Katie Darty Photo courtesy of Katie Darty

People often ask why I moved to Tunisia. I think the question is really, Why did I leave America? And the reason is, I was tired.

I was tired of daily gun violence. When my daughter was just four, my neighbor’s gun went off, and I found a bullet hole through my window. I was worn out from the mandatory “Stop the Bleed” training, where I learned how to shove fabric into bullet wounds and make tourniquets, imagining children bleeding out in my arms. I was tired of hiding with students in equipment rooms in the dark, staying quiet while law enforcement practiced shining flashlights into our faces and yelling at us while we were relocated to a nearby field, using it as a training exercise and a recurring nightmare for our students. I was tired of watching training videos on how to evacuate children from classrooms if law enforcement couldn’t get to us. How to use mirrors to look around hallways for active shooters, or how to break windows and place jackets over broken glass if I needed to help children escape through a window. I was exhausted from showing up to work and seeing extra law enforcement at the entrance because someone made threats to my students online. I was worn down from attending safety trainings where we were told to plan for the “when” and not the “if” when it came to situations like gun violence.

I was especially exhausted every time I looked at my clinically anxious eight-year-old, dreading the day it would “click” in her mind what a lockdown drill actually meant, and what she was training for.

I was tired of book censorship. My district received calls from people demanding to know if our high school libraries carried books they’d heard about—books on lists from groups like Moms for Liberty. Books like Looking for Alaska by John Green and Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. These calls often came from people with no children in our school system, yet they targeted my high school and many others in our state.

I was tired of books being quietly removed from shelves by my superintendent without proper paperwork or paper trails. Tired of trying to advocate alongside fellow librarians, hoping to prevent more of this from happening. And I was tired of worrying that I’d lose my job for fighting to give my students access to books with characters who looked, lived, and loved like them.

I was tired of sleeping all summer just to “catch up” on the life I’d neglected for 10 months—the doctor’s appointments, the housework, the friendships. Of saving up for a summer vacation and then standing by the ocean feeling nothing. Absolutely nothing. Realizing I’d numbed myself to survive, to help our students survive. Tired of just surviving, instead of feeling like I was actually living. Of wanting to leave, wanting to quit, but feeling stuck.

But the truth was that I actually loved my job. I loved being a librarian. I loved my students, my library, and my city. I just didn’t love what I had to become to survive in North Carolina’s broken education system.

I was tired of always feeling like either a good mom and a bad librarian, or a bad mom and a good librarian. That if I was winning at one role, then that meant losing my grip on the other. Tired of feeling underappreciated, undervalued, and unsupported. Tired of hearing the common rallying cry directed toward educators that “If you don’t like it, then leave. Go somewhere else. Do something else. You chose this.” When I got my master’s in library science, was this really what I envisioned when I picked my career as a librarian? Being part of a failing education system with no money, no support, and no hope on the horizon for myself or my daughter?

I’ve heard the analogy that teaching can feel like a bad marriage—you stay in it for the kids. But in truth, the best thing you can do for kids is to leave. You teach them that you deserve better. That they deserve better. So the moment came when I finally left. I walked away from my librarian position and signed up on an international teaching site that a friend recommended. I applied for jobs in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Italy, and even an American school in Tunisia, not knowing if anything would come of it.

Now, three months into my position in Tunisia, I am happy and thriving. I have a work/home life balance where I can be both mother and librarian simultaneously, without the added stress over safety and support. I now feel seen, heard, and valued every day by my administrators, coworkers, and school community.

More importantly, my daughter is also the happiest she has ever been at a school. She has friends and a social life, daily school-sponsored after-school activities, and a beautifully diverse community where differences are celebrated. She also has school resources that would have been eliminated or reduced if we were still living in North Carolina, including a full-time classroom teacher’s assistant, a full-time primary school librarian and library assistant, a music teacher, an art teacher, a PE teacher, an elementary guidance counselor, a school psychologist, and a school nurse. All of these resources mean that she, along with her classmates, can be holistically seen and supported so they can learn and thrive. And, most importantly, my child can be a child—without the fear of someone walking into her school with a gun.

Katie Darty is a school librarian at an American school in Tunisia.