BTDT? Rather than retire, shift to teaching part-time.

[Anonymous]

If you teach and shifted from FT to PT rather than retiring when you reached 30 years, can you share the pros and cons?

[Anonymous]

I honestly don’t know many PT teaching opportunities. Maybe in high school but not in ES.

[Anonymous]

I know serval teachers at our ES who went from Teachers to IAs for a few years before retiring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t know many PT teaching opportunities. Maybe in high school but not in ES.

I’m certified in secondary ed with high school teaching experience although I prefer middle. In about 5 years, I would happily step down from FT MS to a PT HS position.

[Anonymous]

I retired after 30 years in an ES and now substitute. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to only teach part time.

Subbing has been good so far. I’ve enjoyed it. I get my pensions (state was full, district pension is slightly reduced), and I sub on my own schedule. No meetings, planning or grading plus I don’t work in the evenings or over the weekends.

[Anonymous]

We have a couple PT teachers in our department. They regularly say the end up working FT anyway because of workload.

[Anonymous]

In most major cities there are programs that offer teachers part time work doing contract work for schools. I see things like doing reading and math interventions for 10-20 hours per week. Pay tends to run from $35-50 an hour. I might do this when I retire. I really should go until I'm 60, but once my kids are out of college in a couple of years, I'm pretty sure I'm done. Or I will just tutor.

[Anonymous]

Our private school has part time teachers in specialty subjects. But, I think they taught there full time before switching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I retired after 30 years in an ES and now substitute. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to only teach part time.

Subbing has been good so far. I’ve enjoyed it. I get my pensions (state was full, district pension is slightly reduced), and I sub on my own schedule. No meetings, planning or grading plus I don’t work in the evenings or over the weekends.

Thank you. I would consider subbing if I could select half-day jobs only. My goal is to not have an 8 hour day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I retired after 30 years in an ES and now substitute. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to only teach part time.

Subbing has been good so far. I’ve enjoyed it. I get my pensions (state was full, district pension is slightly reduced), and I sub on my own schedule. No meetings, planning or grading plus I don’t work in the evenings or over the weekends.

This. And if you pick up some long-term assignments, you can get a pay bump and sick days (here at MCPS).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I retired after 30 years in an ES and now substitute. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to only teach part time.

Subbing has been good so far. I’ve enjoyed it. I get my pensions (state was full, district pension is slightly reduced), and I sub on my own schedule. No meetings, planning or grading plus I don’t work in the evenings or over the weekends.

Thank you. I would consider subbing if I could select half-day jobs only. My goal is to not have an 8 hour day.

You absolutely can. Subs are so hard to get now that most teachers find a couple of good subs and try to work their absences around the subs’ availability.

[Anonymous]

In my experience working half time, you need to structure it carefully to avoid working full time. Once I was in the building, I invariably worked a full day or was asked to assist with things outside the scope of my duty day. My takeaway was that the people who were really true part timers didn’t go in every day, but that could further limit your options. I was so resentful after two years of working full time for part time pay, I am now full time. But maybe you’d be better at setting boundaries than I was!

[Anonymous]

I did not retire, but rather than quit from burnout I shifted to PT. It was even worse. Whereas FT I was expected to work 50-60 hours a week, PT I was expected to work almost as many hours. They had me doing half days and leaving around 1pm, but then half the time there was a meeting I had to go to after school, or some professional development thing, and I had to choose being incurring the wrath of the admin for not doing those things or just working FT for PT pay. If you have decent admin it's probably fine, but if you are FT and they expect you to work way over contract hours, then those expectations will not go away when your pay drops.

[Anonymous]

Please just retire. Make room for new educators.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please just retire. Make room for new educators.

What new educators? My neighbor works with a local university's teacher prep program. She said this year's graduating cohort started with appr. 45 students back in their freshman/sophomore year. They are down to 8 seniors and 3 of them aren't planning to go into teaching when they graduate. She said they used to have 50+ students graduate every year and nearly all of them went straight into teaching jobs. Not anymore.