Former Teachers Share The Reasons They Gave Up Teaching For Something Else, It Shows Why The Teacher Shortage Makes Sense
We can’t imagine the world without teachers. Yet sometimes we treat them as dispensable robots.
Abby Norman from Atlanta, Georgia, was one of them. She spent nine years in the classroom, but after “loving the students and the learning and despising the testing and the paper-pushing of the classroom,” she gave it up, went to the Seminary, and while seeking ordination within the Methodist tradition, also became a bartender.
Over the weekend, Abby made a tweet to explain the reasons behind her career change, and it immediately went viral.
Image credits: Unsplash (not the actual photo)
This former teacher shared how happy she is after quitting her job and becoming a bartender
Image credits: abbynormansays
Across the US, the average public school teacher salary for the 2019-2020 school year was $63,645, according to data from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
On paper, it looks like a teacher’s salary has increased over the last couple of decades but when you adjust the numbers for inflation, the average salary is just about 0.2% higher than in the 1999-2000 school year.
The Pew Research defines middle-income Americans as those whose annual household income is two-thirds to double the national median (adjusted for local cost of living and household size). So in 2018, for a family of three, that ranges from $40,100 to $120,400.
This puts teachers in the middle-class, however, the job comes with a unique set of challenges. Plus, it’s common for teachers across the country to spend a not insignificant amount of their take-home pay on school supplies for their students and classrooms.
Inspired by her tweet, others also talked about exchanging teaching for enjoyable, less stressful careers that also pay more
Image credits: AFreakingBreak
Image credits: mollypocket629
Image credits: 501Awani
Image credits: TheLJWay85
Image credits: UnofficialMsRob
Image credits: MrAncalade
Image credits: DB1212013
Image credits: FenianSanta
The thread also has teachers sharing how they realized they were severely underpaid
Image credits: jdehlin
Image credits: olivia_meikle
Image credits: lisalulutweets
Image credits: melnoah42
Image credits: EllstonLogan
People also spoke about why it’s getting harder and harder not to quit teaching and why so many already did
Image credits: sehp1020
Image credits: Matty0707
Image credits: sheri_scary
Image credits: librariesrgreat
Image credits: DavidMo48520745
Image credits: Fluff_fury
Image credits: Yuhcyram
Image credits: DoctorZPhD
Image credits: StephanieShutes
Image credits: Malerta
Image credits: jimmy_dguitar
Image credits: rebekahpearson
Ironically, the jobs these teachers took instead aren't known for particularly high pay or great work environment either. The fact they think it's still better than teaching is really depressing.
My mother went from teaching to private tutoring. Easily tripled her income.
I'm thinking that instead of becoming a kindergarten teacher, I should just do nannying.
Load More Replies...
University prof here. Tenured. Quit when it became unapologetically no longer about education, but merely about throughput. I refused to pass graduating seniors who could not write a literate sentence. Fighting over it with the dean and the admins just wore me down. It is no different in K12, except that instead of education the K12 schools only exist to deliver social services. That is not why people become teachers.
Elementary school teacher here. I love teaching and being with the kids, but unfortunately I cannot afford to be on my own. I have to always depend on someone else to share the bills with and that’s not right. I have a master’s degree and if I put all the hours down, I make minimum wage. On top of that, we have to deal with all the bureaucracy of the system, increasing work load, and demanding parents. I had a second job for years and quit the second job because I burnt out. I shouldn’t have to get a second job. I’m also tired of people mentioning my summer off. I easily put in 60-70 hours a week working and making peanuts for a salary. And just a reminder to all, most of us don’t get paid in the summer while many other professions enjoy weeks of paid time off. Teaching requires a lot of hard work, patience and will power. Teacher shortages are happening for many reasons. And if they don’t do anything about it, it’s only going to get worse. We deserve a living wage.
