What’s the REAL straight dope on being a teacher?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It seems there’s a broad spectrum of opinions out there on what it’s like to be a teacher. Both in person and on message boards, I often see/hear exchanges like this:

Person A: Man, those teachers have it so easy… come home at 3 every day, summers off, good salary, union protection so it doesn’t even matter if you’re incompetent, government pension, etc., etc.

Person B: You asinine, ignorant rube! Being a teacher is, without doubt, more difficult than all other professions put together, times ten thousand! Sure, classes end at three, but you have HOURS of grading and lesson plans to do EVERY day. Summers off? Fuhgedaboutit! Since teachers’ salaries are barely above minimum wage, you’re forced to spend the summer working 14 hours per day in a sweatshop just to make ends meet, and you’ll still barely be able to afford DOG FOOD for dinner! And with evil, education-hating politicians in power, neither our jobs nor our pensions are safe; etc., etc.

Now, my gut feeling is that both of these people are exaggerating. I know there are inner-city or otherwise poor districts where the pay is extremely low, but I also know that there are affluent suburban districts where the teachers are certainly not uncomfortable. My ex-girlfriend is in her 3rd year of teaching high school in a semi-urban New Jersey township. I happened to ‘bump’ into her on AIM a few weeks ago, and she mentioned having had a summer job. I asked her why, and she said “because teachers’ salaries don’t pay the rent during the summer.” I thought about asking her why she didn’t just plan her budget so that she had money saved up to pay the summer’s bills, but I thought better of it, realizing I’d probably just get a response like Person B’s above. She also told me that she bought a condo this year, using a fund set up for her at birth by her wealthy grandparents. She said her mortgage payment is lower than what her rent payment was when she was living in an apartment. So while this girl is not rolling in it by any means, she’s not starving either. And she loves her job.

Meanwhile, my aunt and uncle are friends with a couple who are both high school teachers in local suburban Philadelphia districts: he full-time, she part-time. They live in a nice house in what I would describe as a middle-class-bordering-on-upper-middle-class neighborhood, drive perfectly respectable, fairly new cars, and are raising three kids. And I know for a fact that they spend their summers doing absolutely nothing remotely related to earning money: last summer they took a trip or two, worked on the house, worked in their garden, etc.

Again, I know these experiences are less than typical. I know there are teachers who have it pretty rough. But the reason I’m asking this is that I am thinking about looking into teaching myself. I’m extremely dissatisfied with my tech job in the corporate world, and I think I’d rather do something that “makes a difference” (as much as I hate that phrase.) What I’m trying to find out is: what would my experience teaching be like? I went to an excellent public high school, long recognized as one of the best in the state, and graduated from a respected liberal arts college. One thing setting me back is that I don’t want to teach the subject I majored in: I majored in music, and I’d rather teach either English or math, so I know the first thing I’d have to do is take a few graduate classes. But assuming I put forth my best effort in graduate school, and take a few other steps to distinguish myself as a candidate–maybe attending conferences, volunteering, doing extra research-–could I expect to get a job in a relatively well-paying suburban school, or would I have to plan for the worst and assume I’d get stuck in some deprived inner-city or poor rural district?

And, ignoring the protestations of Person A and Person B–-recognizing that there exist both struggling teachers and comfortable teachers-–is there anything that can be said about what it’s like to be a teacher in general? Or are different teachers’ situations so disparate that, in a sense, both Person A and Person B are right?

(N.B.: I should mention that one reason I ask this question–-though not the main reason, more like the icing-on-the-cake reason–is that I’m an aspiring fiction writer, and having all of July and August off sounds like a good opportunity for working on novels I may otherwise never have the chance to write. Yes, I know some of you are laughing as you read that last sentence. Yes, I’ve seen Mr. Holland’s Opus, and I remember the phys. ed. teacher lauging at Mr. Holland when the latter said he thought teaching would give him free time to compose, and I remember that he wound up teaching summer school for the extra pay. But again, what I’m trying to find out is just how typical that experience is. Isn’t there at least a sliver of a chance that I would, like my aunt’s and uncle’s friends, literally and truly have summers off?)

