us who put in sixty or seventy hour weeks early on were not just completing tasks. We were learning.
Every basketball practice taught me about motivation.
Every extra help study session revealed different dimensions of students.
Every late night planning session became an impromptu masterclass.
And here is where it becomes complicated.
I see early career teachers embracing this model as well. They coach, volunteer and pour themselves into the work. But many of them tell me they feel alone in this approach, swimming against colleagues who view the profession through a different lens.
The Core Question
The question I keep circling back to is this.
If school culture is built in the cracks of the day, what happens when fewer people are in those cracks?
A New Definition of Commitment
These teachers came of age during a different time. COVID did not reshape schooling in the same way it reshaped other sectors, but it reshaped the idea of sustainable work.
Many began their careers when health, boundaries and flexibility were survival strategies. They do not equate hours with impact. They believe good teaching comes from energy and authenticity, not exhaustion.
And boundaries existed twenty years ago as well. The difference now is scale and norm.
Research reinforces this shift. Early career teachers report high stress but also strong boundary setting and wellbeing strategies. Across professions, work life balance has become a top factor when choosing an employer.
Still, I wonder.
When a teacher has a thriving side business, is it smart financial planning or divided attention? When professional development sessions are filled mainly with administrators and not teachers, what does that say about our shared investment in growth.
The Extracurricular Equation
Across districts, extracurricular programs increasingly rely on veteran teachers, administrators and community members. To be fair, many early career teachers are coaching teams, running robotics clubs and leading social justice initiatives. They challenge the stereotype.
But the broader trend is difficult to ignore.
Digital mentoring and global collaboration fill some gaps through Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram and AI tools. A week of differentiated materials can be created in minutes. But learning from the teacher down the hall, seeing how they run a class or recover from mistakes, cannot be replaced by an algorithm. When professional learning becomes screen based and individualized, do we lose the wisdom that has always defined strong schools.
I cannot shake the feeling that something special happens in those after school hours.
Quiet students find their voice on the debate team. Students who struggle academically become leaders on the basketball court. Conversations on the bus ride home from a tournament sometimes matter more than any lesson.
The Community Contract
As a parent of four, I know this from another angle.
My kids grew because other teachers gave their evenings to them. Student council advisers. Coaches. Club sponsors. Teachers who ran practices before sunrise.
One teacher spent every weekend in the gym running basketball practice. My daughter still talks about her years later.
This has always been the unwritten contract of a strong school community.
We support each other’s children.
And that contract has always run on goodwill, extra time and a belief that teaching extends beyond the bell.
As parents, we want our children to be taught well — but we also want them to be known, coached, mentored and challenged. Those moments often happen after 3 pm and we can’t afford to lose them.
The world has changed. We now tell people their time has value, that boundaries are healthy and that self care is not selfish. The tension between those messages and the long standing tradition of teacher volunteerism is real and growing.
The Global Staffroom
Early career teachers build their practice differently. They have always had a global staffroom in their pocket. It is efficient and sparks creativity. But when I see a teacher scrolling TikTok for classroom management tips instead of walking down the hall to ask a colleague, I wonder what context is being lost.
Algorithms cannot know your students. They cannot know your school. They cannot know you.
And yet, many teachers blend both worlds well, learning from colleagues while tapping global resources. The best teachers use technology as an addition, not a replacement.
I watched a new teacher use an AI tool to create differentiated materials for three learning levels, then spend the time she saved having one to one conversations with struggling students. Different method, same heart.
Efficiency is not the enemy. Disconnection is.
Meeting in the Middle
Leadership today means navigating these tensions thoughtfully. It means asking questions like these.
- How do we honour both the teachers who give their evenings and those who protect them?
- What structures create sustainability without eroding community?
- How do we preserve what matters while adapting to what is changing?
- How do we avoid romanticizing the past while still naming real losses?
We also need to acknowledge the realities many newer teachers face. Housing costs and student debt make side hustles less of a choice and more of a necessity.
The truth is that we probably need both approaches.
Perhaps the healthiest schools will have a mix. Enough builders to sustain the culture. Enough boundaried teachers to model sustainability.
But balance requires intention. It requires honesty about what we value, what we are willing to compensate and what we can no longer expect from goodwill alone.
So here is the forward looking question I cannot shake. If we want to keep the community building work that has always relied on volunteer time, what would it look like to value it differently? To structure it. To support it.
Supporting All Teachers
My inbox tells a story. Workshops on boundaries, resilience and wellbeing. What once felt indulgent now feels essential.
Veteran teachers are setting boundaries too. They are exploring passions outside of school and saying no to committees they once would have led. Perhaps we are all rethinking what a sustainable career looks like.
Maybe this new balance is healthier. Maybe the old model looked noble while quietly burning people out.
A Final Reflection
Every profession undergoes generational renegotiation. Teaching is simply facing its moment now.
After nearly thirty years, I know that some of my most meaningful work happened after hours.
- The student who finally opened up during an evening study session.
- The colleague who became a mentor at six o’clock at night.
