Is being a teacher so bad?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a friend who is a teacher and is looking to get out of the profession. She likes the kids (mostly) but what with the meddlesome parents, bad administration, unrealistic expectations, and tuned out coworkers, she’s decided it’s just not worth it. The school she’s at is considered average-to-good - i.e., she’s not fleeing some terrible “blackboard jungle” situation.

Privately, I wonder if she’s making a mistake. She makes a decent living (earns more than I do, drives a nicer car, and lives in a much nicer apartment), is off this week for spring break, and is counting down to her 2 1/2 month summer vacation. (A paid one, if she chose to take her salary on a 12-month schedule.) On the surface, it sounds pretty good to me.

Plus, the way I see it, there are bad bosses, coworkers, and clients in every profession. I worry that she’ll learn that the hard way, only after having given up the benefits of education. Also, she still likes the idea of teaching, even if she’s exhausted by the reality, so the core interest is still there.

On the other hand, stories of teacher burnout like this are pretty common. So my question is for those of you who’ve taught and had some other career as an adult: are the frustrations of being a teacher really that much worse than what one faces in every other career? In what way? Did you move to teaching from the other career, or vice versa? Are you glad you made the decision you did?

2

I’ll start with the obligatory “I’m not a teacher, but”… the but in my case being that my family is about half teachers (two cousins, two aunts, an uncle and my grandfather).

I think part of the issue is that teachers end up with at least 3 bosses. The administrators, the parents, and politicians on the school board. They also only have so much control over their end product - whether the students or the parents are involved will make a bigger different than almost anything the teacher can do. So, in that sense, it’s a bit different from being a regular office drone, where you usually have only one boss, and while someone else can affect the quality of your work, nobody is actively trying to NOT get the work done.

That being said, there are good teachers and bad teachers, like in every profession. I had a couple of friends that went into teaching. One of them went in because she liked music and wanted to be a band director. Our entire peer group though this was a bad idea because she was very quiet and shy and there was no way she’d be able to control a class on hormone-laden teenagers. We were right - she lasted one semester and then drifted among a half-dozen jobs before settling on something totally unrelated to her teaching career.

The other is a sweet girl, but has the ability to be tough as nails and in your face as need be when the situation calls for it. Sure, she complains about her students, but she’s been doing it for 6 years now and is handling it just fine.

As far as different jobs - both the uncle and grandfather were retired military when they went into teaching. They said that handling the kids was no different than handling a bunch of rowdy privates - generally you got them to do their work, occasionally you used your command voice, but the same no-nonsense attitude from a previous job was fine. The problem for both was the administration, which was more concerned with metrics than with the students actually learning. The cousins both left teaching for something else (real estate and accounting), and have never looked back.

3

I’ve never wanted to do anything else. Finishing up year 27 and it’s still as fun as it was at the start.

Some people just don’t have what it takes.

4

When I was still in K-12 (about two years ago) there was an opening for a regular ed 3rd grade teacher position. 300 qualified people applied. 300 people who had the education and licensing needed to do the job. The job went to the son of the Asst. Superintendent.

So a lot of people think that being a teacher isn’t so bad IMHO.

5

I think its a calling. And its one of those jobs that you imagine, when you go into it, that its going to be quite different than what it is. Few people think about administration politics. Or IEP red tape. Or having to deal with parents - both of the helicopter variety and of the really crappy human being variety.

A friend of mine is on the verge of quitting after 25 years - and she has a pretty great job (studio art teacher at a school for the arts). But she has a inept and/or corrupt (both from what she says) administration. If it were her, her kids, and her subject matter, she wouldn’t be burned out.

Another moved to teaching at a community college, where the students are making a choice to be there.

6

Not that easy an answer, I think. Do you have adequate support from parents,and the school board back you up when difficulties arise? Are politicians trying to cut your budget? Are you allowed to teach the subject, or are you being forced to “teach to the test”?
What I am trying to say is that some people may have what it takes…but are prevented from giving what they’ve got.

7

Is she really off?