2

No one set of experiences covers what it means to be a teacher. My brother got his first teaching job, out of college, in an inner city school. He took over a position that one previous teacher had left without warning, merely writing “I quit” on the blackboard. My brother toughed it out for a short time, then seriously began to doubt whether teaching was the profession he wanted to be in after all.

Fast forward to today. He’s been teaching in his current school for years, and couldn’t be happier. Different circumstances, different community, different kids, different values.

My wife is a teacher. She loves it. She sometimes doesn’t get home until nearly six o’clock, and then she has papers to grade, phone calls to make, lesson plans to do. Right now, she’s been working on her report cards since about 7:00. It’s 10:00 as I type this. It’s not a cushy job, even when you’re in a school where you fit in and feel comfortable.

As my wife says, in what other profession do you wake up at 2:30 in the morning worrying about someone else’s kid?

Sure, there are poor teachers. But there are poor cops, and rotten lawyers, and bad businessmen, and crooked mechanics. It’s the individuals, not the profession, so don’t mix them up.

I may be biased, having so many teachers in my family, and for friends. But I see them as dedicated professionals who honestly feel they MUST teach to be fulfilled. Teaching is not just what they do, it’s what they are.

I hope some other teachers and spouses of teachers respond. It’s not an easy profession (you try keeping 20 eight-year-olds in a straight line), and in many ways, the financial compensation doesn’t match the workload. Fortunately, people don’t go into teaching for the money. They usually do it for the love of the children.

3

It sounds like you live back east; it also sounds like you want to teach high school. If so, it takes more than a few graduate courses; you need a teaching credential or license (depending on state), which requires completion of a state-approved college teacher education program, and you need a minimum number of semester hours of instruction in your chosen subject. In New Jersey, that number is 30, and the courses “must be in a coherent sequence covering introductory through advanced level study.” I can’t tell how long it takes to complete the education program, but it looks to be between 2-4 years, and you need a 2.75 GPA to get in. Oh, and you need to take an exam. If it’s as easy as California’s, you’ll pass it with your eyes closed.

So we finally get to the good part: where’re you going to work? You send out applications, you wait for responses. Those well-paying suburban schools are getting applications from every student within driving distance of Tri-State, and they’ve been planning on careers in education since they were 12.

Unless you’ve got something really, really desirable (a 4.0 GPA, a British accent, compromising photos of the Superintendent), you’re working in Passaic.

4

I’ll throw some real numbers into the discussion.

I’m planning to teach.

I’m planning to teach music, actually. Here’s my view of teaching, only based on my recent four-year tenure at highschool, and getting along with most of my teachers:

In my school district, teachers made squat. Even if they’d been teaching in the district for a long time, they still didn’t make as much as say, my dad, who has a job in a factory (not putting down factory jobs, just making a comparison). The average teacher’s salary in my district is $45,018. Not terrible, and certainly not the lowest average in my state.

The highest paid teacher in my district makes $57,273. That’s the high end of the pay scale for teachers, right there. You get as much education as you want, you teach for fifty years, that’s how much you make. That’s the upper limit, unless you want an administration job. And who wouldn’t? Our highest paid administrator made almost quadruple that, and the next one down made almost twice that. Lowest paid full time teacher? $24,600. That’s all. Couple thousand bucks a month.

Of course, qualifications matter too…we had a first-year (both in our district and first year overall) teacher making almost $30,000. Depends how bad the district needs you. He was a music teacher, and we’d had one who’d been there about 17 years retire (his salary at retirement? $44,545.). We brought in a guy the next year who had been teaching for at least five years and paid him $38,063, which surprises me. Anyway, the parents and kids treated him like crap, so he left, and the administration got desparate and shelled out $30,000 for the new guy.

