We can’t imagine the world without teachers. Yet sometimes we treat them as dispensable robots.

Abby Norman from Atlanta, Georgia, was one of them. She spent nine years in the classroom, but after “loving the students and the learning and despising the testing and the paper-pushing of the classroom,” she gave it up, went to the Seminary, and while seeking ordination within the Methodist tradition, also became a bartender.

Over the weekend, Abby made a tweet to explain the reasons behind her career change, and it immediately went viral.

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This former teacher shared how happy she is after quitting her job and becoming a bartender

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Across the US, the average public school teacher salary for the 2019-2020 school year was $63,645, according to data from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

On paper, it looks like a teacher’s salary has increased over the last couple of decades but when you adjust the numbers for inflation, the average salary is just about 0.2% higher than in the 1999-2000 school year.

The Pew Research defines middle-income Americans as those whose annual household income is two-thirds to double the national median (adjusted for local cost of living and household size). So in 2018, for a family of three, that ranges from $40,100 to $120,400.

This puts teachers in the middle-class, however, the job comes with a unique set of challenges. Plus, it’s common for teachers across the country to spend a not insignificant amount of their take-home pay on school supplies for their students and classrooms.

Inspired by her tweet, others also talked about exchanging teaching for enjoyable, less stressful careers that also pay more

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The thread also has teachers sharing how they realized they were severely underpaid

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People also spoke about why it’s getting harder and harder not to quit teaching and why so many already did

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