All the teachers I know work 60+ hour weeks (they don’t have time to grade or lesson plan during regular school hours), aren’t actually off during spring break like the students, and usually also do some school related work during the summer, including summer classes and some administrative work.

There are plenty of people who work those kinds of long hours in other fields, but we aren’t shocked when some of them burn out.

8

Sometimes, sometimes, always and always. So what? Name a job that doesn’t have its difficulties and obstacles.

I’ve never bought the whole “teaching to the test” kerfuffle. EVERY teacher teaches to some test or another. The people who bitch and moan just complain because they don’t get to set the test any more. Good teachers can teach the subject and the test simultaneously,because believe it or not, the tests usually cover the subject. At our school the English department bitched because several of the teachers couldn’t teach their favorite books any more. Aww…poor babies. They forget that they aren’t composers. They are fiddle players.

9

The fiddle players don’t get to choose the music, but they do get to choose their fiddle. Your post indicates you think the book is the music; I think the lesson is the music and book is the fiddle.

10

That is just not the case; lots of job s are fraught with political weirdness. I personally have three official bosses and two de facto bosses, depending on what I’m doing. If you think this sort of nonsense is unique to teaching… well, that’s just crazy talk. Terrible bosses, awful customers, organization confusion, backstabbing, insufficient resources? Welcome to life.

The question of whether being a teacher is all that bad is rather easily answered; it is generally not, as evidenced by the fact that there is no shortage of teachers. (There may be local shortages in some places but in general teachers are not in short supply.) If it was that bad people would not want to do it.

11

They’ve been told to play the violin and they want to pick up a bass guitar. If you are going to play in an orchestra, you play the music that is selected and you bloody well play it the way the conductor tells you to play it or you quit. If you want an extended solo and the ability to jam, go get hired at a fairly liberal college.

Good teachers can make the most mundane music sing, for both themselves and their audience.

12

It can be quite bad, but that doesn’t make it unique. Other professions may have similar levels of burn-out, but they’re not as easy to track.

I think what teaching shares with other “caring” professions is that it’s soul-tiring. I mean that you are in contact with people who have really serious shit going on in their lives, like abuse at home, learning difficulties, etc. And you can’t fix it.

13

I would love to be a teacher. I think it is one of the most important jobs out there.

But as an outsider looking in, it seems like they are just mindless automatons. They get told what to teach, who to teach, when to teach it, exactly how to teach it, and with what materials. Might as well install a robot in the classroom. Burger flippers seemingly get more creative control over their work output.

College professors avoid this, but academia has its own mess of problems. I just decided to be an engineer and try to get really good at mentoring and explaining concepts to others.

14

Thank you. First, for being a good teacher. Second, for making that point.

I have a lot of friends and aquaintences that are teachers. The ones that make the “teaching to the test” complaint, I want to ask, “What in the world were you teaching before the test?”

If I may hijack a bit, if I were a magic genie and I came along to grant you one wishful change to the whole system, what would it be?

15

Hopeful future teacher here: I acknowledge nobody gets into education to get rich. It also is a huge time consuming job. When I was in school most teachers were still on campus an hour after school ended, sometimes running a club, but mostly correcting tests/papers.

16

I’ve read quite a few teacher complaints about Common Core. They are required to pretty much teach and prep the kids for those tests. I’ve seen reports of experienced teachers retiring because they don’t like prepping kids for a set of tests. I guess theres no time to teach anything else.

heres one perspective.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/07/common-core-test-gives-students-no-time-to-think-teacher/

17

I have a little over five years experience as a teacher, but I’m currently working in a different field. If I could find the right teaching job, I would go back in a heart beat.

Job #1 - the perfect job. I knew I had it good. I just didn’t realize how good. My principal was insanely good. The superintendent and district staff backed the faculty to the hilt. The kids were pretty good, and while there were some difficult problems, it was never like the other jobs I had. I left to move to another state and regretted it. However, the year after I moved, the superintendent left and was replaced. The new superintendent got rid of the principal, and it went downhill.

Job #2 - one of the worst jobs of my entire life. The district was huge and had a long history of incompetence and corruption. The principal was a con man. The percentage of good kids and parents was about the same, but the number of really troubled kids and parents who didn’t give a damn or were outright insane was much higher. I left at the end of the first semester after I was physically assaulted by a student and the administration made it clear they didn’t care.

Job #3 - teaching at an Orthodox Jewish school. Part fascinating cultural exchange, part nerve-wracking, stress-inducing trial. The school had a very difficult time keeping any non-Jewish teachers for more than a couple of years. I had the feeling that the parents were responsible for much of it, using “they don’t understand our culture” as an excuse to get rid of teachers who wouldn’t capitulate to demands for perfect snowflake culture. I ended up leaving before the end of the year because I’d developed a bout of severe depression which interfered with my responsibilities in the classroom and caused me to behave in an unprofessional way (yelling at the kids). I wish I’d been able to end the year.

The thing is, when a teaching job is good, it is very, very good - fulfilling, adventurous, and good service to the community. When it’s bad, it is soul destroying. Shortly after I walked away from Job #2, a friend had to be admitted for in-patient treatment of her severe depression. She told me later that during group therapy, a third of the patients were teachers from that district, and all of them said they’d leave teaching forever rather than return there.

I love working with the kids. I’d say at least 85% of them are genuinely good, interesting people, and having the opportunity to help them develop into healthy, contributing adults is a privilege that I treasure. Around 1-2% of them are damaged in such ways that I could not figure out a way to reach them, let alone help them, and they were better off under the care and guidance of a medical/mental health professional. The remaining kids needed their teachers to work together to provide consistent disciplinary and educational interactions. Very, very rarely, I would encounter a child who was a perfectly fine human being but managed to rub me so wrong, I couldn’t stand being around them. As a teacher, it was my job to grit my teeth and deal with it.

Parents are partners, and the vast majority of my dealings with them were positive. Most of them are thrilled to have a teacher who welcomes them, wants to work with them, and likes their child. Many of them were relieved that I could validate their experiences, reassure them that they were doing the right thing, and provide them some other resources. Occasionally, I had parents who didn’t care, and it broke my heart. Rarely, I ran into parents who were overtly hostile or abusive.

For me, what made or broke a job was the administration. A school’s culture is dependent on what the principal and his/her staff allow, embrace, and reject. The second school I taught at, a student was raped by a staff member (it later came to light that the rapist had a prior history, but the background check the district paid for didn’t check ALL 50 states), and the principal was more concerned that faculty and staff not talk to the media and make the school look bad than he was about helping the victim or protecting the students in general. It was sickening. He declared that teachers were not allowed to assign a failing grade to any student during the first six weeks because he wanted the football team to have a full roster. The administration was very supportive, but they just didn’t see the demands of the parents to make exceptions and excuses for their child as unsupportable.

I love teaching. Currently, I’m getting my fix by teaching religious education (Sunday school) at my church. If I could land a teaching job at a good school, I’d be thrilled.

18

I have heard my brother, a high school English teacher, complain that it has recently become more and more this way.

19

Yeah, having worked in the corporate world, in not for profits, in (currently) higher ed and (previously) in public k-12, there is no way K-12 is unique in having those issues. In fact, I found it pretty simple compared to working for a larger corp. or a large university system.

Generally, I have found that when a teacher complains about Admin, it is just because (gasp) Admin wants them to do something they don’t want to do.

20

I will disagree with this. Sure, there are office politics, but I have worked in the most corporate of corporate cultures and nobody gets pulled in as many directions, or has as many indirect bosses as teachers. I’m willing to give them this one.

Plus, if you work for a company that has a bonkers structure, you can change companies and get away from it. Teachers are going to have parents and politicians no matter where they teach (Private schools have donors instead of politicians, but the point stands).

There’s no shortage of people that want to be rock musicians either, even if the vast majority of them have to take a second job or live on poverty wages. That doesn’t mean it’s not a rough life.