Well…I did have teachers when I was younger so I did get to see them in action.
Well, I did put it in the form of questions. What criteria are we measuring the “hardness” of the jobs here?
-intellectual difficulty
-physical demands
-work/life balance
-leadership requirements
-repetition and tedium
-competitiveness
-internal politics
Honestly, I am wondering if you are trying to be funny, or straight up. Which is it? Are you suggesting that you understand the job of the teacher because you went to school?
I’m not going to rehash all of the information that other posters have shared in the thread. I don’t know if competitiveness has been addressed, so I’ll take a stab. Schools are highly political places. You usually have veterans, who expect to be deferred to, who might hold on to outdated pedagogical practices… but they also know the school and community inside and out, and can be wonderful mentors to new folks. There’s the dead wood, the people who are waiting until retirement comes, who bitch and moan about the kids all day. That’s just two archetypes. Everyone you might imagine in any other walk of life. You have to share a lounge, work in departmental teams, and plan together. Have fun!
Schools have a pecking order, and sometimes it’s based on competence. Sometimes it’s based on who’s been around the longest. Sometimes it’s based on who’s sleeping with whom. Pretty political. One of the issues I had to help new teachers understand that no matter what their regard for institutional politics, they were going to have to play the game and play it well to be a truly effective teacher. You can’t help your kids if you have no credibility among your fellow teachers, or you’re thought of as having your head in the clouds. You might need to call in a favor for a student, for instance. Teachers can be very territorial, and you have to be able to deal with your colleagues’ poor teaching or poor classroom management and at the same time not piss them off. Sometimes you’re the one who’s the poor teacher and poor manager.
Because the teaching career ladder is fairly flat, leadership among teachers doesn’t necessarily come with a title. You have to work hard to gain credibility without being able to ever say, “Because I said so and I outrank you.” So I would submit that leadership in the teacher ranks, especially if we exclude administrative roles, is exceedingly difficult.
Plenty of people with teaching experience have opined, so I’m sure there will be more responses to your post.
I’ve never done those jobs. As far as how difficult it is…that’s really hard to answer. Some people are naturally good at teaching. Some people like me worked their asses off to learn the art and science of it. Both groups, I imagine, have to work hard. And yet…I don’t feel like I “work hard.” I do a LOT of work, and I do it for many hours a week…but I don’t think it’s hard. But I’ve been doing it a while, so I know how to do it.
I’m 37. I make $50,000 a year. I have a Master’s degree. I’ve been teaching 13 years. I’m trusted to do the most important job for people’s children.
I’ve a good degree from a top college with a 3.5 average 
One thing I’ll make clear: I don’t do anything for anyone other than myself. I’m not an altruist. I expect and receive a pay check. I’d like to meet a teacher who does it “for the kids” and for no other reason. [lol…reminds me of that scene in School of Rock where he says that he’s pretty sure he’s touched all the kids.] Now, it just so happens that what I like to do is teach kids. I also want the kids to be the best they can be. I want it as much as their parents. I also care that I’m the best teacher I can be. And I absolutely am head over heels in love with my job…I have the best teaching job in the US.
It’s much, much, much easier. On so many levels. I’m much better at assessing what each student needs. I’m better at predicting (guessing?) what works. Really, shouldn’t any job get easier with experience? By experience, I mean making mistakes
I’m starting to get concerned about your wanting to know if it’s easy or not.
I think that’s irrelevant. A person should do what he loves. I love to teach, so I love my job. As I mentioned before, it’s not that it’s “difficult.” It’s quite a bit of work, and sometimes for long stretches, but is any job that is loved “difficult”?
I suppose difficult might also be separated into physical/manual labor vs. mostly brain work. My job isn’t physically demanding, but the mental load is a LOT. It also has an emotional load. But demanding isn’t the same as difficult.
I would recommend anyone wanting to chose any job look at what he or she loves to do. Whether someone thinks teaching is “difficult” or not is NOT making a good choice to go into teaching. Probably a very bad choice and anyone using that as a factor would be discouraged by me.
