Once again, dear Dopers, I turn to you for advice.
I changed jobs this year. I went from teaching in a poor inner-city charter high school to a poor suburban/rural public high school. There were a few reasons for the change.
First, the commute is much, much shorter – like an hour shorter each way.
Second, I needed a school where I could complete a fake “student teaching” by using my own classroom. This will allow me to make my teaching certificate transfer from this state to just about any other. I’d like to move somewhere closer to the Midwest, and I need a transferable certification to teach anywhere else.
But most importantly, I wanted to find out if I really want to keep teaching. I thought that four years of teaching in an urban alternative school may have skewed my perspective on the profession, and I wanted to see if the venue made a difference.
Unfortunately, I just don’t like teaching very much. I like the performance aspect of it, and I like the relationship-building aspect of it, but I don’t like the negative parts of it. I hate grading essays, which makes me a poor excuse for an English teacher. I also hate that I have 170 students, which means I can’t really give detailed feedback in any decent time frame anyways. I hate that my district is on a pay freeze, and has been for five years. I have no chance of getting a raise in the near future, which really saps my motivation to do well. I hate that this district is so poor that I have to buy my own copy paper – that stuff is expensive, and this means that I assign less practice than I used to because I can’t afford to make copies.
Mostly, though, I just don’t like teenagers that much. They’re annoying, and there’s nothing I can really do about that. I send kids to the office for cussing or throwing things or hitting each other, and they get sent back after being assigned lunch detention. Lunch detention sounds bad, but they’re allowed to go to the cafeteria and get their lunch first, so they really only have to sit in the detention area for five minutes for it to count. That’s not exactly an effective way of disciplining the kids, as it’s not really a meaningful consequence.
So I’m stressed out about this job. I took a big pay cut to come here, and it sucks. But, hey, the year is over at the end of May (it’s Arizona; we start and end early compared to the rest of the US) and at least I have a job, right? Well, in the words of Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friends!”
My wife is 13 weeks pregnant. Our insurance sucks – both of us have high-deductible HSA plans. We’re broke because of the pay cut, and keep having to charge things each month, which is totally screwing up our “get out of debt” plan.
I’ve had two people tell me to get them my resume, as they have positions open in their companies right now. Neither works in teaching, but either job (if I got it) would lead to a 30-100% pay raise. The friend with the potentially higher paying opportunity (a sales job) also has amazing insurance benefits, although the job is commission-only otherwise.
This seems like an easy decision, right? Do what’s right for my family and at least apply for those other jobs. However, there are a few problems:
-
If I break my contract, there is a $1,500 buy-out clause in it. I can’t really afford that, but my mother-in-law would loan me the money.
-
If I break my contract, my teaching license will likely be revoked without the possibility of reinstatement – Arizona is harsh on teachers who break contracts.
-
If I quit now, I don’t get to complete that fake “student teaching”, which means I won’t be able to get a teaching job elsewhere, either.
-
If I finish the school year, I qualify to have $5,000 forgiven from my $18,000 student loan debt.
-
If I do the student teaching, I’m adding $1,200 to my student loan debt, so the net forgiveness is only $3,800.
-
Finally, quitting a teaching job mid-year would just make me feel like a huge dick.
I know that “Give me your resume” isn’t “I’ll hire you”, but in both cases I’d have about a 75% chance of getting hired – I’d have to blow the interview to not get it. If I got the sales job, I’d go from my current (and future) $35,000 to an average of $65,000 per year. I could be debt free in three years, even if I only made an average of $50,000 per year.
My biggest hang-up is that this move would signal the end of my teaching career permanently. I wouldn’t have it available as a safety net any longer. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. My wife did point out, however, that I’m a nationally certified cable television technician, and I swear that I’ll never, ever do that job again because I hated it so much.
So, now that I’ve gone on for this long (it was cathartic!), I ask you: should I take a risk and bet on myself to be successful in a new career? Or should I tough it out until June, hate my work life every day, but keep my safety net?