Long time teacher here. Our meager wages have been frozen and are years behind what we were promised. Standardized testing is a joke and not a true measure of a child's abilities. In fact, testing is simply a money making business, especially with career and college ready curricula. I got a letter from said testing company asking if I thought my 8 yr old was ready for college. No, 3rd graders are not ready, DUH! So many things we have to do are so someone can get elected. Period. They do not help kids. And there is all kinds of stress. The stress mentioned above, plus the stress of seeing and reporting abuse, dealing with difficult parents, etc. And worst of all, I have had some students who died. Cancer, seizures, pneumonia, etc. I actually had to give a standardized test to a child who had terminal brain cancer. How ridiculous is that!?
No one is mentioning the physical work environment. I had to move classrooms. The room I was given had literal holes in the walls, and I had to evacuate a rat from it. Not a mouse, a rat. Then I had to move my own furniture, clean, paint, and caulk. Also, it leaks AND floods. If say, an air conditioner goes out, teachers have had to wait more than 3 months or more till funds became available to repair it. Imagine working in a room that is constantly 80-90 degrees F, while being required to wear professional attire, and being in there with 30 other people.
It's the next story in a long line of stories about how incredibly broken the US society is. It's sad for all the people involved that education seems to be so badly funded that it's impossible to give teachers security, a decent wage and a decent pension plan. It's another step towards a society where education is a privilege instead of a right and it's also 30 steps back in time.
Don't kid yourself. This is not a US only problem
Load More Replies...
My BFF "I'm only still a teacher b/c the health insurance is actually decent". She put in 25 years of he** for ... "decent health insurance". Not even "great". Just "decent".
Teachers (and kindergarten workers too) should be paid a lot more. After all they have to deal with kids for a living, it ought to be exhausting after a while.
Exhausting is an understatement. It takes a toll on your whole body and mind.
Load More Replies...
This sucks to read because although I'm only just going in to high school this year I know I want to be a teacher but I also know it's a pretty demanding job :/
It isn't just demanding, it is soul crushing. Don't do it.
Load More Replies...
I'm a medically retired teacher and whilst it sucks I'll never wirk again at 32, it was refreshing to lose the stress of teaching. My mum is a teacher and everyday I see how worn down she is and how she's desperate for a new job but a history degree and being in her mid 50's means there isn't a lot of options. Teachers are treated slightly better in the U.K. than america it sounds but still not great.
Teachers absolutely need help. Any job which requires significant overtime on a regular basis is a job that needs to belong to more than one person. My mother taught 6th grade language arts for 30 years. I can't even begin to tell you how many 6th grade book reports I helped her grade while I was in high school. Teaching sounds great when you imagine one classroom of students, but it's more typical to deal with 180 students, 30 at a time. Every single assignment triggered 180 submissions that required grading. No thank you, not alone.
What's absolutely absurd about this is that "careers" in paramedicine/EMS are supposed to burn out the individual so fast that by the age of 50 they are ready to retire. Teaching seems to have jumped right passed that to the point that teachers don't even want to stay at the job.
It s not American...it s global. Teaching drains you from energy, the paycheck is a joke, rich parents look down to you, you are either too strict or too permissive. And people from other fields keep reminding you- hey, you earn what you deserve, look at all the spare time you got!!!! I' m from Romania, btw.
Don't forget regional differences also. I used to live in Tennessee (as it slid from the 49th to the 50th education state). My teacher friends told me that the starting pay at the time was $24,000 (master's required) and that ALL teachers were on like 7 year waiting lists to get jobs in PA or GA because of it.
Remember. The USA is the richest country on earth... But paying people to teach children vs. spending money on rockets and bombs. Not up for discussion.
I feel bad for teachers. Kids have no respect for anyone anymore. When my kids were in school, I worked with the teachers and I didn't make excuses for my kids or tolerate any disrespect towards the teachers from kids and they knew it. My mini me, had a couple of bad teachers it there was still no disrespect. I don't think any amount of pay would be worth teaching now. That is sad.
