Career Change

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Tenks

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As a teacher have you ever gotten called in the middle of the night because your lessons are not working for 0.5% of users in Europe? Have you ever made changes to your teaching plan but some other teacher minutes before made non-compatible changes to your teaching plan so now you have to perform a complex merge to make sure they both jive? Have you ever had to reverse engineer another teacher's teaching plan (which makes absolutely no sense but you have under a directive you have to use it) because this teacher left 3 years ago and her plan suddenly stopped functioning? Give me a break. Any job you can complain about endlessly to sound horrible.
 
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Noodleface

Noodleface

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I'd like to hear tenks complain about blizzard but I'm sure there's nothing to actually complain about there
 
kegkilla

kegkilla

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McCheese said:
That's a really silly thing to say. Yes, every job has bullshit, but some jobs have way more bullshit to deal with way more often than others.
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as a teacher have you ever had to fly out of town for the week for work and be away from your family? have you ever had to come into work on a Saturday? have you ever had to stay at the office until 10 during the week? have you ever had to stress over whether you'll get a salary bump at the end of the year?

no to all of the above.

i'm going to end the bullshit here. teaching is not a hard job no matter how you look at it. the people who think it is a hard job are delusional morons who have no idea what real work is.

no, you are not going to become a millionaire teaching, BUT YOU KNEW THAT GOING INTO THE PROFESSION, SO SHUT THE FUCK UP. what you will get is a very nice salary considering the amount of work you do, a very nice guaranteed pension, the satisfaction of knowing you are shaping the lives of children, the blessing of getting to interact with people all day rather than sitting in a fucking cubicle, the opportunity to coach high school athletics and THE ENTIRE FUCKING SUMMER OFF.

when I did beach patrol back in the good ol days, all the lieutenants and above that I worked with were teachers, for obvious reasons. i just looked a few of them up and found that they're all making $100k from their teaching salary alone. and these aren't all rich suburban school districts, some of them are teaching in the city of Philadelphia. granted they are all 20+ years in but I disgress. then they come to the shore for the summer and make another $30k sitting on the beach all god damn summer and get ANOTHER pension on top of that. if that isn't the fucking life, i don't know what is.

moral of the story, IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY BEING A TEACHER, THE PROBLEM IS YOU, NOT THE PROFESSION. if a teacher's salary isn't good enough for you, you shouldn't have gone into fucking teaching. if you think hanging out with a bunch of smart ass high school kids all day is "stressful" then 1) you don't know what stress is and 2) you have shit for personality.
 
McCheese

McCheese

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Tenks said:
As a teacher have you ever gotten called in the middle of the night because your lessons are not working for 0.5% of users in Europe? Have you ever made changes to your teaching plan but some other teacher minutes before made non-compatible changes to your teaching plan so now you have to perform a complex merge to make sure they both jive? Have you ever had to reverse engineer another teacher's teaching plan (which makes absolutely no sense but you have under a directive you have to use it) because this teacher left 3 years ago and her plan suddenly stopped functioning? Give me a break. Any job you can complain about endlessly to sound horrible.
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The fact is that some jobs are easier than others. You can argue it all you want, but it's true. I've had some super relaxing, easy jobs with 0 bullshit, and some jobs that were never-ending issues, complaints, and other garbage to deal with. I never said teaching is the worst job in the world, I'm just saying it has more bullshit than many other typical office jobs. I think many people look at the hours that teachers work on paper, then look at the solid starting salary, and assume that teachers have nothing to complain about. I think that's wrong, and that's all I mean.
 
Aldarion

Aldarion

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Frenzied Wombat said:
I think y'all are confusing "difficult" with "shitty".
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Yeah, I think you prety much resolved the thread right there.

HS teaching would be a shitty job for many of us, and would be an ideal job for others. This is subjective.
Its not a difficult job for anyone who's completed high school.

I wouldnt want the job, but the pay to difficulty ratio is very good. Like many shitty jobs, they have to pay people more than the difficulty warrants specifically because its a shitty job.
 
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Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
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Aldarion said:
Yeah, I think you prety much resolved the thread right there.