Anyway, like I said, I’m planning to be a music teacher. Upsides: almost a guaranteed job offer right out of college, especially coming from here, IU, one of the top music schools. Higher concentration of kids who actually want to be in my classes, as opposed to being forced by requirements. Little extra time required to grade papers, exams, etc.
Downsides: Much, much extra time required to hold after-school rehearsals, choose music, organize trips to competitions, etc.

Overall, I’m looking forward to it. I think society is beginning to see that teachers are a necessity, and that the old saying, “Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach,” is pure bs.

5

Since you’re looking for advice and anecdotal information, I’ll move this thread to IMHO.

6

It also depends on what you teach. Music, history, social studies, less pay. Math or science, more pay. If you can coach some sport, more pay.

Plus what you earn during the summer.

No offense, but lots of jobs require overtime. And the salaries mentioned in this thread are for nine months work per year.

If you are thinking of becoming a teacher, don’t worry about the academic requirements, which are time consuming but not intellectually demanding. If you want to teach math, you may be able to get some of the qualifying requirements waived.

MHO. I have an education degree. I don’t teach, and part of that was because I wanted to make more money.

FWIW.

Regards,
Shodan

7

I’ll tell you my experience here in central Illinois. I don’t claim to speak for anyone else, just my own experience.

First off, if there are teachers who get all summer off to eat bon-bons and play badminton, I never saw any. I never became an actual teacher - just got as far as student teaching, but everyone I talked to had to do something year round. Yes, you can budget your paycheck so you have twelve of them rather than nine, but that doesn’t produce any more income, just spreads it thinner. And for many teachers the income is thin enough already.

The “home at 3:00” thing is a myth as well. I was only student teaching, which meant I didn’t have to do faculty meetings, meet with parents, extra-curricular activities, etc, and I still was busy pretty much until 9:00 each night. I can’t imagine having that on top of all those other things.

I was training to be a Math teacher. I was required, in addition to my education classes, to take the following Math courses: Algebra, Trig, Calc 1, 2, 3, Statistics, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, Abstract Algebra, Geometry, and I’m sure I’m forgetting one or two of them. Of course, if you can tell me what the derivative of sin(x) is (or pick it out of a list of four choices) you have completed the Calculus portion of the Illinois test to certify teachers of math. That’s it. That’s the only Calc question, and that’s as tough as it gets.

I graduated Summa Cum Laude. My math professors told me I was too good at math to waste my time teaching high school. My education professors told me that math was a useless subject with no real value. I was also told that even though I was at the top of my class in an area where there is a pretty high demand for teachers, what I really needed to do was figure out what sport I wanted to coach, because that would really help me get a job.

Along the way, I found out this info: if your field is English, History, Social Studies, or the like, you’re in for a much tougher time for a job. There aren’t that many jobs and a lot of applicants, so you may not have a lot of choice about where you end up. For Math and Science it’s a bit better.

Since I was in Math, I imagined that I wouldn’t have to deal with anything controversial such as Science’s creation/evolution drama or English’s whole language/grammar debate. I was incredibly wrong. There’s a big controversy in Math education about constructivist vs. traditional learning. My college’s faculty was almost 100% constructivist. I was not. As a result, my ideas on education were happily ridiculed in front of my class, since I wasn’t following “the inevitable way of change”. (Many parents and educators are fighting constructivist math - it’s far from inevitable.) I’m willing to bet there are such controversies in every subject.

Then I got to do my student teaching assignment, and I hated it. Now I grant that I must have been high when I first decided to try teaching. I didn’t like high school kids when I was one, and don’t particularly like them any more now. I found it incredibly frustrating to even get them to sit down and shut up. I would have written this off to my own inexperience except that the other classes I observed were the same thing. Turns out that when you teach kids that they don’t ever have to do anything they don’t want to do, you can’t really complain when one of those things is “learn”. But that’s another story. The high school student is a being that already knows everything there is to know and has it all figured out. He is much smarter than everyone else in the world, so what can you possibly teach him that’s important? And these weren’t just the “bad” kids - they were worse.

