What's teaching like?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m finishing up on the final year of my degree, which means that at some point in the next year, I’m going to have to enter the Real World™. After looking through page after page of jobs that are going in the IT industry, still nothing has struck me as something I’d love to do – my talents lie in coding, and there’s no way I want to be doing that for the rest of my life (sorry to any coders out there, but I once stayed up until 4am debugging some code when all I’d done was miss a ; out. No thanks!)

The Government here in the UK is running endless bloody adverts about teaching. The short of it is, that I’m pretty good at explaining stuff (although strangely, I’m finding explaining my situation in this post quite awkward.) So… teaching is an option that I’m interested in looking at.

The information that is available on Teach.gov.uk is comprehensive about the technical parts – application and so on, but when it comes to actual teacher testimonials, things are a little more flaky:

It’s nice, but it’s, let’s face it, slightly patronising. While I’d love to think that every day is as the adverts promise – endless laughs, kids smiling and being ridiculously cheerful – 14 years in the education system has taught me that classes are more like kids borrowing cigarettes, stealing each other’s pens and taking the piss out of the teacher. This is inaccurate to a point; there are many good students, and some teachers are engaging enough to make you care, whatever the material they are teaching, and there are some classes where people pay attention.

I’d love to hear some real comments from those who have been at either side of the classroom. Is there any hope for a teacher who’d describe themselves as “normal”? What are the students really like on a day to day basis? In fairness, the students are the one thing that worry me slightly. I’ve seen some merciless little bastards, and once a teacher has shown a weakness, it can get nasty.

I’ve rambled on far too much here, for what can simply be summarised as, “what’s it like being a teacher?”

I thank you in advance.

2

I like it a lot. That being said (like most jobs) the first few years are the roughest. You will make rookie mistakes and spend lots of time working on your technique. Many people run screaming from teaching after a rather short time.

It is a job, plenty of hard work and office politics.

The pleasure comes from being in front of a class and getting your point across. I would point out that speaking in front of a group is the number one fear amongst civilians. Do you suffer from this in any way?

In any case, most people are not cut out to do it. Perhaps there is a student-teaching scheme you could try for a few weeks to see how it fits.

3

Experiences vary not only from school to school, but from country to country.

I taught in America and adored my students and the thrill of teaching itself. But demands outside the classroom were overwhelming and eventually hampered my ability to be six people at once.

When it is good, it is very, very good.

4

I agree with Zoe. Last year I had the sweetest class…they were positive about school…nice kids…I could honestly say I liked most of them. And most of them were decent readers. I had fun teaching them.
Now…this year. It started out that I had 17 or 18 students…I teach fifth grade. I could tell early on I had one really difficult, troubled boy and a lot of other “runners-up”.Then, because of numbers, our school lost 2 upper-grade teachers…they split up some classes and gave me 7 new students. 7 new students four weeks into the school year. Now the principal said they would be careful to distribute the students so no one student would get all the behavior problems. (Ha)
For me, it was “out of the frying pan–into the fire”.
1/3 of my class is ESL, Learning Disabled. I’ve got about 5 or 6 major behavior problems. Then, I have the ones who somehow made it to fifth grade…are not in special ed, but are a good two years behind in reading.
I worry about these guys because they aren’t going to make it in life…I can see them in their 20’s still living with their parents, smoking dope, and slacking off.
I also worry that they are going to make me look bad with the standardized “High stakes” testing. See that’s another issue…you can get a low class…and do whatever you can with them…try and get them to learn something but your best isn’t good enough…if they don’t do well on the test. Then the school gets in trouble.
So…there’s the “dumping” of the troublemakers in one class; there’s the “high stakes testing” If you’re ok with this, man, you really want to teach…go for it.
Also…more food for thought…they are recruiting teachers…Do you think they want the recruits for the nice, middle class schools where the kids have college educated parents who care how they do in school?
Sorry I’m so burned out. :rolleyes:

5

More than to a point - the fact you have said this gives me great cause for concern in you considering teaching as a profession.

I’ve taught for 30 years now and love it. I can’t think of anything I wish I had given my life to but that. Although I am now writing and presenting more and classroom teaching less, I consider that just teaching in a wider classroom.

I didn’t find the quote from Helen Reynolds patronising at all. It sounded like a great teacher being able to acknowledge that something the student had introduced into the class had gone beyond her expectations. Kids LOVE it when that happens - when a teacher is confident enough to acknowledge they aren’t God’s-gift to all learning, it can lead to even better teaching of the topic involved because the kids are engaged and feel some ownership. That student went to the effort to contribute to the class. Helen not only acknowledged it but allowed the student to surprise her and then she drew on that for her teaching of the topic. Wonderful.

I am concerned about someone considering going into teaching who dosn’t feel very positive about the kids and the excitement of learning - both theirs and that of the student. The thing I love most about teaching is that I am always learning. Your description of classes doesn’t match my experience at all - but then I enjoy and respect my students. Kids are far less likely to muck about for teachers who they feel genuinely like them. For me - that has to be the very first reason you choose to teach - because you want to be with kids and enhance their learning - not because you want a job and have the skills to convey the curriculum content. That is a crucial, but far from exhaustive, part of teaching.

The classroom is the really great part of teaching. Then there’s the meetings, reports, record keeping, regulations, political correctness, more paperwork more meetings … yuk! The students are what makes it all worth it.

I have taught IT, physics and mathematics to a wide range of kids - age and ability. The main reason I can’t think of any better career is that it is never boring. But it is never boring BECAUSE it matters to you what your students gain. It is not rewarding if you are going into it for the fact you need a job or that you can explain well.

Every day and every minute can be the minute that suddenly something mind boggling happens. Every minute you might turn a kid on to something and change their lives. I was turned on to physics by a tiny event in a classroom when the teacher was rattling on about balanced forces and a tree branch was tapping the window in the wind. At that moment what he was saying and what the branch was doing became one. Physics came to life - the teacher will have never realised he changed my entire direction from biology and literature to physics and maths at that moment. I will never forget that excitement - and it has never faded. Every teacher is in a position to do that every day for every kid. What other job offers that level of reward?

But beware that power - and hence my fear about you going into teaching for the job with such a negative attitude to kids and the classroom. A single comment and put-down - maybe even said in jest and seemingly minor to the teacher - can deeply hurt a kid, especially when done in front of their peers. Again, you may never know the impact. If you don’t care enough about EVERY kid in your class to wish to NEVER let that happen, then please don’t teach.

I love my subjects, and even more, I love my students, hence I love teaching.

6

**Gail ** , I read your response after writing my wax lyrical. Please don’t think I don’t acknowledge the difficulties - especially with difficult students. I guess my experince is slightly biased because I teach mostly senior maths, physics and IT, which is not a cross section of students. In secondary teaching, we change classes after an hour or so, hence it is easier to keep the positive attitude I believe is essential for survival in the classroom, when some of the students are harder to like.

As long as schools keep asking more and more of teachers, and society respects and supports them less, then the current shortages will continue. The testing you describe, which is also happening here in Australia, is implemented by authorities who have no idea of the demographics of real classrooms. The dedicated teachers, who worry about their kids as you do, will become more burnt out. It is the extra time for the kids who need you which gives the rewards, but also take the toll.

All the very best for surviving and moving on to more joy in teaching. The early years were so much harder than the later ones, when I had enough experience to have a store of responses to difficult situations - and had made so many mistakes I had to have learnt something about the profession!

7

It’s also important that your personality matches the grade level and situation. I taught freshman English for a year, and you couldn’t drag me back into a high school classroom with a railroad locomotive.

On the other hand, after teaching primary grades in elementary school for eight years, I cannot imagine doing anything else for a living. After a year’s absense, I’ll be back in the classroom this coming Monday, and I’m nearly as excited as I was the first day I taught school.

You must be able to connect with people the age you want to teach. I happen to connect well to people whose age is still in the single digits.

Think about it this way. Would you enjoy a casual conversation on the subject you want to teach with kids the age you want to teach? Would you be able to talk about that subject in a way that was interesting to them? This is what you’re going to be doing six hours a day, every day, if you decide to teach.

8

I sub taught for a bit more than a year, all grades. Yes, yes, I know. It’s not really teaching. Please, you pros, bear with me till the end of my post before flaming. :smiley:

I also teach college level and adult courses. I truly enjoyed a handful of days as a Sub. I am relentless in following lesson plans, I refused to make the day a day off. Teaching core work in elementary school was wonderful. Ditto for Middle School, although I am hopeless in math and so I would indeed hand out worksheets that were left. High School was for the most part about trying to control total verbal abuse and apathy. It’s atrocious.

I thought fairly seriously about going back for my Masters and teaching Middle School History. I liked it that much.

Even on the college/adult level, there are moments when someone truly “gets it”. There’s the payoff for the hard work, hassles, admin stuff, etc. You allow people to understand something new. To me, that’s truly exciting.

