Why are you considering leaving teaching (and if you've left it, why did you leave it)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:new SAHM mom after many years teaching. I felt super weird at the end of August when all my friends were going back to school, I thought I would miss it, and I did, for about a week. Now I can't imagine teaching and then coming home to take care of LO. Teaching is so demanding, I had work to at home almost every. single. day. The pay for the workload is just not sufficient. When I do eventually go back, I am hoping to get something part time.

Ha, I misread this as "demeaning." After attending a post-observation conference today and finding out that I'd have another 6 official observations and up to 20 more unofficial ones during the year, I don't think I misread it after all. It's like student teaching all year long, except with a salary and benefits.

[Anonymous]

I left because I was getting tired of being abused by my students. Yes I knew what I was getting into but I had 2 family members pass away within 2 months and it was too much to take in. I left to be a nanny/babysitter. Now I'm a SAHM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher in a Title One school and it is incredibly stressful. I love, love, love the kids but it is everything else that makes me crazy. Admins and their bosses seem to take advantage of the fact that most teachers have helping, giving personalities. We are constantly being asked to give more (the children need after school clubs and sports, the children need books, the children need tutoring, the children need supplies, etc). This is where the burn out occurs. I come home and I am dead tired and I have my own child who needs me. They take up our precious planning time with stupid data meetings so that forces me to do most of my grading and planning after school. Higher ups who don't really know what they are talking about make policies that don't work in our situation. We are pawns and we are often treated like children. Speaking of children, so many of them come to school undisciplined and not ready. One mom walks her tall kindergarten student to the door every morning, has a temper tantrum when she has to drop her at the door (the mom has the temper tantrum) and then expects us to carry her daughter who starts with her own temper tantrum. "Just pick her up!" she screams at us. The kid kicked my assistant principal in the face last week. Most of the kids are great and I just feel sorry that they were born to such disaster areas for parents. If I didn't get the summer off, I couldn't do this job.

Did I write this?

[Anonymous]

It's a hard job professionally because it falls into the same realm as medicine and nursing. You are 100 percent on when you are on. I'm an ER doctor and my wife is a teacher and I think the thing that's great about our jobs is that when we're off, we are off.

But the thing that sucks is that you don't have that flexibility of a lot of office jobs. Our days are scheduled to the minute, the breaks are tight and disappear.

I make 225K a year working 40 hours a week. No nights/weekends or call. My wife works about 50 plus random nights (back to school, reading nights, family engagement, etc) and she makes in the 70'sK. She's been teaching for nearly 15 years with a master's.

I won't get into how people treat teachers, but compared to me, it's bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a hard job professionally because it falls into the same realm as medicine and nursing. You are 100 percent on when you are on. I'm an ER doctor and my wife is a teacher and I think the thing that's great about our jobs is that when we're off, we are off.

But the thing that sucks is that you don't have that flexibility of a lot of office jobs. Our days are scheduled to the minute, the breaks are tight and disappear.

I make 225K a year working 40 hours a week. No nights/weekends or call. My wife works about 50 plus random nights (back to school, reading nights, family engagement, etc) and she makes in the 70'sK. She's been teaching for nearly 15 years with a master's.

I won't get into how people treat teachers, but compared to me, it's bad.

The funny thing is that if you were both in Finland, she'd get treated as well as you would. Teachers are esteemed as highly as doctors there, while here, are somewhere between dog walkers and dog catchers.