(It didn’t help that the Columbine incident happened smack in the middle of my assignment.)

Meanwhile, the teacher I was working for told me he didn’t really care about teaching anymore and found it boring. He stuck with it because he liked coaching the softball team. That was pretty clear. At no point did anyone seem overly concerned about whether or not the students were learning any math.

By 2/3 of the way through my assignment I had had enough. I told my professors back at the university that I was ready to stop, that I had no intention of becoming a teacher, and it wasn’t fair to the students to have me up there anymore. They didn’t accept this, so I finished out the assignment. I am not a high school teacher now and have no plans to be. My students did have nice things to say about me, and a lot of them said I really helped them out, but I have my doubts about that.

I don’t present my experience as typical, just one more anecdote for the pile. I was not a good fit for a teacher. My experience confirmed many of my beliefs about education in America - we talk a lot about how important it is, but nobody really believes it. If we did, our schools would be much different. Math education in particular - everyone thinks it’s a very important subject - for someone else to know, but not them.

In addition, keep in mind that whatever your salary is, it’s not just buying them a music teacher. They also want a coach, counselor, psychologist, nurse, police officer, disciplinarian, secretary, caterer, usher, and janitor. I don’t want a child of my own, but I found myself in a position where I was expected to raise 150 other people’s kids. So I admit, I should never have pursued it in the first place.

There are many people who really enjoy it, and more power to them. There are many people who make me angry because they wear the t-shirts that say, “In 100 years it won’t matter what car I drive or what my salary was, blah blah blah” which pretty much lets us justify how crappy we pay, treat, and regard teachers. I’ve no doubt that the right people in the right place can do some amazing things, but I think those are few and far between.

I’m not trying to be Captain Downer on your teaching dream. Many people find it the most rewarding and satisfying thing ever. I can only share my experience - take it for what it’s worth.

8

I am a teacher, in the UK.

Um, I am not your average teacher! :confused:
I teach chess, computer games and roleplaying at a private school. :cool:
I have no standard teaching qualifications (although I am a National Chess Coach and have run chess teams and organised chess events.)

Haviing said all that I can offer some comments:

Please don’t become a teacher for the money, or the holidays. You must want to enjoy working with kids, and set yourself high standards (kids can smell weakness a mile away!).

I have faced situations like:

  • bullying
  • anorexia
  • kids devastated by a family death
  • dsylexia
  • kids who lie about you to their parents
  • parents who refuse to listen to your side of things

Fortunately there is strong support from the other staff and my Headmaster to help me cope with all the above.

I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living (but my hair has gone grey prematurely!).
One of my best moments:

A severely dyslexic pupil is in the computer centre, using spellcheck to spot his multitudinous errors in a long essay. I am entitled to knock off at 21.30 (it’s a boarding school).
He’s working flat out, and I can see this will take him 2-3 times longer than a pupil without such a learning difficulty.

At 21.30, he asks if he can keep going.
He’s obviously grimly determined to finish, so I agree and get a book to read (and clear it with his Housemaster).
By 23.00 he’s done and thanks me politely.
I go home feeling like I’ve won the lottery.

As for:

Person A: Man, those teachers have it so easy… come home at 3 every day, summers off, good salary, union protection so it doesn’t even matter if you’re incompetent, government pension, etc., etc.

Person B: You asinine, ignorant rube! Being a teacher is, without doubt, more difficult than all other professions put together, times ten thousand! Sure, classes end at three, but you have HOURS of grading and lesson plans to do EVERY day. Summers off? Fuhgedaboutit! Since teachers’ salaries are barely above minimum wage, you’re forced to spend the summer working 14 hours per day in a sweatshop just to make ends meet, and you’ll still barely be able to afford DOG FOOD for dinner! And with evil, education-hating politicians in power, neither our jobs nor our pensions are safe;

these are both just ignorant stereotyping.:smack:

9

My Uncle was a teacher in a California public school.

One of his HS students beat him so severely, he wound up in surgery. He got early disability retirement.

