High school- about 65 hours a week. No time at school to do planning or grading due to meetings and documenting. Always working at home.

I teach 5th grade. Over the past couple of years, one of my teammates went to middle school and one to high school (SPED). Both can’t believe what a better environment the new schools are and have been telling the rest of us to switch! Ive never heard of someone going from elem to middle and regretting it. In fact, it is my plan if this year follows the same trajectory as the last.

I don’t expect it to be perfect and all levels have their issues, but I like the idea of only planning for one subject a day and having a guaranteed schedule that is consistent. It Luis, I’m completely burnt out and need a change (unless something changes this year).

I'm OP - thank you for the info, HS teachers. I can see that HS is not a cushy job after all. It still sounds better than ES, though. I enjoy planning lessons and actually teaching, and I felt like we didn't do much of that in ES. And the morale was low and the culture intolerable at my school. Sounds like HS is mildly better in those respects, and at least you can spend your time planning and grading at home, versus sitting in pointless meetings in a child-sized chair.

Anonymous wrote:High school kids can be pretty tough to manage. Are you interested in working with them or do you enjoy younger kids?

Interesting. Do you have experience with middle school as well? Genuine curiosity. I'm a middle school teacher, and it has been since student teaching many years ago that I worked with high schoolers, but my impression has always been that classroom management can be harder with middle school, but parent pressure is harder with high school, along with writing letters of recommendation. I had an admin friend once tell me that with secondary ed, that is the dichotomy. I think high school teachers are also more likely to have a higher number of preps because of the larger variety and levels of courses. as well.

High school kids can be pretty tough to manage. Are you interested in working with them or do you enjoy younger kids?