Any teachers here?

TL,DR version: I am looking into becoming a teacher. Talk me into it, or talk me out of it. Go!

Long and boring version, with my pros and cons--for those who are in the know, tell me if I am missing any of each, or if any are misguided (and not already addressed):

I am considering a career change. I am 1 year out of college with a good job with a good company and great benefits. I am 23, with a BS in Mathematics and minors in Business and Economics. However, due to some family issues, within 5 years--probably 2 or 3--I will have to leave this job. Or at least I will likely have to leave the area, which pretty much ensures I will have to leave the job. I really have mixed feelings about it, but am viewing it as an opportunity to make a career change of the sort that I really can only see myself making at a young age. I also have about 20k left in a 529 plan. I have to talk with my dad to see what the deal is with it, since he funded that account, but it is definitely mine if I want to go back to school for something. I might be able to roll it into a retirement account. Or I could get an MBA, or other Masters degree. Or I could go get my teaching certifications. I would be looking at high school math. Possibly middle school.

The thing that got me started thinking about this was that this weekend, we laid my grandmother to rest. I came in to work on Monday and had what wasn't that bad of a work day, but it just drained me. I came home and got on facebook, and some friends of mine (teachers) posted that they had gone golfing, went swimming, and then were taking a nap before going to their summer job at an ice cream stand. I may be making more money than them, but they are surely having more fun than me.

Pros:
There are not many occupations that would be more rewarding. You get the entire summer off. You get Spring Break, and Christmas Break off. Starting salary is not that bad in the areas that I would be looking for a job—I’d be taking about a 10% hit from where I am right now. Math teachers will more or less always be in demand. 8:00AM to 4:00PM is a pretty nice work day. You get to be around kids, kids are awesome! (Seriously, I would love working with kids/teens). Pretty decent benefits. Possibility of moving into a teaching position at a community college, which is in my opinion the best deal going. And arguably the biggest one, I would not be in a soul sucking cubicle all day—and I say that even though my current job is not hard or stressful, and my company is among the best to work for anywhere.

Cons:
That summer off? 3 months would likely only be 1 month between grading, class preparations, administrative work, continuing ed classes, etc. Same goes for the Spring Break and Christmas Break, probably only ½ of them would be “breaks”. Starting salary is decent, but there is not nearly as much room for growth as in the private sector unless you go into administration. 8:00AM to 4:00PM is more likely 7:00AM to 5:00PM, then another 5-15 hours a week at home. You have to be around kids, and kids can be a royal pain in the butt. And you have to deal with parents. Let me say that again, you have to deal with parents. Benefits are a big question mark in the current economic climate. What is going to happen to the pension/retirement plans? Good chance they’ll no longer be there by the time I retire. Standing on your feet all day is exhausting. I would have to join the union, which is both good and bad. Mostly good, but the right wing nutjob part of my brain is against it.

I think that the pros ultimately outweigh the cons. I only get 13 days of vacation right now. Even by conservative estimates, a teacher is still getting probably a minimum of 5-6 weeks of vacation, unless they choose to work during that time (I would), in which case they’re still getting paid. Long hours are inevitable in a lot of jobs—in fact, I’d expect that a 45-50 hour work week is more the norm for folks who want to end up in management. As far as kids and parents being pills, well, you’re going to find people like that in every facet of life. As for the retirement plan, I firmly believe that one needs to do it on his/her own. If the other things (pension/company sponsored 401k/Social Security) are still there and in good standing, then you can retire earlier.

Other things to consider with this: I have a part time job that pays good and is extremely flexible in terms of schedule. This brings in about 5k a year. Additionally, in the areas that I would be living I could go back and work in the same summer job that I had from age 13 to 22. I made really good money, to the point that if I could do it year round I would be looking at about 40k a year (albeit without any benefits whatsoever) in the least stressful environment and another extremely flexible schedule (if you don’t want to work, just don’t show up!). The first of these jobs is year round, the second summer only, and they would not interfere with each other or the teaching job.

TL,DR version: I am looking into becoming a teacher. Talk me into it, or talk me out of it. Go!

check your PMs

My wife has 17 years of teaching experience in Elementary Education. .
Just to hit one small topic but I hear you mention vacation time. If you are the type who likes to travel, keep in mind that 100% of all your possible travel will be in "Peak Season" at "Peak Rates." Why is it peak? Because all of the kids are out of school.
I enjoy impromptu travel. I take those trip w/o my wife typically. Her schedule is very strict and regimented.

How are you at politics?
I hear all the time from other teachers that they hate all the politics in the school systems. I have news for them, "your a public employee, paid by taxpayers, governed by a board of elected officials." Pretty much the 100% definition of politics.

Your 1 month estimate of summer break is spot on, if not a little long. Your stretched estimate of weekly hours is still somewhat conservative.

You have not touched on how many personal dollars you spend in supplies and generally a better learning experience.

The business of education is also a self fulfilling prophecy. To be considered a better teacher, you need more education. Your state will require more college classes for you. You will then enroll (spend money) at State funded colleges, After having completed the class you will then pay more money to your state to get "licensed" as a teacher with that qualification. The business of education only sees value in more of what they are selling and they require you to buy it.
To make this even better, do not expect that all of this will still be valid should you move to another state.

Speaking of moving, at least here in Ohio, by about the 7th year you are a teacher, you better be damn happy with the school system you teach in because to reap the real benefits of the retirement system, you need to stay there for the remainder of your teaching career.

In short, be a teacher because you want to teach, but per dollar of money spent on college, teaching has to have a pretty low return on investment. My wife has nearly a PhD's worth of education. That is what she has had to do to stay on top of 3rd grade. After 17 years, this is finally netting her $75K in a district known for having high salaries.

Do you like being over-worked and underpaid? (a discussion about how it shouldn't be that way is another thread)

Just keep in mind your peers aren't "the best of the best." It's been shown in numerous studies in the US teachers are typically at the bottom of entry scores for both undergrad and grad schools (I know I'll get vilified about so-and-so is good, stats don't lie).

Sorry, it's hard for me not to be critical of the teaching "industry" in this country. I literally know around a dozen teachers all from nice, middle class families, and they all ended up teachers because they couldn't hack their original plans.

TL:DR.........if you're thinking of becoming a minimum wage worker for vacation time and a small pension........I'd keep looking.

JoeyM wrote: check your PMs

Nothing there... Sent you one, reply to that email

mtn wrote:

JoeyM wrote: check your PMs

Nothing there... Sent you one, reply to that email

sent a few replies back. BTW, we can try to sort out your PM issues if you want.

Was a teacher. Gave it up to become a brewer. Haven't looked back. People always tell me, "That seems like an odd career change." Teachers never say that. Teachers understand completely.

Teaching was not for me. I also worked at a small private school. That meant I had low pay and lots of drama. Not sure if that is better or worse than what people have to deal with at public schools.

So... should you become a teacher? I don't know. Really the only way to know if you are cut out for teaching is to do it for a year or two.

Firstly: do you have a teaching credential? If not, would you be able to get an emergency credential? If not, you're looking at about a year and a half of more schooling.

If you do... you have a good chance at a solid position going in as a Math teacher. Lots of demand for that.

It will be a lot of work for low pay. If you are at a public school, the personal fulfillment aspect is being slowly chipped away. If you are at a private school, the pay and benefits aren't there.

Being a male teacher is really really hard. It may be slightly less hard in a math or science department, but still hard. Anything you say/do will be taken the wrong way. If a girl comes into class wearing inappropriately too much makeup and too little clothing (this will happen), you are in a tough situation. You will also be working in a very female-dominated workforce. Being surrounded by women may sound great... but it's not. You will get gossip and cattiness. I got tired of coworkers asking me why I hadn't proposed to my girlfriend yet. Again, this might be better for you at a larger school and in a math department.

You will not get that community college job. No. Seriously. Everyone wants those jobs. Minimum requirement is decades of hard work in the field or a Masters degree. If you do manage to land one, you will get a "lecturer" position. Translation: no tenure track and almost certainly no benefits.

While I'm not a teacher, I spent a lot of time in about 100 different schools at my old job, as well as two different universities, and got to know the majority of the teachers and staff at most of those. Additionally, we have 4-kids, so I'm familiar with it as a parent as well.

From these experiences, I made a few conclusions.

1.) There seem to be 3-types of teachers: Those who are young and still rather idealistic about the endeavor. Those who are older and completely burnt out by the job, but are hanging around for the pension/retirement. And a very rare few who are actually inspired and passionate about what they do - despite all the E36 M3 dumped upon them by parents, students, and the principle/superintendent/school board.

2.) Many college professors are completely out of their berkeleying minds - as in, I've known a few who I doubt were capable of tying their own shoes, yet they were completely brilliant in their chosen field. The rest of them seem pretty much like those in #1 above.

3.) What age-group of student do you want to work with? That seems like it could make a huge difference in how this works for you as well.

4.) Junior College definitely seems like it may be a better option - but it sounds like the most difficult one to land.

Was a teacher. Now a Nurse. Much better career, less stress, more fun, and more rewarding in every way. I loved the kids, but literally everyone tries to tell you what, how, and who you are to teach, and everyone is your boss from their perspective.

I am in my 19th year as a teacher. I taught for six, was a vice principal for nine, and returned to teaching by choice (I called it my promotion) for the remainder. I love my job. There is nothing about it that I would change. I am privileged to be paid an excellent salary, with terrific benefits.