I was teaching a technical trade at the local jr. college. I enjoyed the work. The head of the tech side of the campus decided to fill the empty classrooms in the afternoons with high school students. They all acted like children in adult bodies. Perfect example: they would ask to be excused to the bathroom, and then they would repeatedly take a minimum 15-20 minute impromptu tour of the entire campus before they finally came back. These children did not have the maturity to go to the bathroom, but were offended that I did not treat them like men. They were deeply disrespectful & full of contempt for teachers. They really did not have any business being in a college class. I told the technical dean that, and he insisted they would stay, no negotiations allowed. So I mailed one resume, went on one interview, resigned, and doubled my pay in a day with better benefits. The new job was an engineering design job. It shook them up that I would quit. They thought they had a fool for life on their team. Not with as big an open door that was held open for me...
oh, I forgot to mention that my departure was the beginning of a long decline for that technical department... the lazy slackers I left behind let everything go down, down, down. They did the absolute minimum they had to do to keep their jobs. The tech dean had recruited me as the next dept. chair to take over & fix that mess starting the next August. The outfall was that it got so bad that the regents (board) finally got involved. The dean who would not work with me had to retire, the next dean was forced to resign, and eventually the entire dept. staff was replaced. I am not vindictive, but I get a good laugh every time I think about this... OHHHH the arrogance of these so-called "professional educators" with their over-rated & useless PhDs in education... How they howl when they finally get their payday and long overdue accountability. Too funny....
Load More Replies...
Well good for them. But not all of us can move to Canada.
Load More Replies...
I've commented here before that if teachers were paid according to how much they increase a student's knowledge, the highest paid ones would be at the pre-school and elementary school level and the lowest paid would be those advising PhD candidates. (This is someone else's idea but it's an important consideration)
People are paid according to the effort they took to get the degree. If pre-school teachers are paid the highest, which requires very little educational training, there will be a surplus of teachers wanting to be in pre-school and a dearth of teachers requiring PhDs....coz who will put in that much effort for lower pay to teach concepts that are harder? On the other hand, Australia's system is good - 1 teacher for every 5 students at pre-school level because taking care of young tots is harder, even if it requires less knowledge.
Load More Replies...
Much of the issues from US teachers could be sorted with a strong teachers' union. Yep, socialism does work for the people.
There’s method to this madness: badly paid jobs attract fewer brilliant people (because they earn more elsewhere) and only idealists (who crash and burn out) and people who can’t quit remain, constantly overworked, frustrated, half sick. That impacts the quality of teaching. Which impacts the standard of education. Which impacts everything. Then the fascist rise.
Pt 1 I wish the comments included countries of origin, so that we could actually know what each country is doing with their teachers, how it differs from these posts. I personally in Australia know that teachers down here when I was in school did not buy supplies, pay for things so that they could teach a class, it was all provided, they also have unions, their own banking institution so they are looked after for loans etc, and have never heard of any having to work other jobs unless they had to because they were saving up for something or trying to pay off homes faster. I do not know how that differs now, but we do not seem to have the same issues down here, and I would love to hear anyone that is a teacher from Oz or NZ chime in on that. I personally have always believed that teachers should not be allowed to become/study to be teachers until they have worked and lived a life first, they should not go from highschool to college/uni and then straight to a classroom.
pt 2 it often means that they have no life skills to share with students, that they also miss out on their own lives, work relationships, just different life lessons overall that the rest of the employed deal with. I also think that teaching should be scholarship based or just outright free to study, in all countries, so that people that do have that passion for it, can jump into that at any time in life, a person in their 30s who wants a career change that would be an amazing teacher cannot afford to drop everything and pay for a degree etc, if the terms were working at school sent to and then some kind of commitment for no fees, it would completely change the world. I also think that now homeschooling being a thing, why not make little home schooling groups, five families chip in and hire a proper teacher to homeschool the kids together, they won't lose the social interaction the kids aren't being taught by parents and the teachers will have less going on for the same if not more $$
Load More Replies...
if you think trying to teach these inmates just be a school bus driver. there is no way in hell I would ever do that again. 5 years of doing that cemented my childfree decision plus I dislike children. I can be nice, pleasant, to others kids but when they start the inevitable whining, puling, and tantruming, I can leave their brainwashed parent(s) dealing with it
me who recently became very obsessed worth being an English teacher, despite my parents both being teachers: ._.