- The breakthrough that came not in a meeting but in a tired conversation after the building emptied.
Maybe this new generation will show that clearer boundaries can produce longevity and great teaching. Maybe they will prove that sustainability creates impact. Or maybe we will discover that something essential is lost when fewer people stay for the unscripted moments.
What worries me is not the change itself but our reluctance to name what it might cost.
If we cannot talk honestly about tradeoffs, we cannot choose intentionally what to preserve and what to evolve.
I am trying to stay curious rather than critical.
The question is not whether boundaries are right or wrong. It is whether we are clear eyed about what we gain and what we give up. Because education has always been about more than what happens between the bells. It has always been about what happens between people. And people need time together to become a community.
The profession is changing. The building feels different than it did twenty years ago. Whether that difference strengthens or diminishes what we do remains an open question.
Maybe the next step is simply conversation. A staffroom conversation. A parent conversation. A leadership conversation.
If we want to protect what is best about our schools, we need to talk honestly about what we want to keep, what we can rethink and how we can support the people who make it all possible.
What I know for certain is that great teaching, in whatever shape it takes, still changes lives. And that is the part worth protecting.
The image at the top of this post was generated through AI. Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers (for our students this post would be a Yellow assignment – see link to explanation chart) as I edited and refined my thinking.
You struck a wonderful balance between the two perspectives and caused me to reflect on my own observations of the trends I’m seeing.
Thanks, Dave. I really appreciate that.
Thanks, Chris. I resonate with a lot you’ve written about and had goose bumps on a few parts.
The impact of mentors and colleagues with the right words of encouragement at the right moment is real stuff. Over the past year, if I compile the top 3 significant moments where I was impacted, encouraged, inspired or learned something I needed for the moment I was in, they were 1) at a tournament 2) at a collegial social event and 3) at a collegial social event.
It’s a deeply human profession and we need time together.
Thanks Jennifer, it means a lot. And I completely agree: when we look back on the moments that truly shaped us, they rarely happen in formal meetings or structured PD. They happen in hallways, at tournaments, or during a quick conversation with someone who seems to say exactly what we needed to hear.
Those aren’t “extras.” They’re the glue of the profession. Taking your challenge, my 3 most significant moments occured 1) At Boston Pizza after a basketball game with a group of teachers 2) in my class with a colleague at about 5:00 one afternoon and 3) at a staff social – interesting alignment with yours.
Hi Chris, I always deeply appreciate your commitment to curiosity over criticism in all you write.
I wonder whether this conundrum might not be about ‘meeting in the middle’ but about moving outside the box. You state that school culture is built in the cracks of the day, and question what happens when there are fewer people in those cracks. I concur, so what if the extracurricular was the curricular? What if a student’s, and a teacher’s day was organized around ‘the informal minutes’, the extracurricular? What if the cracks made up the largest part of the school day? What if students were engaged in teams, plays, music performances, liaising with community members on real world problems, building things, or learning about small online businesses as their primary activities? What if curriculum requirements were ticked off (with the help of AI) by individual students as they were met by participating in one of these extracurricular activities, or in a class offered at various times by an expert teacher or in a virtual tutorial augmented by discussion with a teacher? What if every teacher took on a group of students to mentor and coach throughout the student’s time at the school, a mixed grade group that also supported one another through regular meetings? Adolescents are wired to want to engage in life, to discover who they are and what they can accomplish. Learning will happen more efficiently and deeply when it is attached to what the students are driven to do and teachers will accomplish more with greater joy too. I think we need a different box.
Hi Pat. Thank you for this. What a generous and expansive way to build on the conversation. I really appreciate how you push the thinking out, not just between two fixed points. Your “different box” framing resonates a lot with where my head has been lately.
You’re right: if culture and connection live in the cracks, one response is to ask whether the cracks should stop being cracks at all. Your vision where the extracurricular becomes the curricular, where teams and performances and real-world challenges anchor the day, where mentorship is the constant thread aligns with what we know about adolescent motivation and teacher joy. It’s not fanciful; it’s grounded in how people actually grow.
I think part of what makes your suggestion powerful is that it doesn’t dismiss the challenges teachers are facing with time, burnout, or boundaries. Instead, it asks whether the structure itself is the issue. And whether a model built around relationships, purpose, and authentic work might actually be more sustainable for both students and educators.
We’re clearly at a moment where tinkering around the edges may not be enough. Your comment is a reminder that reimagining the shape of the day and not just the expectations within it might open possibilities we haven’t fully explored.
Thanks so much for this!
Thanks Chris. I appreciate knowing that to someone like yourself, someone directly and daily in the field, a broader type of change is possible.
Thank you for this thoughtful reflection Chris. It names a shift many of us feel, and it opens space to talk honestly about the forces reshaping our profession.