You know, my mother was a primary school teacher for 40 years. She never worked on weekends, never worked late except a few days whenreport cards rolled around. Got awards for excellence too.
Some people are more time efficient than others.
I don’t know why you added that last sentence. Are you insinuating that teachers who work pre- and after-school programs are less efficient?
Did your mother even work at a school that had extended day programs? Or Saturday school?
Was she teaching during a time of high-stakes testing?
It stands to reason that someone in the game for 40 years would be able to do things more efficiently. But the majority of teachers aren’t 40 year veterans. Furthermore, teaching in communities where there are fewer college-educated parents and lower income levels often translates to teachers having to assist kids and families with enrichment activities that better educated and wealthier families take for granted. If both parents work - or a lot of kids come from single-parent homes where the parent works many hours, the only shot that kid has at breaking out of the cycle of poverty is taking advantage of the extra enrichment in extended day programs - field trips, remediation, test preparation. I don’t know how it is in Canada, or in Scotland where the OP is, but most teachers I know in the U.S. don’t have recess and can’t take field trips. Again, if you know the parents can take up the slack in those areas, no problem. But that isn’t the case everywhere.
My school had almost half, if not more, of the kids in these programs. My friends who teach in suburban districts often don’t even have extended day programs. Some might sponsor clubs or teams (I did both as well).
Oh, and I won awards too.
They have pre and after school programs until midnight? Because that’s what someone was claiming. How late do your schools keep nine-year-olds?
Of course, circumstances will differ from place to place, job to job, and school to school. But we always have this same discussion every time this subject comes up; someone asks “should we pay teachers more” and the response is generally “Lord, yes, much more! They work so hard!”
So what?
Everyone works hard. The guy who’s busting his ass driving a cab twelve hours a day works a horrible, exhausting job and gets paid crap, why shouldn’t he get paid more? Tell me why teachers deserve a raise but cab drivers don’t. People who do payroll do a thankless job that always, always, ALWAYS takes much longer than the 40 hour work week they get paid for. Why shouldn’t payroll clerks get paid more? I’ve been in hundreds of factories and I’ll tell you right now that’s shitty, nasty work in some of those places, but where is the hue and cry to pay welders more? Why do teachers deserve raises, but environmental site assessors don’t?
If a jurisdiction has enough qualified teachers then no, they should not pay them more. (I’m not talking about appropriate cost of living increases here.) If the jurisdiction doesn’t have enough qualified teachers then clearly the pay, benefits and/or working conditions must be improved. It’s supply and demand, like anything else.
Someone claimed there were pre-/after-school programs 'til midnight? In this thread? Where? Our program was 1 hour before school and 90 minutes after. Saturday school was 8-12:30 pm.
And why is it an either/or with your requests for increases for the jobs you listed? Is it possible that all of those professions deserve more pay?
The places I’ve been discussing, underresourced urban and rural schools, are places where there are teacher shortages. The profession is aging and there is not a sizable number of new teachers entering the field - and remaining in the field.
It isn’t my intention to get in a pissing match with other professions. The OP asked if teachers should get paid more, and most of us seem to think so.
And I have been sick, gone to the doctor and seen him in action. Want me to come and diagnose you next time you are poorly?
No job is really ‘easy’ teaching included.
Apart from many of the reasons mentioned in this thread one we come up against all the time is “when I was at school…” We may be introducing a new spelling programme or grouping the children in a certain way, increasing the amount of time for Physical Education or using a new reading scheme, reducing the amount of homework for First Graders; all based on recent research, all in the best interests of our students and what do we hear? We hear “Well, we never did it that way when I was at school.”
So, we have extensive meetings with parents after school to go over the research and explain how we now know more about how children learn and how we can better enable our students to achieve their full potential and while some people get it, there are still those who hang onto “when I was at school…” as if it is some kind of useful mantra.
Would they go to the doctor and say “No, I don’t want that fancy new cancer treatment, I want the one they used years ago when I was a child”? Or even to their mechanic and say, “Yes, please fix the car but don’t use any of those new-fangled parts”? I sincerely doubt it, but because they were once at school they are educational experts. Aaaargh. Sorry, rant over.
