Reply to teachers or former teachers

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "teachers or former teachers"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]As a teacher, I would say that there are both advantages and disadvantages from a scheduling perspective.

The biggest scheduling advantage to teaching,  is that once your kids are school age there's going to be a lot of overlap between the times when your kids are off, and the times when you're off.  It's not a 100% correlation, because you'll still have things like parent teacher conference days, and professional days, but it's the majority of days and it's a huge benefit.

The biggest scheduling disadvantage to teaching, is the complete lack of flexibility.  Most schools require that you take leave in half day or full day blocks, which makes it hard to attend things like doctors appointments during the day, and with 1 or 2 personal days a year, things like performances during the school day, or PT conferences, can be very challenging.   As a parent, the fact that I can't really receive phone calls during the day, can even make things like scheduling doctor's appointments challenging.  As the parent of a child with some medical issues, I can't tell you how much time I've spent playing phone tag with a doctor's office about an issue like dosage for medication, because I can't answer my phone.

Also, while the early end time is nice, it comes with an early start time.  I teach high school, and my core hours are 7:30 - 3:30.  Most days, I'm there later than 3:30, but yes, with some planning, I can sneak out at 3:30 (45 minutes after the dismissal bell) once in a while if I need to.  On the other hand, that 7:30 time is set in stone.  Finding childcare that early can be very challenging.  The lack of flexibility also means that you can't do something like wait half an hour if you're making up your mind as to whether your kid is sick in the a.m., or just go in late if your a.m. babysitter falls through.

I just reread your post, and you seem to be assuming that you'd teach at the same school as your kid.  Remember that most schools serve a narrow age band.  So, most of the years your kids are in school there's no way they'll be with you, and won't be on the same schedule.  Even during those few years when you might be in the same building on the same schedule, you'll still need to pay for aftercare (you might be able to get away with your kids in your room before school, but after school you'll have meetings that prevent that).  Also, you'll never be able to attend a school function solely in your role as Johnny's mom.  Being able to pop into your kid's classroom for the 5 minutes of the author celebration that coincide with your students' recess (not the Halloween party, of course, because you'll have your own) sounds great, but if you're spending that time fielding questions from parents of one of your students, or being scoped out by the parent of a future sibling, it can get old really fast.

I think, ideally, most teachers would have non-teacher spouses.  Then you get the best of both worlds.  You have summer and winter break childcare, and hopefully the other parent can handle the morning, the dentist and any midday phone calls that need to be made.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics