Something that isn’t spoken about enough in education, especially in classroom leadership among new and seasoned teachers, is projection.

Unhinged.

Unnamed.

Unprocessed.

Teaching is one of the most heavily projected upon professions in our society. It makes sense: Everyone has had a teacher. Everyone has a story. And whether they’re aware of it or not, everyone carries an image, a memory, or an expectation ready to land on the person at the front of the room.

I’ve been that person for over two decades. And in my 20-plus years of teaching, I’ve learned that the most charged projections come from parents.

When a child begins expressing behaviors that fall outside the norm—emotionally, academically, socially—it can stir something primal in a parent.

Fear. Shame. Insecurity. Guilt.

That activation seeks a place to land, and more often than not, that place is the teacher.

“You never told me my child was struggling in math.”

“My child doesn’t act like this at home.”

“How are you going to fix this?”

Boom.

There they are. Landing in the teacher’s lap. Often activating the already intense anxiety and burnout so many educators carry silently.

I’ll frame projections as parts of the self that one has yet to be able to see and meet with love. And they are just too painful to hold. I especially see the projections fly with aggression and intensity when a child is visibly struggling beyond what the parent has the capacity to hold in their own nervous system.

And when parenting is like a high-stakes arena (which, let’s be honest, this is the new climate of parenting), that pressure needs somewhere to go. It doesn’t always get directed at systems or institutions. It often goes to the most visible, emotionally significant adult in the child’s life outside the home: their teacher.

In my truth, teaching is not a profession but a spiritual path that unveils the deeper soul’s purpose with each continued experience. One that invites us to face the deepest and most challenging parts of ourselves as we struggle with what is being asked of us and simultaneously showing up in good will. This is a path where our own wounds, projections, and patterns rise to the surface, especially when others are trying to offload theirs onto us.

One of the most transformative things I’ve learned as an educator is where my responsibility ends and where a parent’s begins.

This passage is not to place the teacher in the victim role. But to provide a permission slip to name what is silently endured amongst millions.

To choose humanity over perfection.

It took years of trembling under the weight of other people’s stories. Stories that weren’t mine, but that I somehow felt responsible for. I used to carry them all. Every firecracker tossed my way.

Until one day, I realized my fear of not being enough and humbly faced it.

Now, I say in truth and in love:

No.

No, I will not be the container for every parent’s unprocessed fear.

No, I will not shoulder the blame for a system that was broken long before I stepped into it.

No, I will not abandon my truth to appease projections.

I am a guide. A caregiver. A witness. A human.

I am not a blank canvas for unintegrated stories.

And I understand that these projections parents throw are nothing more than the unmet, unseen, and unloved parts of themselves, which are really begging to be met in truth and love.

To the teachers out there, especially those barely holding it together at the end of the school year:

You are not alone.

And you are not responsible for carrying what isn’t yours.

This is a permission.

To say no.

To set boundaries.

Because your truth is real.

Because teaching—real teaching—is soul work.

And the soul cannot thrive when buried under everyone else’s firecrackers.

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