Cartooniverse

9

I “only” teach PE (dance, exercise and aqua aerobics), but I LOVE it. As someone else says, it IS exciting when someone “gets it”. When someone realizes that they are NOT trapped into being fat, that there is an out, a “secret” and how that “secret” works.

I LOVE the “Oh my GOSH, I’ve lost 4 pounds since we started class, how’d that HAPPEN?”. I love the energy and interaction between me and my “audience”. IMHO, it’s like “they” always tell you, find something you love and can also get paid for.

10

It’s hard work, but can be extremely rewarding from a personal satisfaction standpoint (not necessarily from a financial standpoint). The satisfaction comes from successfully connecting with your students. You must not only have the knowledge to impart, you must also have good delivery skills. Patience and fairness are good attributes for a teacher to have. I’m kind of biased, but I consider teaching as our most important profession. Hope you give it serious consideration.

11

Well, if it was a never-ending Super Happy Fun Time with fabulous pay and benefits, do you really think they’d need to recruit so aggressively?

My mother’s taught elementary school in a fairly rural part of Kentucky for over 30 years. She works 10-hour days most days with a 22-minute lunch break, a 10-minute recess (on days she doesn’t have playground duty), and on some days a 30-minute break for the class to go to music or PE or the library. That’s the time she puts in at the school. She grades papers for an hour or so every night, and spends 7-8 hours grading, planning, etc. every weekend. When it’s time for progress reports or grade cards, the workload goes up. Granted, part of all this time is because she’s the director of Extended School Services (tutoring, summer school, etc.), but that’s really a pretty small part of it. She also spends about 6 hours a day for four weeks doing summer school. For all of this, she earns the princely sum of $40,000/year.

Half of her class is a year or more below grade level in both reading and math, with the resultant deficiencies in science, social studies, etc. One of her students was sent to a juvenile psychiatric facility after setting fire to the library. Another has been expelled for a laundry list of issues. Two more are on the verge of expulsion. One set of parents has called the superintendent to bitch about her four times in the past two months, because their unmedicated ADHD child either cannot or will not behave herself and then lies about the circumstances of her getting in trouble. This is better than some years, though; this class doesn’t appear to have any kids who are being physically or sexually abused by their parents.

Basically, you can’t do this job for the money or benefits or because you want summers off or because you can’t think of anything better to do. It’ll chew you up and spit you out if you try that. You have to do it for the love of thing.

12

I’ve just finished my Internship

First let me say I’ve pretty much decided teaching is not for me unless I change my mindset. I was teaching band with grades 6-12. I’m a musician at heart and love all kinds of music.

I will say this about teaching. The most important thing is valueing the kids first, not your subject area (although it is important)

I put music at a higher level than the kids. This meant every time the kids did not understand, not care or do something wrong it would frustrate me/piss me off. After four months I was nearing a burn out mode. That was an unhealthy way to approach teaching not only for the kids, but for myself. If I had to do it over again, I would reverse the priority level and make sure I saw everything through the kid’s eyes.

I would also not describe teaching as a job. It’s more of a lifestyle. Expect long days of lots of work. Also expect to teach outside your subject area (it will happen) so you may have to learn as much as the kids. Don’t forget too that you will have about 300 bosses (those being the parents of your 150 kids expecting every mark to be explained.)

Now I hope I haven’t put you off because as the other teachers have said, there are great rewards in this profession. I got so many Christmas presents before I left with hugs and goodbyes.

If you can do it, Kudos to you. You are a better man than I.

13

I’d like to thank everyone for their input, it’s certainly given me more to think about. That Database Administrator job is looking more and more appealing!

14

I’ve taught in a private school for 15 years.
Before that I did 7 years training graduates, then a year in a technical college.
My sister teaches in a state school and so did my father.

As other posters have said, you have to see teaching as a vocation.
You will need plenty of patience and politeness!

Here in the private sector, I teach small classes and have excellent facilities with the backup of colleagues. (We can expel pupils if necessary).
The parents expect a lot of me, but are generally sympathetic.

My sister’s school is quite a good one. (They get about 1/3 of the funding per pupil). She has a lot of paperwork and larger classes.

My dad taught in a financially-poor district of London. The school was very basic and the kids included many with English as a second language.

All 3 of us enjoy the job, but the stresses are there.
You should therefore consider carefully where you will be working, as well as whether this is what inspires you.

15

Take the IT job…you’ll be happier in the long run.

Teaching requires commitment, and a strong “need to teach.” If you don’t have that, then the endless distractions, disturbances and disruptions will wear you down in no time. You might want to give it a shot…it could grow on you. But don’t be ashamed to say it isn’t your forte. Teachers are special people. :smiley: