Teachers! Tell me about your career!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am 30 years old, and returning to school after almost ten years. The first time around, I took vo-tec classes that were pretty worthless. Now, I’m planning on attending a community college and then transferring to a university. Eventually, I would like to get a degree in history then go on for a teaching certificate. I would like to eventually teach history or economics either in middle school or community college.

I never thought about teaching until a year or so ago, and I’m not sure about the realities of being a teacher. I know several teachers, but not well enough sit down and start talking about salary, benefits, etc. I also can’t figure out the education requirements. One highschool math and English teacher I know has a master’s in stage performance, and as far as I know her undergrad degree was in performance as well. So this part is still confusing.

So are there any teachers on the Dope willing to tell me about their careers? The good and the bad, what kind of education was required to get where you are… anything, really.

Thanks.

2

I made a thread here a couple weeks ago about the reasons why I think NOBODY SHOULD GO INTO TEACHING FOR ANY REASON. It was in the BBQ pit, “fed up with teacher hate and disrespect”. It went on for several hundred posts, and you could learn more there than anywhere, I think. Read all the arguments, back and forth, and all the stories, and you’re going to see that there are a lot of people who hate teachers, think they are just a bunch of whiners who are overpaid and should quit their jobs.

If you do decide to become a teacher, god help you. Be prepared for a thankless job, with minimal support, where you are held to unachievably high standards, and will be blamed for everything that goes wrong. Depending on your area, you might have to put up with terribly apathetic students (but that really was never a problem for me), unsafe working conditions, etc. Your endurance will be stretched to the limit, and you will be constantly required to work afterhours and beforehours just to scrape by.

I only taught for 2 years in a high-paying district, with well behaved students, and it was horrific. I couldn’t imagine doing it for 100K per year, let alone what you will be making.

Do anything, ANYTHING other than become a teacher. Please.

3

The basics in the US are a Bachelor’s in an approved subject (or in an unapproved one if you pass the Praxis) and a year of grad school taking Ed. classes. After that it gets so different that you’ll have to be specific as the what state you plan to teach in. I can tell you right now that Econ. isn’t taught at the middle school level anywhere I know of, and community colleges have more instructors than they know what to do with. Especially in the Liberal Arts.

Now, if you were a Math teacher…

I’ve been teaching 25 years, and I wouldn’t want any other career.

4

My wife is an elementary school teacher.

First of all, there’s a big difference between teaching in K-12 and in any sort of college environment, including community college. In college the students generally want to go there and chose to be in your class. They want to learn the material. In K-12 they generally didn’t choose to be in your class and aren’t that interested in learning the material (although there are exceptions). Thus the attitudes of the students are quite different.

Having said that, if you really enjoy the process of teaching, of seeing someone learn something new, and you enjoy being around kids of whatever age you want to teach, then it is a great profession. Most teachers I know wouldn’t think of doing anything else.

But it is quite a hard job, especially for the first few years. You have prepare good lesson plans that are engaging and also really instructive. You have to spend a lot of time on grading. In middle school you might have to do some physical preparation of the classroom – in elemenary school my wife usually has to spend a whole week before the school year starts putting up new bulletin boards, positioning the desks, etc. And then do minor tweaks on these about once a month.

And the thing about teaching is that you’re always “on” when you’re at work. You’re always the center of attention. All eyes are on you. You can’t surreptitiously burb, or have an off day. The students notice. It’s kind of like acting. That’s the thing that makes it so exhausting, I think. And that’s why I myself could never be a teacher. (I’m a software engineer.)

And then drewtwo99 was not wrong when he said that there are major downsides as well, in that you can do a great job but still get no respect from you students, their parents, or the administration. You have to believe in yourself that those students will understand when they are adults that you did what was best for them. If you have to pick, it’s best to get on the good side of the administration, especially the principal, rather than the students or the parents.

5

I would also just like to add that watching students learn, and then teach eachother, and express genuine interest is an amazing, wonderful experience that I won’t ever forget. It is a truly remarkable and wonderful thing. But until teachers start getting more respect and support in this country, I don’t think anyone should go into teaching.

6

I make $35,260 per year. I have to give 11.3% of my gross to the state retirement system. My health insurance doesn’t start until Nov. 1, and then it’s an HSA with a $2,500 deductible.

I will not receive a pay raise unless I start working on a M.A. or M.Ed. I’m in my fifth year of teaching, and with only a B.A. in my district I will never make a higher salary.

This is my first year at a traditional public school instead of a charter, and it’s been a financial disaster. The kids are better behaved and of a higher skill level than my former students, but the pay and benefit cut was gigantic. I’m not convinced I’d make the same decision again. I’m also considering transitioning out of teaching after this year. I started this thread about it back in June.

You need to ask yourself if you can handle grading 165 papers per night. You also need to ask yourself if you can handle being told to fuck off by a 15-year-old or his/her parents. You need to be able to handle that kid being back in your classroom three days later.

This career takes a large amount of mental toughness. I have that toughness, but I want a better lifestyle than I have now, so I’m following Rand Rover’s advice from my thread and drewtwo99’s thread and getting out of this career.

Before this, I worked in retail for seven years and as a cable technician for three years. Teaching is by far the most difficult, exhausting, frustrating job I’ve had. In retail and telecom, if I have a butt-hole of a customer, I rarely have to see them again, if ever. I have to see the butt-hole students for however many of the 180 school days are left. I would strongly advise against going into this.

7

I currently work as a caregiver. I clean up urine, vomit, feces on a daily basis. I’ve done post-mortem care on more bodies than I can count. I’ve dealt with family dynamics and strong emotions, including physical abuse. I’ve had to tell people their loved ones have died. I’ve taken care of children - children! mangled in car accidents, then went home to my own own kids. And I do this for minimum wage, literally, and have been since 2002.

I read your pit thread, but I can’t imagine my kid’s teacher having a worse job than I do.

8

Then good luck to you and I hope you enjoy it! Being a caregiver will defintely help you prepare for being a teacher, as it is one of the many roles you will be playing in the classroom.

9

If you’re into the thrill of discovery on the kiddies’ faces, etc., but don’t think much of a classroom career, look into informal education. I teach in a zoo, and have previously done so in museums, camps, cruise ships, etc. My qualifications are in science, education and science communication. I have a credential, which is useful in getting a foot in the door for these sorts of jobs, although not vital. You can usually start by volunteering. Does your local history museum have a docent program? Check it out to get a feel for engaging kids with history outside of a classroom context.

10

Lancia, pay particular attention to the ex-teachers in that thread. {Particularly blinking duck :D}. You may not want to hear it but read it with an open mind.

If you still wish to become a teacher - then try this:

Go back and find a favorite old high school teacher. One you liked/loved. Also, you need to chose a teacher who is not the wife of a local doctor or CEO…someone who is the breadwinner of their family or shares the burden roughly evenly. Go to him or her and invite them to a restaurant for dinner (make sure you pay :wink: )

Tell him/her that you are THINKING about becoming a teacher and want their opinion. Sit back and listen.

It is important that the teacher you are talking to is in a private place and won’t be overheard. It is also important that you come across as someone who is logically considering teaching as a career and not a rabid cult member. This is because teachers have been FIRED for saying negative things to people*. If you don’t believe me, I have a couple people you can talk to! At the very least their lives can be made uncomfortable so if you approach them that way they will likely lie. This will provoke their desire to save you and I bet you will hear an earful.

Back when I left teaching and I was militantly trying to save people from entering teaching (i.e. being an asshole) I saved someone from the teaching profession because she did exactly what I advised above. She told me that her favorite teacher made me seem positively optimistic about teaching in comparison. :smiley:

  • Like for example, I taught computer programming. Once while out in the town I met the parents of one of my students. They were extremely liking the idea of their daughter taking my class because after she did dhe could get a job paying $60,000 a year! I must not have been able to contain my…contrary opinion…to this. I do remember saying a friend of mine just graduated from college in computer science and was making $35K a year.

A complaint was made to the principal the next day about my ‘negativity’.

11

But there are so many other things you could do!!!

Things you don’t even know exist.

12

I realized reading through this it sounded snarky, which wasn’t my intent. Apologies

13

Wouldn’t your current skill-set translate into nursing? Even new-hire nurses I know in the Phoenix and Detroit areas make more and work less hours than I do. I’ve considered pursuing that avenue.

Can you imagine having to clean up the blood, vomit, and feces at your own house? I teach high school English, and I have to grade 165 papers every time I assign an essay. It takes at least five minutes to grade each paper, and that’s for kids who are good writers. Add in the other assessments I have to grade, and you start to the picture of how much work this is outside of school hours. History teachers aren’t at all immune to this; there is a huge push for writing across the curricula, and many history teachers I know hate their jobs now that they have to grade the same amount of essays as English teachers.

14

Just retired, and started late. If you are teaching in Illinois, you will pay (I can’t give you the percent because they are moving to a tier system) into the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) and you will probably lose all right to a Social Security pension and all right to draw on your spouse’s account, because your teacher pension will be too high for you to draw SS. You will no longer pay into SS. You will have kids you love, and kids you don’t particularly get along with who never seem to be absent, but you get that in any job.

You will have lots of meetings that have no point, and lots of busywork that has no rhyme nor reason to it, again like any job. What you will have that you don’t have from most other jobs is the knowledge that many parents and it seems like most of the public think you’re a slacker who is earning an exorbitant amount of money, who was too stupid to get a real job, who has a pension system that is bringing down the economy, who has decided on his/her own to teach evolution/not teach evolution or make the kids memorize math facts through drill and kill/ignore the basics of arithmetic or teach grammar which is now a useless skill and a waste of time/not teach grammar which will cripple the children as they try to write their college application essays, etc.

You will dread Sunday nights more now than you did as a kid, if you can believe it! And if you’re not feeling well you can’t just drift through the day like you did as a kid; every day you’re onstage and the star of the performance, but it will be great most days because there’s always a couple kids who can see something’s wrong and will ask if you’re okay, or want water, or just try to cheer you up.

Parents will believe everything their kids tell them about you. Kids lie a lot. It’s not a good combination.

I really, really miss 99% of the kids. They kept me young, and I enjoyed hearing what they were doing and reading and seeing. There are topics I miss teaching. I don’t miss lesson plans, faculty meetings, any other school meetings, parents, administrators, and most of the public comments about teachers I read in the paper.

15

I didn’t respond snarky though…I had the ‘well if a step up from cleaning puke for minimum wage’ is your dream job…go for it…but I didn’t press submit :smiley:

Seriously though…and I know this is going to sound very bad and assholish…

If you just want a job that pays a little below the median income of the area you live and college is tough and/or boring for you and you just want it easy and done with and you also kinda like kids…then get an education degree and teach.

If you actually LIKE college and/or want to make above median wage. DO NOT TEACH. You can find something better.

If you are smart, actually Love kids and want to make a difference in people’s lives…FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY – DO NOT GO INTO TEACHING! I beg of you…please don’t.

16

One more thing for any lurkers…

If you are young and going to college, want to teach and noone can talk you out of it…

DO NOT get an education degree. Get the ‘real’ degree.

For example, get a Math Bachelors and not a Education degree in Mathematics*.

Most people do not stay in teaching. Going to college to get an education degree means that you really only have a college education for teaching only. Industry will not consider you college educated for your degree. Math Ed does not mean you have a Math degree. Even a master’s in math ed is not considered equivalent to a bachelors degree in math.

Get the degree and also all the education courses you need. This means you meet all the requirements for the education department AND the department that holds your degree (like math).

  • If you respond with…“but then I have to take tough upper level math courses and that is hard”…or something like that…then forget what I said. Get your education degree and teach. You’ll fit right in.
17

Do.
Not.
Be.
A.
Teacher.
sincerely,

A Teacher

18

I agree. It’s my goal to eventually work at museum. But you don’t need a license for that.

19

[Waves at silenus, my only kindred spirit here**]

This almost feels like thread shitting, but I’ve been a teacher for ten years and I love, love, love my job more than anything save my husband and the baby I am carrying. I love my life. I can’t imagine being this happy doing anything else.

I teach AP English Language and AP Economics in an “urban” school: we are about 65% socio-economically disadvantaged, around 20% ESL. Compared to the suburbs we look “inner city”, but compared to the real “inner city” school in my district, we look pretty suburban.

My salary is about $50 a year. I probably add $10K or so to that with various stipends and incentive payments and pay for summer work (test writing) and such. It’s not great money, but in Texas it’s enough for my husband to stay home with the baby and for us to have a comfortable middle-middle class life.

I have NEVER felt disrespected. Now, part of that is that I have a fortunate combination of good people skills and a thick skin, so people tend to respect me anyway, and I am pretty good at overlooking lapses. I also respect what I do so much that I tend to assume others do to: they have to be pretty blatant about it before I notice otherwise. Another part of this is the school I work at. We have great parents and great faculty. There’s a strong tradition of mutual respect there.

Teaching is full of administrative bullshit, but what job isn’t? At work, I’ve managed to wrangle myself into set of classes and other campus roles that give me a fair bit of immunity from the worst type of crap and a fair bit of influence over the rest of it. This did not happen by accident: if you can’t handle office/interpersonal politics, teaching is probably not the career for you.

The thing about teaching is that it’s one of very few professions where the stronger your personality, the better off you are. It doesn’t even matter what type of personality: raging bitch, whacko-goofy, intimidating genius, sarcastic wise-guy, bitter old man–any of those work as long as you can keep it up every day. I don’t know of any other readily available profession where truly being yourself, as hard as you can, is an asset.

At the right school, teaching is an amazing opportunity to use all your creative and organizational skills every day. If you like to be in charge, if you like to build systems, teaching is awesome. If you like to get inside people’s heads, teaching is awesome.

The process of becoming a teacher varies tremendously by state. In Texas, you just need a BA and a teaching certificate, which you can earn at a community or a 4-year college in about a year. To teach at a junior college, you have to have a master’s degree. The pay, at least in Texas, is total crap because it’s all adjunct instructors: they make like $2k/class/semester.

Economics is an especially interesting choice. In states where it is a graduation requirement, economics is the red-headed step-child of the social studies department: no one wants to take it on. However, this is because no one understands it and it intimidates them (most HS social studies teachers were history majors, after all). So when you come in as an econ specialist, you are 1) filling a role no one else wanted and 2) seem like your really, really smart. But it’s like a fraud. High school econ–even AP level–is easy as shit to teach. It’s 10% of the work of AP English, both in planning and in grading. Hell, you can do almost everything with multiple choice. I have a very, very good pass rate on the AP test and people think that it’s really impressive because it’s in such a difficult subject. But it really isn’t that hard. Furthermore, teaching economics means dealing with seniors (dead easy) and it’s really simple to make it funny/relevant. You draw goofy ethnic sterotypes when discussing currency exchange; you do supply/demand of video games(or, hell, twinkies. They think twinkies are funny); you talk about fixed and variable costs in terms of condoms vs the pill. Economics is giving kids language to describe stuff they already knew about the world, and if you give them a chance at all, they will be fascinated.

This post is already way too long, and I doubt I answered all your questions–feel free to ask more. But I love teaching and I work with plenty of other people who love it too. And some who hate every minute of it. All I would say is that it’s a lot of fun for me, and that if you hate it one place, it’s worth trying a different school or district or subject.

20

I teach pre-kindergarten in a private school. The children come from a high-income area and the parents pay more for a year of their tuition than the cost of half my college education.

I love my work and my students. Truthfully, I don’t think I would be happy in anothet field.

However…

There have been months where a lost bus pass meant a month of walking 8 miles to work and eight miles home every school day. There have been weeks where I have eaten nothing but cabbage and eggs because there just wasn’t enough grocery money. I have no car and seven roommates, and I know how to remake thrift store clothes and sleep well on a floor out of past experience. Granted, that frugal living means there are savings in case of an emergency, but it tends to give you a very skewed perspective on money.

In short, it is a calling. If you are called to teaching, you will be fulfilled by it. If your calling is in early childhood education, you will have the thrill of seeing children read for the first time, but at the cost of forever being among the working poor.