HS teaching would be a shitty job for many of us, and would be an ideal job for others. This is subjective.
Its not a difficult job for anyone who's completed high school.

I wouldnt want the job, but the pay to difficulty ratio is very good. Like many shitty jobs, they have to pay people more than the difficulty warrants specifically because its a shitty job.
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This is pretty much why teachers and restaurant wait staff who complain trigger me. For the difficulty of the jobs both get compensated very well. Would I want to do either? Fuck no. But that is why I chose not to do either.
 
Frenzied Wombat

Frenzied Wombat

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I have no pity for teachers that knew what they signed up for and complain. I have even less empathy for those that complain, yet when confronted with the choice to do something else, haul out the "but I make a difference in children's lives line". But the job IS mental exhaustion personified. Having to talk half your day, trying to keep a class of 30+ brats focused, and then having to deal with other teachers and parents is the literal definition of "FML". I still however disagree that it's "good money" for the work-- I can think of lots of other jobs that pay 45K a year that are less exhausting and disempowering than being a teacher. 20 years ago when teachers could better control their syllabus, actually discipline students, and didn't have their cell phone number on the quick dial of every parent? That's when teaching was a "good" profession. Students used to respect teachers because they held disciplinary power, today they're basically a joke and not even allowed to assign extra homework, let alone force LeQuan to come in Saturday to scrape gum off desks.
 
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ToeMissile

ToeMissile

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Typed this out on my phone, it's a little disjointed.

My wife taught math for 8 years (grade 6 - 12 at different times) and has been an assistant principal for 3. The quality/tier of schools have ranged from "pregnant 13 year olds"/"parents high level gang members and banned from the city" to "i crashed my lambo, so my parents bought me a new one"/"it's 7am on a sunday, why haven't you responded to my email from 11pm last night about classes for my child who wont be attending your school for 3 more years."

My wife is the first to admit there are a ton of shitty teachers out there as well as the difficulty in getting rid of them. The majority of teachers however didn't start out that way. Skills aside, they came in with the desire to help kids.

The teachers that dgaf have it easy, and those who try to make a difference are the ones who give up lunches, evenings, and weekends to help the kids who need it, pay for supplies out of pocket, go to after school events

The real difficulty/PITA part of the job is dealing with bullshit policy/coworkers/parents. Also, on paper hours =! Hours worked. Lesson prep and grading takes a lot of time. Contacting parents for underperformance or other issues also happens during off-hours.

Pay/benefits can vary quite a bit depending on city/district and grade level. Unless you become an administrator or get an MA/MS/PHD, the set pay schedule is the only raise you get.
 
Pops

Pops

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McCheese said:
You know what I mean. It's not an unlivable salary. It's not like teachers are scrimping and scrounging to get by in most areas. Their salary is generally on par with the amount of hours they work on paper. However, the mentally and emotionally exhausting nature of the job is the issue.
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That's their psychic income.
 
ZyyzYzzy

ZyyzYzzy

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I don't look at just their hours, I look at what the actually do and fail to see how it is more mentally draining than any other profession
 
Jx3

Jx3

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Speaking of career change, one of the teachers at my school was arrested for selling drugs 2 days ago. Cops did 4 controlled buys before arresting him.
 
Jysin

Jysin

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Jx3 Jx3 How bound are you to your current location? Do you yearn to travel overseas? I ask this because I have been an expat living abroad for the last ~18 years. During my travels, I always come across a ton of American / Canadian / UK teachers. They too hated the systems where they came from and looked for teaching positions overseas. Qualified western teachers are highly sought after in many countries. Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc .. the list goes on. Quite often there is 0 requirement to speak the local language, as the schools are often "American School of X" and the entire curriculum is based on western style teaching... sans all of the political horseshit that comes in the US system. I know in Qatar and UAE you can end up teaching classes that are 80-90% made up of expat kids. Dad and/or mom has the fancy high paying job, they send their kids to the private western school in the city.

Just something to think about if you still enjoy actually teaching, but are burned by the US system.
Better pay, bigger school budgets, far more time off, and amazing travel opportunities in your down time.

I have always slightly envied my teacher friends. They can just up and pick a destination on the map and get work anywhere. That job mobility is a damn good thing.
 
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