• Holly Acre was an elementary school teacher for six years before she left the profession in 2020.

• She now works in tech sales, where she makes $20,000 more, works from home, and has greater work flexibility.

• "There were always things being added to our plate, but nothing was ever taken away," she said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Holly Acre, a former teacher who now works in tech sales. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I got into teaching because I love sharing what I know and I love helping people, so it just seemed natural. Career tests in college all pointed to teaching. My mother was also a teacher, and I think I wanted to be like her, too.

I taught at what is considered a high-poverty school. The way you teach students who live in poverty is different because you need to make sure their basic needs are met before they can learn. I had to really rethink what I thought teaching was.

Some of them had difficult home lives or came from unstructured homes, so a very structured environment at school could be difficult. A lot of the behaviors we saw at our school wore me down over time. It was never any of the students' faults; they might not know how to express their feelings, so they'd behave in ways adults know are inappropriate, but they might not know.

At the end of the day, they needed more support than I could provide. I usually had around 23 students when I taught third grade and 20 when I taught kindergarten. Sometimes I felt a little stretched thin. There were always things being added to our plates, but nothing was ever taken away. We felt overworked.

Before I started teaching, I was a happy-go-lucky person, but over time I noticed teaching was taking that away from me.

My day-to-day was unhealthy. I was experiencing burnout and stress, and my body was telling me in no uncertain terms, "You can't keep doing this." I was in a state of fight or flight.

During the pandemic, our students had the option of learning online or in-person, so we were essentially doing two jobs. When my in-person students went to an enrichment class or P.E., I'd rush back to my classroom to teach online.