Something just doesn't add up with these stories. The average starting teaching salary in the US in 2019 was $40,000 a year. Assuming 2000 hours or work, that's $20 an hour... Yet apparently grocery baggers and pizza delivery drivers are making way more working fewer hours. Other BP posts claim these jobs keep you at minimum wage and overwork you. Both these things can't be true. These stories are echoed by mainstream media in the US and these logical inconsistencies are what creates the distrust.
It depends on where you're getting your numbers. Some media groups take the "average" from states with a high cost of living to make it seem like teachers make more. This way they can boost their ratings and clicks. Where I live in the Midwest, the starting salary for a teacher with a masters degree is $28,000. To get to $40,000 you need 30+ years of teaching at your school. If you switch districts, they can drop you all the way back to first year salary again.
Load More Replies... As long as the ridiculous school system is not being changed into something more inclusive and schools become a place where not just academics but all skills are appreciated and create human beings that fall in love with life long learning/experience that learning can be fun and enjoyed, more Montessori/alternative proven teaching methods being used, I and many others will never go back there.
What I don’t understand is just how people can make the decision go into teaching when everyone KNOWS full well what is involved with that career path. It’s no secret how the life of a teacher works. Why are they wasting their time and money going to college for it? People should teach because they love teaching (or do whatever they do because they love it) not for money. Young people today have no direction with their lives. You do not have to go to college right after high school. Why not chill out for a few years, figure out what you want to do, do some research about it and then make your decision? I honestly think that people just make the decision to be a teacher because they think they’ll get 3 months off in the summer.
It's a calling I think... you want to share knowledge and help children reach their potential. Even if you know how bad things are, that can strengthen your resolve to make a difference. Not that different from people who join the military while a war is going on... a battle is being fought, the stakes are high and the future is at stake.
Load More Replies...
What an ignorant assumption. You probably live in a dirt cheap area and have no family to support. Not all of us live in the same place. Have you seen rents in the east coast? And before you say anything, no, moving is not an option. I shouldn’t have to move to the boondocks and live in a trailer in order to survive.
Load More Replies...
ah yes, I remember When I learnt Correct capitalization from bored panda.. my Mother says I Shouldn't Capitalise random words in a Sentence. I'm not Sure what she's on about.. social media is a very reliable teacher.
Load More Replies...
And thanks to that, far fewer are going into education and many are leaving. What perks do you speak of? Having to pay for your own masters' degrees? Working 70+ hours per week? Spending your summers on professional development or another degree? 60k may be the average, but not the median. The median is closer to 47k. No one in a median or larger city buys a house with that kind of income. Don't start with "oh they get summers off", they really don't and work an average of 73 hours per week (per the US OMB), so they actually work more hours per year than a typical worker. Supply and demand don't seem to factor in here, fewer teachers only really mean more students (35+ average now) but no extra pay for larger classes. So, no, I won't stop it. Teachers are the lowest paid professionals based on their educational level.
Load More Replies...
Ironically, the jobs these teachers took instead aren't known for particularly high pay or great work environment either. The fact they think it's still better than teaching is really depressing.
My mother went from teaching to private tutoring. Easily tripled her income.
I'm thinking that instead of becoming a kindergarten teacher, I should just do nannying.
Load More Replies... University prof here. Tenured. Quit when it became unapologetically no longer about education, but merely about throughput. I refused to pass graduating seniors who could not write a literate sentence. Fighting over it with the dean and the admins just wore me down. It is no different in K12, except that instead of education the K12 schools only exist to deliver social services. That is not why people become teachers.