The real question -- do you have any similar experiences that suggest you would be good as a teacher? Knowing the subject is only a small, small part of being good at the job, and finding it rewarding.

I've been teaching at the same small college for a decade. It's not the same thing as the public schools, but it may provide an interesting data point for comparison.

Compared with friends who teach in the public schools, my biggest advantage is never having to deal with parents. 99.9% of the time the parents stay out of their kids' academic business; in the remaining 0.1% of cases, I tell the parents it's their kid's situation to deal with. If they try to go over my head my department chair tells them the same thing. This is a massive difference to the incessant parental badgering and administrative acquiescence to same that my public school teacher friends have to deal with.

We have far fewer requirements imposed regarding what we have to teach and how we have to teach it. "Teaching to the test" has become far more pervasive in the public schools than ever before, and as a result I am getting more and more students who might have once known how to pass a state test but don't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to subject matter. Spending an entire year teaching students how to take a state-standard test seems less than rewarding.

Even in college, it is rarely as rewarding as one might think. Most students are there to punch their ticket so they can move on, and what they want first and foremost is a grade that will facilitate their advancement, not an education. Grade inflation and the aforementioned lack of subject knowledge has created an atmosphere in which many students don't know how to learn in an academic sense, which means much time is spent on remediating basic critical thinking skills that are long overdue. When it works, when you have a student that suddenly "gets it" at some point in the semester, yes, it's very rewarding. This does not happen often.

Beer Baron wrote: You will not get that community college job. No. Seriously. *Everyone* wants those jobs. Minimum requirement is decades of hard work in the field or a Masters degree. If you do manage to land one, you will get a "lecturer" position. Translation: no tenure track and almost certainly no benefits.

The tenure track Junior College/Community College prof is definitely a nice position. You don't have the publish-or-perish pressure of a university, and you don't have the discipline issues of high school or middle school. So yes, it's a good gig....and it is difficult to get. Schools already have a pool of adjuncts teaching for them. All the adjuncts want any position that opens up. The school already knows how well those adjuncts teach. That makes it less likely that the school will take a chance on a new person (unknown entity) with minimal experience teaching.

I have personally seen it take TEN YEARS for an adjunct to get a full time tenure track position at a community college.

[EDIT: check your email.....I sent you a much longer, more detailed version of this with a lot more information.]

After 40 years in teaching and counseling My advise is run, run, as fast as you can. The politics in most states will suck you dry. All the things we worked for in Wi over the years to make teaching a better profession are gone. No rights left, frozen pay and 3rd class citizenship. The worst is the "slap in the head" that says you are a public employee so take what we give you because that is all you are worth----The public in most places have little respect for the profession. Many of my students over the years went into teaching. When I talk to them most find teaching in the present climate to be very difficult.===== I do think technical school is a better bet but they also have their own money problems (I am retired)

viking wrote: After 40 years in teaching and counseling My advise...

I lol'd

I choose to teach. If I wanted more money I'd do something else. I love being in an academic environment where learning is the focus. When I was an automotive tech there were only a handful of people actually increasing their knowledge, learning new things, and applying real thinking and problem solving.

You will have politics in any profession or job. Public ed just has a more overt discussion due to budgets, contract negotiations, and oh yeah, most everybody is impacted by education in some way.

I've been lucky to work in a great district in Vermont. Next year I move on to a full time gig in a new district.

If you've never been drawn to education you might not find the fulfillment that a good job provides regardless.

Good luck.

G. Rooney DE Instructor at Middlebury High School in Vermont

Private School, not public

I'm not a teacher, my mother was for 40+ years, retired in 2012 and hasn't looked back. She loved her kids, disliked most parents, hated the state and federal teaching standards. Kids are great, loved her and she loved them. The parents are the problem. Either they are overprotective, not protective enough, overinvolved, not involved enough, send the kids to school in dirty tattered clothing while they pull up in a brand new SUV on 26" wheels with gold on every appendage, whatever you think of, she saw. She started teaching in inner city Talladega, AL and moved to Alabaster (just south of Birmingham, AL) and taught at the same school she went to and I went to. We moved to Austin, TX in 1993 and she taught in Pflugerville from 1993-2012 when she retired. The day she retired she was making a whopping $55k salary. Her main complaint wasn't the kids, the other teachers, the drama, the parents, any of that. It is the fact that the new laws make it no fun to teach and makes it no fun for the kids to learn. You are now instructing kids to take tests. They only need retain knowledge long enough to puke it back up on a test and go on. She said she had so much fun making lesson plans and figuring out how to make kids retain knowledge in fun and exciting ways. Those days are long gone. Now you are following strict government guidelines and basically raising irresponsible parents kids and getting in trouble for diciplining them, failing them, trying to push them, praising them, hugging them, or anything like that.

