Disabuse me of my romantic notions about being a teacher

In My Humble Opinion
1

Some of you Dopers teach - or taught - and I’m looking for some anecdotal data. (Second-hand stories are fine, too. :wink: )

I’ve been drawn to the idea of teaching as far back as I can remember - and I’m sure being quite the teacher’s pet when I was little influenced this. Now, having lost my job, I’m giving serious thought to the career track I’d been on, such as it was.

I wanted to be an editor - still do, I suppose - but it’s a tight field in good times, and these ain’t good times. I have a BA in English and an MA in journalism, so I think I can get a certification here (my state = TX) without too terribly much more schooling, right?

The main reason I never got a teaching certification when I was in college was b/c of my parents. They were very adamant in their desire that I do something, anything, that was higher paying and (in their eyes) more prestigious. Now their pressure is no longer an influence, and the idea of teaching has come off the back burner.

So tell me what I should know. I know teachers put in a lot of hours outside the actual standing-in-front-of-a-classroom part, but how, exactly, does lesson planning work?

My biggest indecision lies with age. I don’t know what age of kids I’d like to teach, so I’d love to know how you picked what grade to teach. For a long time I thought, “I’d teach elementary or high school, but there’s no way in hell I’d ever teach middle school.” But now I realize that was because middle school was such a hell for me. The further back in time my own middle school experience becomes, the less unappealing the idea becomes.

I know my background is in writing but I actually think I’d prefer to teach science, for a number of reasons. Biology has always been a passion of mine, and I think I could impart an intuitive feel for a lot of the concepts in science.

I worked for a while as a tutor for 9th grade chemistry, and I spent a summer in Poland teaching English to a batch of middle-schoolers and another batch of high-schoolers, so I have at least a vague sense of what it’s like to stand in front of a sea of faces and instruct. I’m looking more for … the other stuff, I guess.

Thoughts? Reactions?

2

My decision was made for me. I did a two year Teach For America-type program out of college, and the program itself decided on the age for me. I requested middle school or high school history/social studies. I got third grade. My biggest piece of advice - don’t compromise on this, whatever age you do decide on. You have experience with middle school and high school age kids in the classroom - I’d make your decision based on that. (Personally, I think middle schoolers are all pod people replaced by aliens for 2-3 years of their lives - it’s really the only explanation.)

3

According to Yahoo News just today, over 50% of French students use their cellphones/electronics in class. Both I and Pepper Mill have substituted in our public schools, and it feels higher. As the kids get older, they get harder and harder to control in class. I was teaching high school, and Pepper (who taught elementary and middle school) did not envy me.

4

Here’s why I am not a teacher: I hated it.

I did a one year qualification (in Australia,) so I could technically teach science and Indonesian in a high school. But I won’t, because it is SO not a job I could be happy in.

My course, sensibly, threw its neophyte teachers into the deep end almost straight away, I think it was during the second week of the course, we were placed in classrooms as observers/assistants. It certainly sorted the sheep from the goats in a hurry! Around 1/3 of the teaching students quit.

I got through the week, and the first months of ‘instruction’ - taking science courses during my undergrad years made the touchy-feelyness of the education course work much, much worse. Then our second round of practicum began, six weeks in a suburban high school.

Wow. I just didn’t cope. My supervising teacher had been at the same school, teaching the same lessons, for thirty years. She encouraged me to use her lesson plans, and, in fact, got quite angry when I suggested trying new ideas, like, you know, lab sessions.

Apart from her lack of imagination, I just wasn’t enjoying the vibe; I kept getting talked over by loud kids, and second-guessed myself constantly about what I was doing. I was learning all the wrong things, like how little I could get away with, and how to navigate the bureacracy of the schools and the Department of Education.

I was utterly dreading the next practicum - three months in a classroom! Luckily, I was saved when the Education Officer from the local zoo came looking for an intern. Presto, informal education! I was converted, and have worked in science museums and other non-school teaching jobs ever since. My favourite age group to work with, after trying them ALL, is 8-9 year olds - old enough that you don’t need to baby them and tie their shoes, but young enough to respect and listen to you.

I did complete my teaching qualification, which is a useful piece of paper to have, kind of a foot in the door for some positions; but even better was my qualification in science communication, which also has a great alumni network, which has been invaluable in getting jobs.

5

No matter how hard you work, a significant percentage of people (your students, their parents, and society in general) will consider you a lazy parasite who only works 6 hours a day for 9 months out of the year and spends the rest of the time in hedonistic bliss on an island in the Pacific.

