My wife quit teaching and became an entrepreneur
Most people agree that teachers are one of the great pillars of society. At the same time, teachers are leaving the profession at unprecedented rates. This is crazy! Why does our culture not support such a valuable resource? Teachers are a key building block for our children’s lives.
This current quandary is how Vacas came to life. The company would have never been created if the founder would have continued teaching full-time. Angela Smith launched Vacas in 2019 after a decade long career as an elementary teacher. From a young age, she knew her calling in life was to teach children. Throughout high school and college, Angela worked for the Boys and Girls Club and a children's gymnastics school. Upon graduation, she went directly into teaching elementary students and truly believed she would retire from that occupation.
Fast forward ten years, a mortgage, one husband, and two kids later, Angela began to second guess her career choice. The job she used to love was changing. And it wasn't the students. They were great! It was everything else. The standardized testing, the absent parents, bureaucracy, and red tape galore. Over countless nights, Angela and I (her husband) had many discussions about her future as a teacher. It was hard for her to even imagine doing something else.
In the end, she decided her sanity and self-worth was worth more than the salary and respect she was receiving. Many people argue that teachers get paid plenty because of the summers off. Then they say things like, “If they don’t like it, then they should quit”. Well, that’s what my wife did! And that’s what many other teachers are doing every day!
Because Angela loves children, she’ll always teach in some form. She continues to teach spanish part-time. But she’s no longer dedicating her full-time career to a system that does not fully support her. This is the backstory of how Vacas was created. It’s weird to see my wife going through the entrepreneurial journey after years of working a job that has nothing to do with business. It’s actually really neat to see her tackle this new challenge, and exciting to see how other teachers are transitioning to all sorts of different paths. One point is becoming blatantly clear. The teachers don’t need us like we want to believe. We need them. Isn’t it about time we started treating them that way?