At the heart of all this is something we share: we love our students. That’s why we chose teaching. And even amid the societal pressures, that commitment hasn’t changed. What has changed are the conditions surrounding the work. In education, especially when supporting our most complex learners, we are taught to look inward, to ask what we can adjust in our practice so we can meet a student where they are, through a trauma-informed and equitable lens. That same mindset can serve us well when we think about the profession itself. Rather than placing expectations solely on individual teachers to stretch, stay late, or absorb more, perhaps the system also needs to evolve to meet teachers where they are. Chris Kennedy Affordability and Commute Realities
Many teachers, especially newer ones, cannot afford to live near their schools. Long commutes drain time and energy, limiting the informal moments that build school culture. When teachers leave quickly, it’s often about logistics and survival, not disengagement. Equity and Shared Responsibility
Extracurricular work and culture-building have historically relied on unpaid labour, which isn’t accessible to everyone. Sustainable schools require equitable structures: dedicated time, fair compensation, and shared responsibility.
Indigenous Ways of Learning
Indigenous approaches remind us that learning is relational and communities thrive through balance, reciprocity, and collective care. No one person should carry everything alone. This perspective can guide how we build community without burning out staff.
A Hopeful Reframe
We can recognize the pressures teachers face and still hold hope. Educators continue to find meaningful ways to connect with students through clubs, one-on-one check-ins, or quiet classroom moments.
The goal isn’t to return to old expectations and to design systems that allow teachers to contribute sustainably, regardless of commute, life stage, or financial realities. Strong school communities depend on valuing teachers’ time and energy and supporting ALL staff, not only those who can stay late.
The love for students remains; the challenge is creating a profession that honours that love while sustaining the people who give so much every day.
Thank you for this incredibly thoughtful reply.
I really appreciate your reminder that the reflective stance we ask teachers to take with students, to meet learners where they are, to seek to understand before reacting, is the same stance we need to take with the profession itself. We can’t ask individuals to endlessly stretch while the system stays fixed. The system has to shift too.
You’ve also highlighted something that was only implicit in my piece: affordability, commutes, the realities of life stage and housing, these are structural constraints, not mindset issues. When teachers are driving an hour each way or juggling multiple pressures outside of school, it inevitably shrinks the space for the informal moments that used to flow more naturally.
And I’m grateful you brought Indigenous ways of learning into the conversation. The emphasis on reciprocity, balance, and shared responsibility feels like precisely the lens we need as we reimagine what strong, healthy school communities look like.
You’ve given me more to think about. Thank you for contributing so generously to the conversation.
When I was in my teacher training program at UVic in the early ’90s, one of our seminar instructors—a vice-principal from Reynolds Secondary—gave us a warning I’ve never forgotten. He told us that teaching consumes more time than we could imagine. Then he added something that stopped the room cold: the divorce rate among teachers, especially PE teachers, was extraordinarily high because of the time they gave to schools outside their contracted hours.
He actually teared up saying it. It was clear this wasn’t a theory. He was talking about his own life. The unspoken message was that his marriage was the price of being a “good” teacher.
Even as a clueless twenty-something with no spouse, no kids, and no real responsibilities yet, that moment stuck with me. I remember thinking: this is insane. The idea that the collapse of your family is an acceptable—or worse, admirable—casualty of your profession is deeply messed up.
From that point on, I made a promise to myself: my job would never come before my role as a husband and father. Ever.
Early in my career, while serving on a union executive, I said something during a grievance meeting that enraged one of the board members:
“The needs of my family come before the needs of my students.”
In his view, the district’s children were my primary responsibility. Anything outside of work, my marriage, my kids, my actual life, was secondary. That moment was clarifying. I stopped donating unpaid emotional labour and endless extracurricular hours to the system and redirected that energy to my own children.
I have never once regretted that decision. My kids are healthy, grounded, and close with their parents in no small part because I refused to martyr my family on the altar of “doing it for the kids.”
Fast-forward to today.
Young teachers can barey afford to exist, let alone build a life. A side hustle isn’t a lifestyle choice—it’s survival. I have a child who would be an exceptional teacher, better than I ever was, just by showing up. She won’t touch the profession. Why would she? Her standard of living working part-time outside of education is higher than working full-time as a teacher.
That should terrify anyone who claims to care about the future of public education.
Teaching is not what it used to be. I entered at the tail end of the “good old days” and have spent 30 years watching the job become harder, leaner, and more exploitative for each new generation. My wife and I had tough years, sure, but we didn’t need multiple side hustles just to stay afloat.
Today? Side hustles are baked into the profession. And we’re still pretending this is sustainable.
If the system requires teachers to sacrifice their families, their health, and their financial stability to function, the problem isn’t teacher commitment.
The problem is the system.
Keith, thank you for taking the time to engage with this post. I’ve always been impressed by the way you work with students and the care you bring to the classroom, and I genuinely appreciate you adding your perspective here.
What I value most in your response is your willingness to reflect on the realities of the work without oversimplifying it. Teaching has always required commitment, energy, and heart, and conversations like this help surface how those demands are experienced differently across careers, life stages, and personal circumstances.
Hearing thoughtful voices like yours adds important nuance to that discussion.
Thanks again for engaging so openly and contributing to a respectful, meaningful conversation.