If you’ve ever worked in a tough school, you might be familiar with the term “midnight run.” It describes those moments when teachers, overwhelmed by intolerable working conditions or relentless stress, simply disappear and quit without warning. u/Otherwise-Bad-325 recently shared their own firsthand experience with this: “Five days in, and two teachers have already done a ‘midnight run’ at my Title I school.”
They elaborated: “My neighbor pulled a ‘midnight run’ last night. She said good night normally to me last night and called the front lady in the office this morning to say that she wasn’t coming back.”
“I wasn’t able to get into her room today, as they moved her kids to the cafeteria,” they continued. “From what I remember, she really didn’t decorate her room that much, so she wouldn’t have left much behind. Amazing that she might have just woken up one morning and said, ‘Screw this, I’m not going in.’ Just mail in the keys and never go back. How liberating. I feel like keeping my room bare, just to maintain the fantasy of being able to do what she did, even though I cannot financially afford to walk off.”
Inspired, 25 teachers from across the country weighed in with their own unforgettable “midnight run” moments, sharing what it feels like when a colleague (or even themselves) finally hits their limit and walks away:
1.“My favorite was during their first day, a teaching assistant said, ‘I’m going to go get a sweater from my car.’ Never came back.”
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2.“My first year teaching: ‘Cowards.’ My 10th year teaching: ‘Good for them.'”
3.“We had at least one teacher walk out the first week of each of the three years I taught seventh grade in my urban Title I school. One teacher was wearing a wig, and the kids snatched it off her head during class. She walked out immediately after. I don’t really blame her. The paras said they’d pegged me as a walkout, but I lasted three long years. My last year there, I realized most teachers were on blood pressure meds, and one had an aneurysm and was taken out in an ambulance. I just had this moment of existential dread and thought I did not want to die at that school. Put in my notice shortly after. Went from one of my principal’s favorites to blacklisted really quickly. Did not help that I was one of many leaving that year.”
4.“I just heard that the new English teacher (who everybody says is doing an awesome job) has cried twice this week.”
5.“Having taught at an inner city Title I, absolutely not, man. While looking for other teaching jobs after quitting the day after I was stabbed, I worked pumping out septic tanks. I would 100% recommend jumping in literal septic tanks over teaching in an inner city Title I school.”
6.“By my fifth year, I looked around and realized almost all the teachers were either on blood pressure meds, anxiety meds, or depression meds — we also had heart attacks, strokes, and one good friend who died by suicide. I realized I did not want to be a statistic and left, and my principal ended up hating me. So toxic. I quit four years ago and ended up with adrenal dysfunction due to high stress that I’m still trying to fix. Glad it’s not anything more serious. I have teacher friends around the nation, and they all have seen the same things. It’s so sad.”
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7.“I was hired with 15 other teachers for my reasonably large Southern Title I school. I am one of three left. We joke that they stepped out to get milk and cigarettes.”
8.“Title I schools are the survival of the stubborn. If you’re five days in and already watching midnight runs, brace yourself — admin spin will be, ‘We’ll find replacements soon,’ but in reality, you’ll be picking up slack while the revolving door keeps spinning. Protect your energy, set boundaries, and do not romanticize being the last one standing. Burnout eats people alive faster here than anywhere else.”
9.“We had a teacher my first year that I heard walked out and ‘left all the kids unattended.’ People were so mad at him. It turns out they’d repeatedly left him by himself with over 80 sixth graders (at one of the roughest schools in San Antonio, and the class was supposed to have two teachers and two or three resident teachers). The day he walked out, he was by himself again and had been calling the office for help all morning. I could not have been louder about the fact that I was glad he stood up for himself. A few years later, my principal at a new school and city was treating the school so poorly that I went to my union, and they helped me walk out, too.”
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10.“Had a special education coworker do this recently. Not a single person has applied for the position.”
11.“We called it ‘going to Walmart’ for the teacher who said they were going to go to Walmart and never came back.”
12.“Self-contained Exceptional Student Education (ESE) unit. Lost one teacher and three instructional assistants by the end of the first week. It’s not even a wild unit, comparatively. Just with the lack of funding and district cutting us to the bone, people don’t want to deal with it anymore.”