If you want to teach in America today, you are out of your mind.

Get your degree in Accounting, instead, Arcite.

10

Another teacher from the UK here… though with a twist - I’m American.

I absolutely love teaching. I’ve been tutoring and teaching since I was a wee lass - was always helping anyone in school who needed it. Even started a program to introduce Spanish to elementary kids when I was 16 in which their year end project was to do a play entirely in Spanish for the whole school… Taught Spanish at community college, tutored several subjects such as marine biology, maths, anthropology, economics… You name it and I was willing to tutor it. Loved it.

Figured ‘why not get into it here in the UK as well’…

This is not the Pit, so shall keep this tame… It’s driving me nuts!!!

Granted, I run a special program in a struggling school that is doubtful to pass its HMI next week…

I am responsible for monitoring the attendance of the entire set of years 7 and 10 - about 200 students. If there are attendance issues I have to raise concerns with the Educational Welfare Officers during our weekly meeting - after school. If they meet criteria they can join my program that gets them into a small group for more individualised instruction - of which I teach. I am responsible for covering every single subject at each child’s level. My class currently contains years 10 and 11 (not supposed to have year 11 but…).

Hey, I’m always up for a challenge, but guess what?

I have absolutely NO curriculum!!!

Not a bloody clue what I am supposed to teach these kids. Colleagues have been unprofessional by not responding to multiple requests for work. They won’t even tell me when I can chat with them to find out about what I should be teaching. As it stands I only have 4 English, 5 science and 5 maths books for my students - which is good as a full curriculum for them includes: English, maths, science, resistant materials, food science, geography, history, sports studies, drama, citizenship, religious education, art and now… leisure and tourism. Go bloody figure.

Then there is management… Well, if you want to call it that. In accepting employment part of it was they were to secure my UK teaching credential for me and provide me with full-time work - this was in July. As of today, neither criterion has been met - they have yet to even phone about my credential. Both the deputy head and headmaster are aware I have no curriculum but are not bothered by this. I’m told to “do what I can”.

My project supervisor is a couple cans short of a 6-pack. Has her fingers in so many projects she is never sure what she has said to whom and literally hollers at you for her miscommunications. She goes behind people’s backs to sabotage projects and promotions. And in relation to all my family health problems of late, told me that I “obviously worship the wrong god.”
So, what is the straight-dope on teaching??

Know what you are getting yourself into. Do your homework (;)) about the school and what it can realistically offer you professionally. Please don’t do it just because you (supposedly) get all these great holidays and time off, and great pay and all the bs people spout about it. That is what it is unfortunately… bs. It is a lot of hard work. Emotionally and physically taxing. Lots more to it than many people think.

Washte

p.s. - Sorry for the rant.

11

The straight dope on being a teacher varies from state to state and school district to school district. I can only tell you about my mother’s experiences in a public school in western Kentucky.

First off, in Kentucky you must either already have or be working on your Masters to even get a job, and you must have completed that degree within a set amount of time (it used to be 5 years, but I’m not sure if that’s changed). Secondly, in Kentucky you have to deal with the utter idiocy and mountains of paperwork that come with KERA (the Kentucky Education Reform Act, passed just before I graduated). Basically, it’s a system of giving or withholding funding based on how much your test scores have improved in a certain time frame. Schools that were horrible before only have to get their kids up to mediocre in order to be lavished with monetary rewards, whereas schools that already had really high scores are punished for not being able to bring their scores even higher.

That’s just the statewide standards.

Mom’s school district has one of the lowest teacher pay rates in the state. She has a Masters degree and thirty years of experience, and she makes a little under $40,000 a year. She gets to school before 7am (6:30 on the days she has bus duty), teaches from 7:50 to 2:30 with a 22 minute lunch break, a ten minute recess (on days she doesn’t have playground duty or kids who have to stay in for punishment), and sometimes a 25 minute break for music, library, or PE sessions. On afternoons she doesn’t have bus duty she has parent conference, planning sessions with other teachers, or tutoring sessions until 3.