Good luck to you brother, I wouldn't want to be in that job at all.

OP, check your email!!!!!

I hinted at this earlier, but I'll be blunt: I found your account. I can fix your PMs. Talk to me.

Teaching can be very rewarding... can be. I am going into my 4th year as an adjunct instructor at our local tech school. I love the classes, the students (most of them) and, the subject I teach (auto tech), but I kept my full time gig to pay the bills. I have thrown my name in for every full time position that came along in my department. Those jobs are not easy to get. I have personally seen a change in the school in just the few years I have been there. The school is much more political and I have been told it is just going to get worse as the government tightens the budget noose. There will be more need to justify your existence to the school and they seem to be leaning to testing and course completion rates. The pay is decent, certainly better than I get in my regular job, but there is little room for raises, so you need to be happy with what you make starting out. You are not likely to get wealthy teaching.

JoeyM wrote: OP, check your email!!!!! I hinted at this earlier, but I'll be blunt: I found your account. I can fix your PMs. Talk to me.

I did, replied, working on another now. Sorry for the delay, I was at an autocross today.

I taught for 28 years and really enjoyed it. I was in a very good school district with good programs, excellent salaries and benefits.

I am also glad I retired in 1994 before all the state/federal mandated testing and "helicopter parents" put in much of an appearance.

Teaching can be a very satisfying profession but it also can be (based on comments from colleagues still teaching) very frustrating in todays conditions.

Everyone in my family was a teacher, and I have a HUGE family. All four of my grandparents, all 8 of my great grandparents, both of my parents, my sister, 9 cousins, and a few hundred other cousins.

Put it this way... I enrolled in college for Biology Education. After 3.5 years of watching my friends enter the teaching world, my parents retire frustrated, and my cousins change their majors, I switched to Music Theater. I had 13 credits and student teaching left to go before I hit the educational world and I dropped it like a bad habit.

I have a very good friend who is now at 13 years in a top-paying PA district (New Hope in Philly) where he gets the finest rich students and is now making $103k a year. He is quitting because he wants to start being a contractor. He's giving up 6 figures to be a builder. The stress of his job is destroying his life.

I'm 39, I'm broke, I'm working at Home Depot and I love my life. He has a profound envy for my life.

Now consider that you will probably enter the educational world at a more realistic $30-35k and it might be an additional stress. It is highly noble that you want to impact our youth with your abilities, but I must insert this.... with some exceptions, you MUST be committed to that noble goal at the expense of selling your soul to the "corporation" of mindless legislators and inexperienced administrators. You will most likely be worn down to the very soul as the machine counter-intuitively subverts your noble efforts, and your attempts to improve the system will be a never-ending battle of 2-year cycles of protests, lobbying, voting, and praying, only to be forced into submission by "the man."

The actual "education" part that is so rewarding (and it is, as I taught college theater intro classes for three years) will be maybe 10% of your job. The rest is subversion, legislation, red-tape, fear of some immature student claiming you are a pervert, BS administrative duties, teaching a force-fed curriculum that doesn't make sense, and various fear-related legal BS.

My dad taught 7th grade Bio for 30 years. He loved his job. He was excited to get up at 5am every day and touch the minds of every kid. He purchased his own supplies for mind-blowing demonstrations in class just so he could be more than just a cookie-cutter teacher. He retired a bitter and angry man; so eager to leave what education had become. His job was 80% education and 20% other stuff that he gladly performed. Nowadays its 10% education and 90% BS. If you can find enough joy in that 10% of touching the lives of young people, good for you. You are what we need in education today.

curtis73 wrote: The actual "education" part that is so rewarding (and it is, as I taught college theater intro classes for three years) will be *maybe* 10% of your job. The rest is subversion, legislation, red-tape, fear of some immature student claiming you are a pervert, BS administrative duties, teaching a force-fed curriculum that doesn't make sense, and various fear-related legal BS. ... If you can find enough joy in that 10% of touching the lives of young people, good for you. You are what we need in education today.

This. 100% this.

I will add, that if you are on here asking us to "talk you into it, or talk you out of it," you probably are not motivated enough to revel in that 10%.

However, I fully understand the desire to want to inspire and help guide young minds. My suggestion would be to find a passion and turn it into a part time teaching or mentoring gig. Teach driver's ed, or dance, or carpentry. Become a camp counselor or take on a youth leader role at your local church. Become a Big Brother. Heck, find a tiny private school that could use a skilled math teacher to come in and teach classes twice per week.

Why not sign up as a substitute teacher and see what its like on the "inside"?

My mother did for about a year. She now works at Macys.