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[quote=Anonymous]I worked in corporate right after getting a bachelor’s. I made like $13/hr back in 2013. I was also SO bored all the time. I had a psych degree and thought about doing the GRE to be a school counselor. A friend told me I could sub so I left and did that. Subbed at every level. I ended up loving elementary school when I thought I’d prefer high school. I got a master’s in elementary education because in my state you need one eventually anyway. Teacher pay here was average of $70k back when I was in grad school in 2015. This was from Google… I didn’t know about pay scales and how you can find them for any public school online. My state has a lot of districts that pay very well and others that aren’t so great. In my part of the state a teacher with a master’s starts around $49-60k depending on the district and you’ll eventually make $90k or more by year 12-20 (depending on district). It’s really not bad especially if you majored in education and got a job right away at 22. For career changers or those starting later it obviously takes longer to work your way up the pay scale.

My state has a very high COL. Houses are like $500k at the least. Studios can be $2k. But I think some teachers falsely believe all other careers pay enough to easily afford to live here and that’s not true. Sure there’s people in law, medicine, some nurses in certain settings, and certain tech jobs that pay very well and make it easier to live here. But teaching is one of the better paying jobs here. It’s hard to get jobs to teach here so I taught in the DC area for a year. The most I’ve ever made in my life was as a first year teacher in NoVA…. But it was so different from the schools I had worked in as a sub, para, and student teacher in MA. I also just missed the area, family, and friends. So I only did a year. I came back home and long term subbed then worked in corporate the next year where I made $21-23/hour… most people I worked with weren’t making big bucks either. Old teacher friends were surprised but in some states teaching really is one of the higher paying jobs. Yes it can be incredibly stressful!! I’m not saying it’s not but lots of jobs can be (and let’s be honest, there’s also jobs that pay very well and have minimal stress but we can’t all get those or we would…).

In many states teaching is one of the lowest paying jobs you can have that requires a degree. Think FL, NC, AZ… You can find any public school pay scale and I’ve looked at plenty. FL teachers don’t really get raises at all and they aren’t paid enough for sure. But in some states teaching is a job with ample time off and decent benefits and pay compared to many (not all) corporate jobs. I think a lot of teachers haven’t tried anything else so they don’t know. And I think a teacher in an area that has decent pay might think they’re pay isn’t good enough bc the teachers in states where pay IS abysmal are always complaining about pay (for good reason) do they just don’t understand what they’re saying doesn’t necessarily apply in all states. No you won’t make more in a basic entry level office job in certain states than you would as a teacher but in some states you would…

And the complaints about no overtime pay seem to indicate that many teachers don’t understand the concept or hourly versus salary. In any job if you are a salaried employee you can be asked to work outside of your set hours. You won’t be paid overtime if you’re salaried. That’s for hourly pod employees. There’s pros and cons to both. Many jobs also make you wait a year just to qualify for some for the benefits.

I know from working both corporate jobs and teaching jobs that both have pros and cons. For me personally, office jobs could be a challenge due to boredom, monotony, office gossip/politics, people being cut throat and shady for promotions and raises, the lack of something as simple as more three day weekends, and just little things like that. With teaching I found administrators to cause anxiety but wonder if those who supervise them put stress on them and they take it out on teachers sometimes? I found that some parents and some students could be so hard to deal with and unlike an annoying client you might communicate with a few times in an office, you’re stuck with them for a while. I found admin could cause anxiety and stress by almost blaming teachers for how students behave. Sometimes you try a lot of strategies and a student is still a challenge but admin tells you you haven’t made the kids feel safe enough or built strong enough relationships so it must be your fault one kid acts out a lot… it just makes you feel crappy and then you worry about losing your job because one kid is really struggling and it’s not your fault but admin blames you.

I guess I think in many states the pay for teachers needs to improve to attract and retain. But a big thing for everywhere would just be administrators being more supportive of teachers, especially those who haven’t made it to year 5 yet. They’re hardly in the classroom to see how you do connect with the kids and sometimes teachers get nervous when admin comes in and don’t act natural… if the kids and parents are giving a teacher good feedback (at least most bc you can’t please them all), then administrators should really believe that a teacher cares and is effective whether the hour total they’ve spent in their room in a year showed them that or not.

Sorry for the rant and I’m sure some will be upset with me for saying teacher pay isn’t horrible in every state, but office jobs can be pretty low paying for real… and it’s just my personal experience that admin expectations caused a lot of anxiety for me. I’ve been interviewing to get back to teaching in my home state recently and the one thing that makes me feel nauseous is dealing with admin as I feel they can be too judge mental. They walk by and your classroom is a little loud and you get a dirty look but you have kids excitedly measuring items while learning about measurement in second grade math… but they don’t take the time to even see why the kids got a bit loud or to see you calming them down to continue the lesson… in corporate you deal with directors and managers giving you stupid feedback too but it’s usually not blaming you for why other people are doing certain things. [/quote]

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