13.“I taught math for the first two months at a Title I school. After admin loaded all my classes up with 40 to 50 kids each and promised to hire another teacher someday, I hurt my back and was out on workers’ comp for a month or so. They had to hire someone, so once I got back, all my classes were split into reasonable 20-person classes. Turned out to be a good year. I’m just telling the story because no one had any info on where I was except for admin, who didn’t say anything, so everyone thought I did a midnight run.”
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14.“We had one flee the building in tears right in the middle of class, five weeks into the year. She never came back, and I ended up taking over the class. I wonder about her sometimes and hope she found a better career for herself.”
15.“Sixth to eighth grade art. Yep, we’re still in pre-service and already had one. Last year, we had one who was a summer hire come in for new teacher orientation and quit on day two of that.”
16.“This job is definitely unhealthy. I know more teachers on anxiety or depression medication than I do not. I’ve been teaching for 14 years, and I work with newbies yearly. Just today, I had one say she was ready to have a ‘midnight run,’ to borrow the term. I’m going to support her the best I can, but honestly, I will not judge her if she doesn’t come back Monday.”
17.“Saw one run out of the building on day three, never to return. I lasted 12 years. Very tough school, but the pay was double, and I was getting my teacher certification after one year. I had to stay.”
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18.“A couple of years ago, my school hired a math teacher. She walked into pre-planning, sat through the head of school’s welcome message, and then went out to her car and left. My division head checked his email when we could not find her, and there was one from her that just said: ‘This is not for me.’ She was the third person hired for that job who quit before actually doing the job. We started calling that position the Defense Against the Dark Arts Chair.”
19.“I was talking with a new hire one day. She looked over and said, ‘You just always seem to be happy to be here.’ I turned and said, ‘Of course. If I wasn’t happy to be here, I wouldn’t be here.’ I never saw her again.”
20.“In my last school (not a Title I or ‘bad’ school by any means), a teacher we hired quit before kids even arrived. She quit on the second day of pre-planning. Apparently, the administrative and content area team meetings were too much for her. My department head was dumbfounded. We had to scramble to hire someone and ended up with a woman who looked fantastic on paper. She seemed a little odd; I thought she was on the spectrum when we met, but I didn’t think much of it because she clearly had experience. Her students learned nothing in her class. They were sleeping on tables or jumping around the desks. She’d hand out a packet, expect them to just work on it, and then sit there. I remember going down near her room during my planning period because I needed to grab some items — it was wild. The kids were going nuts. I walked in, shouted, startled the kids into their seats, and that began the downward spiral to her disappearance after winter break.”
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“I don’t even remember what we did about hiring someone new, but that was an interesting semester. Parents were angry when she left because so many kids were suddenly failing the course — they’d learned nothing. I don’t remember what we did to handle the situation, but I know it was one of many things that led my friend to stop being the department head. He tried to get things handled through the admin, but they wouldn’t listen. My recording the classroom for 15 seconds was enough for him to fly off the handle…”
21.“They stayed to the end of the day? That’s generous. Day three before brunch is the best I’ve heard so far, if you don’t count subs leaving halfway through the first hour.”
22.“My first year teaching in Savannah public schools, we had one teacher quit after the first week and another quit during week two. Another lady quit in the middle of September, around six weeks. The kids were so bad that he (the first teacher) couldn’t sleep because of anxiety. I lasted three years before I couldn’t take it anymore.”
23.“We had an assistant principal do this one year. Middle of November — just dipped.”
24.“This year, on day one of training, we met a new math teacher. On day two, we met her replacement.”
25.“I had a long-term sub do a noon run when I was in seventh grade. He told the seventh-period class to go ‘F’ themselves and disappeared, never to be seen again.”
Whether you call it a “midnight run” or just hitting your limit, these stories make it clear that teaching in high-stress schools can push even the most dedicated educators to their breaking point. Have you ever witnessed a colleague make a quick exit, or been tempted to do it yourself? Share your own stories or thoughts in the comments below.
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
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