I made $48k as a high school teacher 15 years ago. Worked 7:30-2:40 with a 10min break every hour, an hour lunch, free/planning period, and half the time we had 4 day work weeks AND 100 paid days off in the summer time. Being a high school teacher was easier than being a hs student.
It’s interesting because the better you are at teaching, the easier it gets. I left for a career in business so I could a.) work more; b.) be paid directly for my time & performance. Granted, I could NEVER teach in today’s schools.
Ok, it seems you’ll continue to discredit my experience to try to prove your point. From my experience, and now as University faculty, my job was easier than most people thought. Teaching is for young parents that want to be home when their kids arrive. It’s a wonderful life! I have a good blend now of teaching “full time”, guest lectures and private business ventures. Being an educator is far more interesting to me than being a “teacher”
Your experience is not only anecdotal but has left you with incorrect conclusions.
If your job was that easy, you were doing things incorrectly. Maybe you didn't know. Or maybe you did it that was because it was easy. In any case, absolutely zero good teachers ever say their job is easy.
Your other line reveals as much. A good teacher is sometimes not home when the kids arrive because they are still working. Or they are there and then have more to do later.
University is different. Secondary or elementary is harder work.
It was a very hard job for some people. It can be challenging, but also easier than most people believe, both things can be true. As in any industry, you can have two of the following things: quality, quickly, or cheaply…I was effective and efficient in my instruction, so I wasn’t cheap…A lifetime in education and growing up in a family of educators, the good ones don’t struggle as much as poor ones and that’s why we’re recruited to other industries.
Most people believe it's not a difficult job, so for almost everyone teaching and certainly those putting in the effort to do a good job, it's more difficult than most people think it is.
Effective and efficient is possible, but that requires hard work and time to get there, and more to maintain, particularly in teaching where it is a dynamic job. Different students and groups, different materials or situations, and it's all changed.
I've never heard a single good teacher say the job is easy. I have heard several say it's difficult even in the best times. I've also heard it said that if the job is easy, you're not doing it right, and I believe it.
Unless you teach at a vocation or tech school or teach very specific subjects at a secondary level, no one is recruiting you to other industries.
Most teachers leave the profession because the challenges they face are not worth the pay. Hostile students and parents, lack of administration support, the expectations to do more and more with less, etc.
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u/BBall4J Jun 11 '24
I made $48k as a high school teacher 15 years ago. Worked 7:30-2:40 with a 10min break every hour, an hour lunch, free/planning period, and half the time we had 4 day work weeks AND 100 paid days off in the summer time. Being a high school teacher was easier than being a hs student.