Elementary school teacher here. I love teaching and being with the kids, but unfortunately I cannot afford to be on my own. I have to always depend on someone else to share the bills with and that’s not right. I have a master’s degree and if I put all the hours down, I make minimum wage. On top of that, we have to deal with all the bureaucracy of the system, increasing work load, and demanding parents. I had a second job for years and quit the second job because I burnt out. I shouldn’t have to get a second job. I’m also tired of people mentioning my summer off. I easily put in 60-70 hours a week working and making peanuts for a salary. And just a reminder to all, most of us don’t get paid in the summer while many other professions enjoy weeks of paid time off. Teaching requires a lot of hard work, patience and will power. Teacher shortages are happening for many reasons. And if they don’t do anything about it, it’s only going to get worse. We deserve a living wage.
Long time teacher here. Our meager wages have been frozen and are years behind what we were promised. Standardized testing is a joke and not a true measure of a child's abilities. In fact, testing is simply a money making business, especially with career and college ready curricula. I got a letter from said testing company asking if I thought my 8 yr old was ready for college. No, 3rd graders are not ready, DUH! So many things we have to do are so someone can get elected. Period. They do not help kids. And there is all kinds of stress. The stress mentioned above, plus the stress of seeing and reporting abuse, dealing with difficult parents, etc. And worst of all, I have had some students who died. Cancer, seizures, pneumonia, etc. I actually had to give a standardized test to a child who had terminal brain cancer. How ridiculous is that!?
No one is mentioning the physical work environment. I had to move classrooms. The room I was given had literal holes in the walls, and I had to evacuate a rat from it. Not a mouse, a rat. Then I had to move my own furniture, clean, paint, and caulk. Also, it leaks AND floods. If say, an air conditioner goes out, teachers have had to wait more than 3 months or more till funds became available to repair it. Imagine working in a room that is constantly 80-90 degrees F, while being required to wear professional attire, and being in there with 30 other people.
It's the next story in a long line of stories about how incredibly broken the US society is. It's sad for all the people involved that education seems to be so badly funded that it's impossible to give teachers security, a decent wage and a decent pension plan. It's another step towards a society where education is a privilege instead of a right and it's also 30 steps back in time.
Don't kid yourself. This is not a US only problem
Load More Replies... My BFF "I'm only still a teacher b/c the health insurance is actually decent". She put in 25 years of he** for ... "decent health insurance". Not even "great". Just "decent".
Teachers (and kindergarten workers too) should be paid a lot more. After all they have to deal with kids for a living, it ought to be exhausting after a while.
Exhausting is an understatement. It takes a toll on your whole body and mind.
Load More Replies... This sucks to read because although I'm only just going in to high school this year I know I want to be a teacher but I also know it's a pretty demanding job :/
It isn't just demanding, it is soul crushing. Don't do it.
Load More Replies... I'm a medically retired teacher and whilst it sucks I'll never wirk again at 32, it was refreshing to lose the stress of teaching. My mum is a teacher and everyday I see how worn down she is and how she's desperate for a new job but a history degree and being in her mid 50's means there isn't a lot of options. Teachers are treated slightly better in the U.K. than america it sounds but still not great.
Teachers absolutely need help. Any job which requires significant overtime on a regular basis is a job that needs to belong to more than one person. My mother taught 6th grade language arts for 30 years. I can't even begin to tell you how many 6th grade book reports I helped her grade while I was in high school. Teaching sounds great when you imagine one classroom of students, but it's more typical to deal with 180 students, 30 at a time. Every single assignment triggered 180 submissions that required grading. No thank you, not alone.
What's absolutely absurd about this is that "careers" in paramedicine/EMS are supposed to burn out the individual so fast that by the age of 50 they are ready to retire. Teaching seems to have jumped right passed that to the point that teachers don't even want to stay at the job.
It s not American...it s global. Teaching drains you from energy, the paycheck is a joke, rich parents look down to you, you are either too strict or too permissive. And people from other fields keep reminding you- hey, you earn what you deserve, look at all the spare time you got!!!! I' m from Romania, btw.
Don't forget regional differences also. I used to live in Tennessee (as it slid from the 49th to the 50th education state). My teacher friends told me that the starting pay at the time was $24,000 (master's required) and that ALL teachers were on like 7 year waiting lists to get jobs in PA or GA because of it.
Remember. The USA is the richest country on earth... But paying people to teach children vs. spending money on rockets and bombs. Not up for discussion.
I feel bad for teachers. Kids have no respect for anyone anymore. When my kids were in school, I worked with the teachers and I didn't make excuses for my kids or tolerate any disrespect towards the teachers from kids and they knew it. My mini me, had a couple of bad teachers it there was still no disrespect. I don't think any amount of pay would be worth teaching now. That is sad.
I was teaching a technical trade at the local jr. college. I enjoyed the work. The head of the tech side of the campus decided to fill the empty classrooms in the afternoons with high school students. They all acted like children in adult bodies. Perfect example: they would ask to be excused to the bathroom, and then they would repeatedly take a minimum 15-20 minute impromptu tour of the entire campus before they finally came back. These children did not have the maturity to go to the bathroom, but were offended that I did not treat them like men. They were deeply disrespectful & full of contempt for teachers. They really did not have any business being in a college class. I told the technical dean that, and he insisted they would stay, no negotiations allowed. So I mailed one resume, went on one interview, resigned, and doubled my pay in a day with better benefits. The new job was an engineering design job. It shook them up that I would quit. They thought they had a fool for life on their team. Not with as big an open door that was held open for me...
oh, I forgot to mention that my departure was the beginning of a long decline for that technical department... the lazy slackers I left behind let everything go down, down, down. They did the absolute minimum they had to do to keep their jobs. The tech dean had recruited me as the next dept. chair to take over & fix that mess starting the next August. The outfall was that it got so bad that the regents (board) finally got involved. The dean who would not work with me had to retire, the next dean was forced to resign, and eventually the entire dept. staff was replaced. I am not vindictive, but I get a good laugh every time I think about this... OHHHH the arrogance of these so-called "professional educators" with their over-rated & useless PhDs in education... How they howl when they finally get their payday and long overdue accountability. Too funny....
Load More Replies... Well good for them. But not all of us can move to Canada.
Load More Replies... I've commented here before that if teachers were paid according to how much they increase a student's knowledge, the highest paid ones would be at the pre-school and elementary school level and the lowest paid would be those advising PhD candidates. (This is someone else's idea but it's an important consideration)
People are paid according to the effort they took to get the degree. If pre-school teachers are paid the highest, which requires very little educational training, there will be a surplus of teachers wanting to be in pre-school and a dearth of teachers requiring PhDs....coz who will put in that much effort for lower pay to teach concepts that are harder? On the other hand, Australia's system is good - 1 teacher for every 5 students at pre-school level because taking care of young tots is harder, even if it requires less knowledge.
Load More Replies... Much of the issues from US teachers could be sorted with a strong teachers' union. Yep, socialism does work for the people.
There’s method to this madness: badly paid jobs attract fewer brilliant people (because they earn more elsewhere) and only idealists (who crash and burn out) and people who can’t quit remain, constantly overworked, frustrated, half sick. That impacts the quality of teaching. Which impacts the standard of education. Which impacts everything. Then the fascist rise.
Pt 1 I wish the comments included countries of origin, so that we could actually know what each country is doing with their teachers, how it differs from these posts. I personally in Australia know that teachers down here when I was in school did not buy supplies, pay for things so that they could teach a class, it was all provided, they also have unions, their own banking institution so they are looked after for loans etc, and have never heard of any having to work other jobs unless they had to because they were saving up for something or trying to pay off homes faster. I do not know how that differs now, but we do not seem to have the same issues down here, and I would love to hear anyone that is a teacher from Oz or NZ chime in on that. I personally have always believed that teachers should not be allowed to become/study to be teachers until they have worked and lived a life first, they should not go from highschool to college/uni and then straight to a classroom.
pt 2 it often means that they have no life skills to share with students, that they also miss out on their own lives, work relationships, just different life lessons overall that the rest of the employed deal with. I also think that teaching should be scholarship based or just outright free to study, in all countries, so that people that do have that passion for it, can jump into that at any time in life, a person in their 30s who wants a career change that would be an amazing teacher cannot afford to drop everything and pay for a degree etc, if the terms were working at school sent to and then some kind of commitment for no fees, it would completely change the world. I also think that now homeschooling being a thing, why not make little home schooling groups, five families chip in and hire a proper teacher to homeschool the kids together, they won't lose the social interaction the kids aren't being taught by parents and the teachers will have less going on for the same if not more $$
Load More Replies... if you think trying to teach these inmates just be a school bus driver. there is no way in hell I would ever do that again. 5 years of doing that cemented my childfree decision plus I dislike children. I can be nice, pleasant, to others kids but when they start the inevitable whining, puling, and tantruming, I can leave their brainwashed parent(s) dealing with it
me who recently became very obsessed worth being an English teacher, despite my parents both being teachers: ._.
Something just doesn't add up with these stories. The average starting teaching salary in the US in 2019 was $40,000 a year. Assuming 2000 hours or work, that's $20 an hour... Yet apparently grocery baggers and pizza delivery drivers are making way more working fewer hours. Other BP posts claim these jobs keep you at minimum wage and overwork you. Both these things can't be true. These stories are echoed by mainstream media in the US and these logical inconsistencies are what creates the distrust.
It depends on where you're getting your numbers. Some media groups take the "average" from states with a high cost of living to make it seem like teachers make more. This way they can boost their ratings and clicks. Where I live in the Midwest, the starting salary for a teacher with a masters degree is $28,000. To get to $40,000 you need 30+ years of teaching at your school. If you switch districts, they can drop you all the way back to first year salary again.
Load More Replies... As long as the ridiculous school system is not being changed into something more inclusive and schools become a place where not just academics but all skills are appreciated and create human beings that fall in love with life long learning/experience that learning can be fun and enjoyed, more Montessori/alternative proven teaching methods being used, I and many others will never go back there.
What I don’t understand is just how people can make the decision go into teaching when everyone KNOWS full well what is involved with that career path. It’s no secret how the life of a teacher works. Why are they wasting their time and money going to college for it? People should teach because they love teaching (or do whatever they do because they love it) not for money. Young people today have no direction with their lives. You do not have to go to college right after high school. Why not chill out for a few years, figure out what you want to do, do some research about it and then make your decision? I honestly think that people just make the decision to be a teacher because they think they’ll get 3 months off in the summer.
It's a calling I think... you want to share knowledge and help children reach their potential. Even if you know how bad things are, that can strengthen your resolve to make a difference. Not that different from people who join the military while a war is going on... a battle is being fought, the stakes are high and the future is at stake.
Load More Replies... What an ignorant assumption. You probably live in a dirt cheap area and have no family to support. Not all of us live in the same place. Have you seen rents in the east coast? And before you say anything, no, moving is not an option. I shouldn’t have to move to the boondocks and live in a trailer in order to survive.
Load More Replies... ah yes, I remember When I learnt Correct capitalization from bored panda.. my Mother says I Shouldn't Capitalise random words in a Sentence. I'm not Sure what she's on about.. social media is a very reliable teacher.
Load More Replies... And thanks to that, far fewer are going into education and many are leaving. What perks do you speak of? Having to pay for your own masters' degrees? Working 70+ hours per week? Spending your summers on professional development or another degree? 60k may be the average, but not the median. The median is closer to 47k. No one in a median or larger city buys a house with that kind of income. Don't start with "oh they get summers off", they really don't and work an average of 73 hours per week (per the US OMB), so they actually work more hours per year than a typical worker. Supply and demand don't seem to factor in here, fewer teachers only really mean more students (35+ average now) but no extra pay for larger classes. So, no, I won't stop it. Teachers are the lowest paid professionals based on their educational level.
Load More Replies...
150
83