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.
