Teachers, what surprised you most about the profession?
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Anonymous
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How lack of sufficient technology (copy machine, printers, computers etc) could impede my ability to work so much. When I have 30 minutes for planning, at least half of it is spent waiting for something to work that doesn’t work. My room is a 5 minute walk to the copy machine, so I don’t have time to use it during the day because by the time I get there, I won’t have time to unjam it when it inevitably jams. The closest printer is down the hall and I’ll press print and walk down the hall to get what I printed and it won’t have actually printed. Rinse and repeat.
Or I’ll run down the hall to put card stock or colored paper in it and run back to my room to press print and when I go to pick up what I printed I see that someone else printed something while I was running down the hall and their work printed on my paper. Seeing the spinning wheel and having to wait every time I try to click on something or respond to an email. Just a lot of things that are time sucking and time is at a premium. Only one employee in the school is allowed to use the laminator so I’ll put my stuff in on the assigned day and plan my lessons accordingly and when I go to pick up the laminated materials to have time to cut them out, I find that it wasn’t actually done. Some days I leave so frustrated, and I can’t believe why we don’t have the sufficient equipment we need to be able to do our jobs. |
Anonymous
All of this. Or you go to start your lesson and the bulb to the Smartboard blows. And then administration tells you they won’t replace it. And then you suck it up and spend $100 replacing it and two planning periods installing it and it still doesn’t work. So then you have to print all your materials and put everything on the limited chart paper you have. And then the printer breaks and when you call tech support they tell you it’s 11 years old and no longer under warrantee so they can’t help you. So you buy a printer for your room, and ink, and wonder why you keep doing this. Then a parent calls and asks why the homework isn’t in colored ink. |
Anonymous
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Probably how unstable it is. I’m from the northeast like many teachers in this area. It’s extra difficult to get a teaching job in a union state as tenure helps maintain teachers and the unions help attract plenty of applicants from all over when someone does leave. Every year (unless you have tenure) you have to worry if you’ll be given a contract for the following year. You can be let go for something as simple as an admin not liking you. I know it’s easier to find a new school to work at if you’re in a state with a high need for teachers, but even that means people who need to find a new school will have to deal with new commutes. I would not buy a house as a teacher unless I had tenure or felt very secure for years at a school in a non-tenure state. I know you can be let go from any type of job, but I don’t know any other job where most people worry each spring for they’ll be asked to continue their position the following year or have to apply and find another school. It’s truly unstable. Also, the salary freezes. There’s a set scale yet I’ve been hearing teachers here will be paid the same amount next year because they can’t afford to move anyone up on the scales. It seems like this can happen a lot. In the northeast I’ve seen teachers get pink slipped and spend weeks looking for another position and feeling so much stress but luckily a lot of the time they end up being able to afford to keep them on. Also, many teachers are let go before the year where they’ll be granted tenure.
Just not a very stable profession, but obviously right now with COVID that may seem silly to say. Most jobs aren’t stable enough to get you through the pandemic, but a pandemic is a rare event. Normally most jobs are far more stable (unless you are a tenured teacher, which most US teachers are not). |
Anonymous
I wrote about how draining it is. I’m an ESOL teacher so it it rare to teach the same grade levels each year. We are put in the grade levels where we are needed most. Every few years something about the curriculum changes so there’s that too. Each new group of students is different so you can’t really just recycle last year’s lesson plans. One of my grade level’s caseload was huge this year. Huge and very low. I spent much more time on the basics. The year before was a small but much higher group who could mostly read at or near grade level. Different focuses meant different lesson plans. |
Anonymous
| What surprises me is the lack of control we have over our own career. In my school the superintendent decides where we'll teach and that's that. I honestly didn't expect to be moved around so much - I feel like I never really master a grade level and/or subject matters before I'm pushed somewhere else again. Good test scores, good evaluations, good parent and student rapport make no difference. I don't see the frequency of changes happen to people in other jobs nearly as much as it does to teachers in my school. |
Anonymous
Another career changer. This x100, plus how exhausting it is, especially once you have your own kids. |
Anonymous
I'm in a union state and my union took pay freezes on two contracts (so 6 years total) when the 2008 recession hit. I fully expect that we'll take another pay freeze on our next contract and or a pay cut. While we have some job security, I think teaching, just like many other profession, is going to take a massive hit in the next year or two and plenty of teachers will lose their jobs simply because there isn't money to pay us. Many states are losing 25% of their budgets. And that's just for *this* year. I expect next year we'll take an even bigger hit. I won't be surprised to see class sizes in the 40's again like we had many years ago. |
Anonymous
I'm also a career changer and I underestimated how hard it would be. I probably work around the same number of hours per week as I did in my former career, but every minute of the school day is spent working whereas before I would have slower days and at least could guarantee I would get to eat lunch every day. I could take an hour of leave here or there for an appointment, but now I have to take 4 hours even if I only need to leave 30 minutes before the student day ends. Don't even get me started on getting a sub and writing sub plans. It's such a pain to have to be absent for any amount of time it makes it not worth it. I also thought my day would be pretty much over when the student day ended since I had planned to be extremely organized and efficient with my time at school so that I wouldn't have to do too much after school ended. What I didn't realize was that I would barely get any time during the student day to do planning, grading, creating materials etc. Most of our planning time is taken up by meetings, and the little individual planning time I do have is either interrupted or unproductive due to equipment/technology issues like a PP described. |
Anonymous
| All of the above. I retired. I miss the kids and the actual teaching desperately, but there was no way to make it all work any longer. The most frustrating part is that it doesn’t have to be this way. |
Anonymous
| The biggest surprise for me was seeing how the schools near my home actually were. I never would have known if I had not been a teacher. We heard they were good schools with a mix of students. Working in my neighborhood showed the dysfunctional atmosphere of the school and behavior problems of the students. I would have never imagined it could be that bad and we moved before my children started public school. I was able to find a new job and essentially find out how a different district really operated rather than going on reputation. The difference between reputation and was really goes on was my biggest surprise as a teacher. |
Anonymous
This is something I have experienced as well. We bought a home based on the reputation of the public schools. People said things like, "I'd sell my soul if I could afford to live there" (so they could send their kids to this district). Well, I got hired in that district and holy crap, within 2 years, I quit and we moved as fast as we could. The stories I could tell! Unethical administrators, rampant cheating, cover up of all kinds of crap and yes, test scores were good, but test scores will be good anytime you have a large percentage of high income kids. |
Anonymous
| Teachers: are there any federal or state policies that need to change to make teaching easier and more effective? (Aside from the obvious funding answer) |
Anonymous
We need a complete overhaul. I would start though with capping class sizes much smaller. Especially for younger grades and writing intensive courses. I would also legally limit how many preps a teacher can have. Right now, it’s a contract item, but that puts it on the teacher to complain to the union. Just make two the max in the first five years of teaching and maybe three with an additional planning period after 5 years. I taught three preps in my first year because my principal said no one else complained about doing it. Now, I think everyone else was too scared of him. |
Anonymous
| What does “preps” mean? |
Anonymous
The number of different classes you have to prepare materials for and teach. For example if a teacher is teaching AP Psych and U.S. History, he/she has two "preps," because there are two different classes. |