Reply to Second career ideas? Would teaching be a mistake?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You say money isn’t an issue but are you really okay with a salary of $50k in a dmv public (less in private)? None of your degrees or certifications will be worth anything, so you’ll still need to pay to take education coursework to get your license. Depending what you want to teach, there probably isn’t a shortage (sped being the exception) so provisional licenses aren’t really happening lately. You will start at step 1 on the pay scale since you have no experience.

The job has zero flexibility. You cannot leave 1 hour early for an appointment (subs are minimum half day), cannot go to your child’s 11 am band concert without taking a full day off, cannot easily be the emergency contact when your kid is throwing up. There’s no working from home when kid is old enough to just watch tv when sick but too young to be alone. My husband was default parent when kids were young. Summers and breaks make up for it in some ways.

The downside of a meaningful job is they will try to guilt you into doing everything possible with no pay. Leading clubs, tutoring kids, chaperoning prom, buying snacks for hungry kids, donating prizes for behavior challenges. You have to have really, really firm boundaries or the job will take over your life. Even at the richest schools there are stories that will break your heart. About every 3-4 years I need a few sessions with a therapist to help work through something so I don’t bring emotional baggage from kids home to my own family. (Admittedly I am pretty sensitive and the teens in my room share a lot with me)

I work 50 hours a week after 15 years in the classroom. The first few years it was 60. You get basically 0 downtime from 8-3 so all grading and planning is done in the evenings until you get your bearings better and figure out systems and start to be able to reuse parts of lessons. Many public schools provide no resources, so you hope you have colleagues of the same course willing to share, but if not then you scramble to make it yourself.

Then you get it around year 3-5, and it feels good! And then they give you a new course to teach and you sort of start over.

I love my job and find it very rewarding, but my husband is a saint for encouraging me to do it year after year, because it’s hard on our family.

I’m glad I did it, but go in with open eyes.[/quote]
All of this. I did it for five years and decided I could never have a family of my on if I continued to teach. I know some people do, but I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. It's hands down the hardest job I've ever had. And honestly not that rewarding. [/quote]

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