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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I left teaching a year ago. I am in the education field, but not in the classroom. At first I took a bit of a pay cut but now my pay is the same as it was when I was teaching. However now I work about 15 hours most weeks, compared to 70+. The difference is hard to explain - for many years my whole life revolved around teaching and now my job is just a small part of my life. I used to spend every evening and most of the weekend prepping and working. Now I have tons of flexibility and work from home.

I do truly miss it though and I miss feeling very effective and at the top of my game. I don't feel like I am really contributing to the world the way I was when I taught. But it is not sustainable, not if you want to do it well. [/quote]

Are you part time or is it a job where you don't work very hard?[/quote]

I work a full time position and am willing to work as many hours as needed but the work just isn't there past 15 or so hours a week. Some weeks more, some less but it really averages out to about 15 I think. [/quote]

What would need to change to make teaching a sustainable profession for you?[/quote]

-Better career paths to stay in the classroom and also progress career-wise
-Generally being treated like a professional. Teachers are often treated like children in ways that would never ever occur in other professions. My husband has always had a more traditional office job and he could never believe the stories I would tell about what I had to put up with. It is really degrading year after year. 
-Better school administration in general. I have respect for a handful of administrators but so many of them are not helpful. My biggest complaint is that there is often little accountability for teachers who are doing a bad job. This leads to my next item:
-Stronger teachers surrounding me. I could teach for decades if I was surrounded by equally strong and passionate teachers I could collaborate with and grow with. Unfortunately there are many lower-caliber teachers that are simply not effective and not concerned with becoming more effective. It increases the workload quite a bit when you can't depend on others. It is also really demoralizing to achieve amazing things with your students and then see them go on to the next grade with a really weak teacher.

I could go on but those are some of the first ones that came to mind. [/quote]

Thank you. That is great information. As a parent, I completely agree with all of these, especially the parts about bad teachers. It's hard to overstate the impact that a year with a truly terrible teacher has on the students. They leave a lasting impression in a way that few other bad employees in other professions do. I don't know if we need a revolution in teaching as much as we need to completely revisit school administration. As a white-collar working, it has been my experience that abusive toxic work environments where employees are not treated as professionals simply breed dispassionate, detached workers who are going through the motions to get to the end of each day. There seems to be a lot of that in teaching, and that's not something that individual teachers or parents can address. The administration has to be better.[/quote]

I was a math teacher who left high school teaching. As a person with good quantitative skills, it was pretty easy for me to leave. I miss working at the high school all the time because I miss the students and the "aha!" moments. I agree with PP. Though for  me it was the not being treated like a professional that really killed it for me. We had to submit a slip if we wanted a classroom supply (eg. tissues, whiteboard markers, paper). When it was October, and students were getting colds and I was told I had already requested too many boxes of kleenex that month.... ARGH. Or when I requested a pack of whiteboard markers and was told I now had to choose which of the four colors I would like (red, green, black, or blue) because I would only be getting one at a time and a max of 4 per month.... 
[/quote]

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