No matter how much you try, there will also be a percentage of the population who believes that you’re incompetent at life. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach,” is not a old-fashioned and outdated adage - to many people, it’s rock-solid truth and fact, and you will be a living example to them.

No matter how skilled you are, you will never be accepted as a professional outside of your field (see #1).

Obviously, many many people will chime in to deny that these are true, and that may be the case for them, but I’ve read these sentiments (perhaps not in so many words, but definitely in meaning) on this very board.

6

Go out and rent The Wire - season 4 is the one that directly applies.

7

Yeah, but you do in fact only teach 9 months in the year, plus get every single conceivable holiday, plus two weeks at Christmas and a week in the Spring. Come see what it’s like on the other side. If I could start over I would definitely look into teaching; I think I’m a natural, and I could take the BS alone for the trade-off of having every damned summer off.

I respected my teachers, and I respect my kids’ teachers. But from my perspective it sounds like a really cushy job guys.

8

Your perspective is uninformed. My 9-to-5 office job was far, far, far cushier than my 3-month student teaching gig.

Re the cell phones in class, for a while I answered questions from a popular text-message info service and during school hours, I would say that about 90% of the queries that came in were obviously quiz or homework questions.

9

Most teachers put in countless hours at home doing class prep, grading papers and lesson plans. Then there are after school and evening activities to attend. Many days off for kids are professional development days for teachers. Most teachers are in well before the students and in the school until a few hours after the students leave.

Summers are off, although you are paid a 10 month contract, so you salary reflects this compared to many other professionals. Often summer is time used for professional development and prep, especially if you have been moved to a new grade/subject area unexpectedly. Many teachers I know work second jobs during the summer to round out their salary.

Are there teachers who slack and do the absolute minimum? Absolutely. Just like in any profession there are individuals who skate by. But a true professional is putting hours upon hours that no one sees.

10

My brother has been teaching for about twenty years. High School, American History, Government, that sort of thing.
He loved it for years. Loves the kids, even the problem students. He’s the teacher everyone remembers. He’s the cool guy, the one who tried to make learning fun and interesting.

He desperately wants to get out now because of all the bullshit changes admin makes to save a few bucks and make the schools look better while not doing a thing to help the students. Students and teachers suffer for it.

Unfortunately (in his opinion) it’s too late. He’s too old to change careers.

Also this “summers off” thing will I believe be a thing of the past very soon. As our district settles into block scheduling, year round classes will make more sense, with short breaks where the teachers will be working year round except for holidays.

11

Given that other posters have already started disabusing you of your incorrect notions of my performance as a professional, I’ll allow them to continue. However, I am under no illusions that you’ll actually believe their statements or consider them as a reason to revamp your opinion.

12

I want very much to be that teacher! :cool:

Can you tell me a little more about these “bullshit changes admin makes?” This is something I’ve heard about before but always tangentally and never in any detail.
How do the teachers suffer? This is *exactly *the kind of thing I want to know more about!

13

All of my “official” teaching has been college-level (I also helped out in elementary classrooms, tutored high school, and guest-lectured at high school and college).

From what I’ve seen at higher grade levels, the difference lies in what classes you teach. If you teach things that students have to take, they’re much harder to motivate and more likely to cause trouble. If you’re lucky enough to teach things that students want to learn, it’s a piece of cake.

A really good teacher, however, can make students want to learn just about anything.

14

Boo fucking hoo. Come work in high-tech. You get 3 weeks paid vacation (as a senior employee) and you’re definitely putting in the same extra hours year 'round. Nah. I still think teaching is cushy compared to some jobs, but most definitely in the cut-throat high-tech arena. Sorry.

Also, you don’t get laid off every fucking 3 years when the company changes hands. Oh, and you get a pension? (At least here in Ontario.)

15

Ugh. It seems like there always has to be someone in teaching threads who comes in and smugly proclaims that teaching is sooooo much easier than their really really tough, really really hard job, and they wish that they could be like all those teachers that sit on their asses eating bon-bons all summer long. Who gives a crap if your personal job is harder than teaching? I’m sure rocket scientists have a harder job than teachers, too. Here: Oh, wow, Leaffan, your cut-throat high-tech job sure does sound really difficult and it sounds like you get hardly any vacation at all and you get laid off all the time. I sure am glad I don’t have your really tough job. Now will you lay off with bitching about how teachers have it so incredibly cushy compared to your super-demanding workplace? Please?

16

The point that people like Leaffan typically miss is that the high-tech job that requires 4/3 as many months per year typically pays a lot more than 4/3 of the teacher’s salary, too.

Although some teachers get their money year-round, the pay is still based on 9 months of work.

Around here, starting pay for a K-12 teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience is $20K per year.

I know a lot of teachers that spend that three months of “vacation” working another job.

17

I thought I wanted to be a high school teacher when I was in grad school. You can really make a difference in kids’ lives, you give back to the community, I always loved tutoring, that thrill when a kid gets something s/he didn’t before… I had a very romantic view. Then I took an science education class in grad school, part of which involved going into an actual high school science classroom once every 2-3 weeks, and that turned me off it completely. The teachers who were affiliated with the program were all great, but seeing the conditions they had to work in (kids who gave them sass, kids who just didn’t care, office bureaucracy that was constantly interrupting their efforts to, you know, actually teach things, and occasionally would come up with idiotic rules about teaching to the AP test or something) made me immediately decide it wasn’t for me.

As to the whole debate on teaching vs. non-teaching jobs… I love my analyst job, two-to-four weeks of vacation and all. Would I rather have summers off? Well, yeah, sure. And I’m fairly sure that the average person at my company works at least as many extra hours as the average teacher. But clearly these things do not alone a cushy job make, as I’m pretty sure I could still get back into teaching math or science if I wanted to, and I emphatically don’t.

18

Leaffan’s attitude is what the OP will have to tolerate throughout their career. No matter what facts are presented, people will denigrate and dismiss you as lazy, unproductive, slothful, whiny, and incompetent.

Think of all those co-workers that people bitch about on this board. The ones who come to work late every day, take long lunches, leave early, spend most of their time at work chatting with their co-workers in their cubicles. You know, all those co-workers that are the subjects of minirants?

Most of us naturally realize that those people do not represent every single one of the workers in a particular industry. If a person composed a mini-rant (or an all-grown-up rant) regarding an IT professional who comes in late, leaves early, plays video games at his or her desk, and for some reason is not fired (which happens on this board, like, a lot), most people would say “Yea, I’ve got a coworker like that. Those people make the rest of us look bad.”

But if someone knows a teacher who really DOES only work 8 a.m. - 3 p.m., doesn’t bring home work until 8 or 9 every night, doesn’t work during the summer either for money or for continuing education, and who generally meets the stereotype of the lazy unmotivated teacher? People like Leaffan assume that that person is representative of every single teacher ever.

So, OP, if you can tolerate being told that you don’t know what hard work is, that you have a cushy job, that you only work 6 hours a day 9 months out of the year, and doesn’t listen to you when you try to provide them with information otherwise, you’ll do fine.

19

I work in high tech. My wife is an elementary school teacher.

My wife’s job is MUCH harder than mine, and over the course of an entire year she puts in many more hours than I do. Basically during the school year she’s working every evening and weekend.

20

In the most polite way possible, you have no idea what you are talking about. I worked for ten years in the cut throat high-tech arena, my wife has been a public school teacher longer than that. Not one bit of what you say is true. Time of at summer is not three months. Work weeks are far more than 40 hours; the wife puts in eight hours at school, 2-5 hours at home on weekday evenings, and 3-10 hours over the course of a weekend.

Yes, teachers get most government holidays off. So does nearly every government worker, bank worker, insurance employee, and many IT workers.

Teachers are being required in many places to have a Master’s degree to get license or have one before they renew the first license. For all of that, starting salaries are far below the average of what the holder of an MBA makes, and the salaries remain below average.

None of which takes into account the utter unmitigated bullshit of parents, and the almighty TAXPAYERS. Students are never wrong, the teacher is stupid, blind, racist, sexist, atheist, conservative christian wacko, a bigot. Administrators are almost uniformly spineless slimeballs who are far more interested in making the parent go away than actually educating or disciplining the child.

Pension? - Sure, assuming the pension fund has not been mismanaged. Or, the teacher did not take the option to manage their own retirement funds and then have a recession hit a retirement time.

Never laid off? - HA! I am not in Ontario, but a quick perusal of archived newspaper stories in central Ohio and I am sure many other locations would reveal the absurdity of this statement. Many teachers around here have taken across the board cuts in order to prevent layoffs. In some cases, that was not enough. It is next to impossible to get a job as a new teacher around here, there are far to many who have been laid off and are looking for work.

To the OP - teaching is not romantic. It is a hard job, you will not be thanked or appreciated by 98% of those you come into contact with. But, you should see the joy it brings my wife when she is able to make the connection with a student and help them see the possibilities life has for them. If you want to try it, try it. The worst you will find is that is not for you.