In response to the OP, yes it is a difficult job, you have to plan for a variety of abilities within your class, you have to deal with behaviour problems, home problems, parents. You have to satisfy your students, admin and government inspectors. Some days you can’t go to the toilet when you need to because it would mean leaving the children unsupervised. But it is the best job in the world, because whatever crap is hitting you, each day you will see a child learn something new, gain confidence and take a step further in their life of learning. Yes all my time with the students is spent teaching, I use my own time for mounting work, putting up displays, correcting workbooks, planning lessons, etc. I wish I was paid more and I do love my summer holidays. People who complain about teachers having summers off should become teachers so they can have the summer off!
Every single day is different and unpredicatable, and I take great joy in that.
Of course, it’s possible at any given time that someone should be paid more.
My point is that the “Teachers should be paid more” response isn’t something most people have actually put any thought into, it’s a reflex. I’ve met people who said teachers should be paid more who didn’t even know what teachers were paid. Perhaps some teachers should be paid more. Perhaps some should not. It depends on the local circumstances and what’s specifically needed.
I’m a teacher, and of course I would like to make more money. And there are certainly places where teachers are horrifically underpaid, though what we make in Dallas is really ok. Not great, but ok. That said, one of the biggest problems with the knee-jerk 'teachers don’t get paid enough" meme is that it is keeping good people out of teaching. I work in an “urban” district, 70% of our kids are on free or reduced lunch, and many of my kids reject teaching out of hand because all they’ve ever heard is that it doesn’t pay well. So they think, and I am not exaggerating here, that I make 18-20K a year, tops, when a first year teacher makes twice that (which is middle-middle class here in Texas). My kids are poor, and they don’t know it’s hyperbole when people say teachers are paid crap, so they never even consider the profession.
As far as comparing it to other jobs—comparisons are odious. Teaching can be a job, where you either do a workman-like job of it or a half-assed job. It can also be a vocation, where you identify as a “teacher” before you identify as “mom” or “husband” or any other label. I put an insane amount of time into teaching–not just lesson planning and essay grading and summer training, but going to football games and orchestra concerts and after school hearts games and academic competitions and reading college essays and nagging people to get their FAFSA in. I honestly have no idea where, in that, work stops and the hobby begins–I just know I am generally having a good time.
Like any job, it does get easier over time, but there are also times where it becomes very difficult all over again–I had my best kid get arrested in a stupid prank last year the same month he found out his mom was dying. I can’t even tell you how much time getting that straightened out took, and that’s one of those 'is this part of my job or part of my hobby" issues.
There are days when I leave work feeling like I’ve been beat with a stick all day. There are other days when it’s pure joy all the way through.
Fair enough. In my experience, I’ve not run into teachers that live lives of luxury - the ones that are fairly well-off are usually married to well-to-do spouses. Typically, when one has a college degree and plies their trade well for a few decades, they are living quite well. I can’t think of one teacher that I’ve known that I would stop and say, “Wow, they’re rich.” Unless they leave teaching for administration. But then administrators tend to administrate, and do little teaching. So another talented teacher (if they were in the first place) is out of the profession, so to speak.
The step ladder in my district was pretty decent after 10 years or so. But the problem is that a lot of the people whom we need in classrooms desperately - men, people of color, mathematicians, and scientists - often have considerable debt when they leave college and/or have more lucrative offers available after college (specifically, men). Teaching is what David Tyack refers to as a feminized profession, which means historically the low pay and poor working conditions are directly a result of the fact that the job is considered “women’s work.” I am a man of color and there were 2 other men of color who were certified teachers - not coaches or administrators - in a faculty of about 80. There were two White men teachers as well.
Again, I’ve never known a single public school teacher who I’d say was financially well-off after a few years teaching, and doing well at it. I can do this quite easily for lawyers, engineers, doctors, consultants, accountants, and CPAs.
First year teacher chiming in here. I feel in my location I should get paid more. Housing costs are high, and it is a well known statistic that most teachers in community have another part time job. I have a part time job as well. I don’t think the administration is respecting our profession when pay is low enough for us to need two jobs.