This is all before she grades papers, makes out tests, writes out lesson plans, puts up bulletin boards, works at the fall festival and bake sales, or attends PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences. This is also before she takes part in the Site Based Decision Making Council, which deals with everything from curriculum alignment to budget allocation to hiring new staff. I have NEVER known my mother to leave the building before 5pm, except on Fridays when she sometimes slips out as early as 4.

She deals with kids who are abused, neglected, surly, lazy, violent, apathetic, or just plain insolent on a daily basis. They have some of the highest test scores in the state, but since they aren’t improving enough the school is always on the verge of being declared “in crisis”. She has parents condoning their children’s lazy, disrespectful, or violent behavior. She’s had more than one parent threaten her with bodily harm.

The last few years she’s done after-school tutoring and summer school to earn extra money, and she is now the ESS director, which bumps her salary up some but takes an average of 15-20 hours of extra work a week.

There are only two reasons she stays: she and Dad can’t afford for her to retire, and the kids need her.

That, my friend, is the Straight Dope about being a teacher, at least in that school system.

12

Along with the summers off, teachers (at least in MI) have excellent medical benefits.
One thought, to those thinking about teaching ( and I don’t know if this is the same everywhere.) In Michigan, whatever school (or district) you pick, that is the one you are in for life. If you make tenure, then your school goes to shit or you move and it isn’t close anymore, and you decide to go to another school to work *you lose all the years * you were at that school and have to start all over.

Pretty friggin’ stupid, if you ask me.

Just relaying the rant from the teachers I know.

13

One more thing. In some districts, those three months during the summer, you aren’t just not getting a check, you’re unemployed. Your contract ends and to teach again in the Fall you hope it’s picked up again. It usually is, but not necessarily. Sometimes the school waits until the day before the school year starts to let teachers know their contract has been picked up and they’re teaching that year.

14

Oh dear. Panic is starting to set in! Well, “panic” is an exaggeration, but I am getting nervous. Not that I wasn’t to begin with.

I’m almost 24 (took a couple years off) and am in a Bachelor’s/Master’s program that I’ll finish in two and a half years. I’m majoring in English and double minoring in secondary education and psychology: Depending upon the district & my educational history, I might be able to teach electives (i.e. public speaking) along with “regular” English classes.

All of the teachers I’ve met thus far (including my cousin) really do enjoy their work (or have been lying to me :)), but this thread seems to be veering in the “For the love of all that is holy, don’t teach!” direction. It’s not swaying me, but it does add to the nerves. I’m lucky, though, in that I’m really convinced that teaching is for me - I really do think that I can be an effective educator.

Well, either lucky, or in need of the men in the white coats. I s’pose it depends upon one’s view. :wink:

15

My mom does love her job most days, but some years she has a lot of really bad kids, a jerky principal, and assholish parents as far as the eye can see. She really does care about her kids, and she does the best she can for them.

Not all school systems, and not all grade levels, are like Mom’s experience. It really just depends on where and what you’re teaching.

I do think that one incident from my childhood is very telling, though. When I was about six I announced I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, and Mom just looked at me a moment and then said very quietly, “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.”

16

Terrific - thanks for that encouraging childhood anecdote, CrazyCatLady. :wink:

17

I don’t want to discourage anyone from teaching. By god we need all the good teachers we can get. If you can and will do it, more power to you.

I just think that people need to know what they’re getting into. I liken it to the military - for some people it’s a great job that they love and do well in, but it’s not for everyone, and it’s something you need to be certain of before you do it.

What I wish I had been told as I went along was how little the actual teaching seemed to matter. Here I was, thinking, look, I’m really in this for the teaching. I want to teach some kids math, maybe help them not hate it as much. What I found (in my own addmittedly limited experience) was that this was naive. In fact, one of the teachers I worked with told me, “If you’re in this because you like teaching, you should reconsider. The teaching isn’t even high enough to be considered secondary.” That spooked me, but it’s what I saw for myself.

