Award Winning Teacher Looking for Transition Advice

[Anonymous]

Go get an MBA and get into consulting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just to add.....

Currently, I work (teach) about 25 hours a week, spend approximately 10 hours in meetings, duty time, or planning, and enjoy summer breaks and holidays off. I don't typically bring work home, but despite these advantages, the job remains physically and mentally demanding, leaving me exhausted most days and weeks.

Lastly, another area I would need to consider is how a transition may impact my pension/retirement planning.

Private school teacher here (formerly public)

Maybe continue teaching, but in a different environment? My passion for teaching was renewed when I switched to private. It isn’t easier, but it was a great change.

I do have to ask: how do you manage to bring no work home? I’m in my 20th year and I work 55-65 hours a week. The grading alone takes 20 hours a week (essays, tests, projects). I can’t imagine bringing no work home!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You should open a consulting firm for other teachers on how to work more efficiently since all the ones that post on here apparebtly work 80 hours per week. You would make a lot of money.

80 hours a week would be absolutely absurd. However, considering various factors such as subject, organizational structures, and time mgmt, it is conceivable that some teachers may put in around 50-60 hours a week.

Typically, a school day lasts for approximately 6.5-7 hours. I can only speak from my experiences but daily instructional periods usually span about 5-5.5 hours in total, as the remaining 1.5 hours are allocated for lunch, recess, and elective activities like music or physical education. Consequently, teachers generally spend 25-30 hours a week instructing students. We typically spend another 10 hrs a week at school planning, grading, covering duty, meetings, etc. Some teachers do lesson planning, prep and grading at home but I find that it can be done in the time allocated at school. Adding an extra 40 hours on top of this outside of school would indeed be unreasonable and far beyond the norm, at least based on what I observe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to add.....

Currently, I work (teach) about 25 hours a week, spend approximately 10 hours in meetings, duty time, or planning, and enjoy summer breaks and holidays off. I don't typically bring work home, but despite these advantages, the job remains physically and mentally demanding, leaving me exhausted most days and weeks.

Lastly, another area I would need to consider is how a transition may impact my pension/retirement planning.

Private school teacher here (formerly public)

Maybe continue teaching, but in a different environment? My passion for teaching was renewed when I switched to private. It isn’t easier, but it was a great change.

I do have to ask: how do you manage to bring no work home? I’m in my 20th year and I work 55-65 hours a week. The grading alone takes 20 hours a week (essays, tests, projects). I can’t imagine bringing no work home!

Thanks for the advice. My only concern in switching to a private would be pay.

Regarding the time management piece, first I must mention that I teach math so there's much less reading. Also we are a one-to-one school so most of our cw/hw/assessments are done electronically, graded right away, immediate feedback given and can be quickly exported to excel or my gradebook. In instances where hand-written work is assigned (or prior to laptops), we'd spend 5 min at the beginning of class collectively grading it and I will put grades in during planning or the next morning. During small group sessions we perform error-analysis, I provide remedial instruction as needed or expand on concepts.

Furthermore, since I teach the same content each year, lesson plans are already created and require only minor adjustments based on the current students' proficiency levels or new district initiatives. My approach involved eliminating distractions and developing a system that enables me to complete all my tasks at school. While this method may not work for everyone, its been good for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of the teachers I know in this region that have transitioned have gone into government contracting - there are a lot of instructional design or training positions that you might be qualified for.

Thanks for the pointer. I am noticing this along with some non-profit instructional/training positions that I may qualify for. May be worth a deeper look.

[Anonymous]

Uh, you have it really good. Stick with teaching and retire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of the teachers I know in this region that have transitioned have gone into government contracting - there are a lot of instructional design or training positions that you might be qualified for.

Thanks for the pointer. I am noticing this along with some non-profit instructional/training positions that I may qualify for. May be worth a deeper look.

You’re going to work a lot more hours than 35 hours per week + all of the school breaks for 130k.

[Anonymous]

Project management get your pmp most of us barely work and easily make 130k

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Central office positions or OSSE

I think I would prefer to be out of the system if i make a move. Plus, there has been a recent decision by the council to reallocate a significant portion of funds from the central office back to the school level. This decision may have implications for the central office so I might want to avoid fir the time being.

OSSE may be worth looking into depending on salary and what I could qualify for.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I would just suck it up for another decade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of the teachers I know in this region that have transitioned have gone into government contracting - there are a lot of instructional design or training positions that you might be qualified for.

Thanks for the pointer. I am noticing this along with some non-profit instructional/training positions that I may qualify for. May be worth a deeper look.

You’re going to work a lot more hours than 35 hours per week + all of the school breaks for 130k.

+1. DCPS has 28 days off for teachers and students scheduled when offices generally get 10 at most. And, you know, then there's also the 40 work days teachers have off in the summer. That's 1600 hours. Your salary would have to be far higher than 140k for your new job to be comparable if you are working FT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to add.....

Currently, I work (teach) about 25 hours a week, spend approximately 10 hours in meetings, duty time, or planning, and enjoy summer breaks and holidays off. I don't typically bring work home, but despite these advantages, the job remains physically and mentally demanding, leaving me exhausted most days and weeks.

Lastly, another area I would need to consider is how a transition may impact my pension/retirement planning.

Private school teacher here (formerly public)

Maybe continue teaching, but in a different environment? My passion for teaching was renewed when I switched to private. It isn’t easier, but it was a great change.

I do have to ask: how do you manage to bring no work home? I’m in my 20th year and I work 55-65 hours a week. The grading alone takes 20 hours a week (essays, tests, projects). I can’t imagine bringing no work home!

Don't private school teachers make a lot less money?

[Anonymous]

OP, would you recommend working for DcPs? Is it realiatic to get hired at a good school for DcPS without a teaching license?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:None of the jobs you mentioned are going to pay you 130K+ a year with more than 2-3 weeks of vacation time. Nursing is harder physically than teaching and will pay much less than you want. You mentioned you only teach 25 hours a week plus 10 more hours of meetings and planning. If you can be a decent teacher only working 35 hours a week? You have it made. Most of us teachers work significantly more than that for significantly less pay. I'd focus on the retiring early part. Most teachers I know are not making it to the full amount of years they need to get the max pension anyways.
But yeah, if you're looking for easier than the info you gave us, it might exist, but I wouldn't count on any job making more than about 50-60K.

Great point about the demands of nursing.

We definitely are undervalued and I understand the work balance. I would need about another decade to get to full pension but I'm not sure that is the long-term plan.

I firmly believe I can adapt my skill set and prove my worth realtively quickly in most fields. The question is what career path will value my experiences enough to offer a salary similar to what I currently have (lifestyle wouldn't allow me to start over). Given the diverse DC landscape with an abundance of non-profits, contracting, government, universities, for-profits, etc., I am confident there are 6-figure positions that align with my skill-set and background however I do need knowledge and experiences to open my eyes to them.

I am not against the current course (although mentally and physically there may need to be some adjustments) but I would like to spend this summer researching opportunities.

[Anonymous]

Any job that pays the full time equivalent (175K) is basically a owns-you-soul situation.

I had a career crisis about a year ago after being brow beaten by a couple worker and attended a vision seminar that helped me refund my passion for my work and purpose in moving forward. I'm really glad that I took it as opposed to giving up or continuing to work like a Zombie.

https://rajikamahan.com/workshop