I don’t think of my job as a job so much as I enjoy working with kids. But at the same time it is lots of work. In fact once I’ve finished posting I’ll be heading into school on a Sunday to prepare for the last 10 weeks of the year. My last school week I worked about 50 hours in and out of school. This is not an easy job, and there are reasons why we and the students need all the extra time off.
Here’s what I always say about 5 year olds: “They look human, but it’s just a disguise.”
I’ve taught, mostly science, to elementary school kids for 17 years, on and off. Teaching is a tough gig. But would everyone who thinks their job is really easy, or that they’re paid what they’re worth please raise their hands?
Anyone?
Anyone?
Since my wife is retiring in two months after 37 years of teaching, we’ve had a lot of conversations like this over the past few weeks.
She spent a lot of her career teaching middle-school kids (ages 12-14). This is supposed to be the nightmare group for all teachers, but she liked them. Compared to that, teaching elementary-school age kids was easy.
What she liked: well, she liked teaching. She liked showing someone how to do something and making it stick.
What she didn’t like: Number one on her list would be paperwork. Teachers face loads of paperwork. She taught special ed, so she often would be faced with three reports for every student – one form for the district, one for the state, and one for whatever federal program the student was being taught under. Reports, forms, evaluations, etc. can be all consuming. That’s why the teachers in this thread argue that there’s no such thing as an 8-hour day or a 5-day week when you’re a teacher. You sure aren’t going to get the paperwork done during class time.
Is it “difficult”? It’s a high-stress job. There are a lot of high-stress jobs. Some of them, like medicine and fire-fighting, get a lot of validation by society. That helps makes the stress easier to deal with. Teaching? Maybe not so much validation by those who don’t teach.
Does she get summers off? Not really. She has two masters degrees, but spent most of her summers either going back to school for additional courses (her employer paid for the courses, but not for her time) or teaching summer school. The last time she took summer “off” was in 2002. She had a knee replaced and was still in a wheelchair when classes started again in September. Not exactly the fun-in-the-summer schedule non-teachers imagine.
Is lesson-planning still difficult? Not as hard as it once was. But, as noted above, students change, curricula change and she pretty much has to start from scratch each year. Yes, with all her experience she can do it faster and better, but it still has to be done pretty much from scratch each year.
Is she overpaid or underpaid? That depends on how you want to look at it. In the field of “social services” she definitely is paid better than some other time-consuming, high-stress jobs like social worker. However, when you start breaking it down per hour, adding in all the nights, weekends and summers where she’s doing work that has to be done, it’s not all that much on a per-hour basis. And she didn’t get to the top of the salary scale until she’d taught with one district for 20 years. Before that, the pay was pretty bad. After that, the salary didn’t keep up with inflation.
As a student you saw only the most enjoyable part of a teacher’s work – what goes on in a classroom. That doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. Not only does the teacher have to be a good teacher, she or he has to prove you’re a good teacher too. He has to account for everything that is being done in the classroom for every student every day. In some school systems, parents have to be notified every three weeks on the progress each student is making. Lesson plans ideally should be individualized for each student.
Then there are endless forms to fill out for the office regarding your certification, racial data on your students, student addresses – it’s a new form everyday. Once I had nine forms due at the same time. There are lunch tickets to pass out, doughnuts to sell, hallpasses to write, absences to report, absence notes to write, homework assignments to makeup, committees to work on, tickets to sell, schedules to make out, questions to answer, field trips to plan, book money to collect, on and on and on. It does not end.
It is a very stressful job. There is a reason for teacher burnout. On the otherhand, teaching is never boring.
I taught in secondary schools. During my career I had to
Stand in a puddle of urine at the back of the football field to sell tickets at night. (I was told to hand over the money if anyone “demanded” it.
Take a knife away from a student.
Take a used condom off the outside doorknob of my classroom
Talk a gay student out of suicide.
See two students removed for having loaded weapons in my room.
Survive being beaten up by trespassers.
Give a final exam to a student in labor.
Endure rocks thrown at me by a student with no consequence to her.
Love too many students that died.