I should add that I was in a small school in rural Illinois. Not urban, but not suburbs either.

18

Background: My mother recently retired from teacing elementary school.

Yes, teachers spend a short portion of the day actually “at work”. But then, consider: No coffee breaks. No bathroom breaks. Maybe not even a lunch break. You’ll notice that you don’t see any teachers posting here from work? Teachers also need to be able to deal with situations of a sort which just don’t arise, in most professions. Have you ever had to stop an attempted rape, without hitting the perp? My mom has… As a second-grade teacher. Bomb threat at the school? Guess who has to go in and look for an “unfamiliar lunchbox”. Hint: It’s not the police bomb squad. Yup, Mom’s had to do that, too. Death threats from parents? She’s been there, done that.

Of course, a lot of this will depend on the district, and Cleveeland Public far from being the best in the country. There are places where the situation is much better. But there are also places where it is worse.

19

One thing that I’ve found to be the best indicator of your teaching experience is the principal of the school you’re working in. Examples (which I may have used in another thread but am too considerate of the hamsters to look for):

A. My student teaching. The principal was admittedly only working so he could pad out his retirement. He rarely left his office. I saw him maybe twice the whole seven months I was there.

Result? The kids were wild (fortunately I was teaching Honors so I didn’t get the real demon kids), fights were common, weapons were brought to school (more than once), and I had to walk through a cloud of pepper spray my last day there. The administration frequently lied to the students, like the time they called a “fire drill” for a bomb threat. A twenty-minute fire drill. The kids all knew why they were hanging around outside, but the administration would never admit it.

And the teachers? Embittered, grumpy, and most of them were trying to get into the new school being built in the district because one of the few competent principals in the county was working there. I’d also like to point out that this particular county relied far too heavily on the university’s education program for backup and boy did it show.

B. My substitute teaching now. The principals at the schools I’m working at are competent and determined (wo)men. Discipline problems are dealt with swiftly, teachers are backed up in their decisions, and most of the people I’ve encoutered there are happy where they are. Heck, yesterday a kid brought a gun to the school where I was working and some of his peers turned him in. Today the principal sent out a letter to every student thanking them for their actions and told them everything about the situation except the name of the student. Would that have happened at the Student Teaching School? Hayul no. Did the kids appreciated it? Heck yeah. Will they do it again (turn in kids with guns)? You betcha.

I would work at the schools I’m subbing at now in a second. The county where I did my student teaching is at the bottom of my list, right next to Mecklenburg County.

Also, you may not be hired right out of college despite the lack of teachers. I wasn’t. But subbing is a valuable experience as well and teaches you how to cope with kids when they’re being Little Bastards. I’ll be a better teacher because I’m subbing now.

The pay? It’s better than sub pay. I get $75 a day. I get $25 more than other people because I have a teaching license. Still, it’s not the highest pay in the world as you can see from this link to the NC salary schedule: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/salary_admin/SalSched02-03.pdf

I want to teach because I want to help the kids get ahead. That’s the best reason to do it, actually.

20

Thanks for the responses. As I feared, there’s been a lot of Person B talk. Is it really that bad? I KNOW there are teachers who take summers off. My dad’s cousin’s husband just left a 20-year stint with AT&T to become a high school math teacher. He didn’t need to become certified first. Last I heard, he was planning not to work over the summer. Granted, it’s possible he’s got a little nest egg from his years at AT&T, but I wouldn’t think it’s huge; he was an electrical engineer, not a manager.

Also I don’t want to impugn anyone’s credentials, but is it possible that many of those with negative attitudes about teaching have those attitudes because teaching is the only, or the primary, field they know? I’ve only ever worked in the IT field, and I have nothing but bad things to say about it. Isn’t every job like that? Don’t we always think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence? Is it possible that most of the vociferous complaints about teaching are really just the universal “my job’s a pain” gripes? For this reason, I wondered if I’d hear from anyone who got into teaching as a second career, as opposed to those who went into it straight out of college.