Considering Teaching - what should I know?

[Zette]

I haven't read all the replies, but have you considered becoming a dyslexia tutor?  There's a huge need, you'd be able to work as much or little as you wanted, and you'd get all the satisfaction of teaching kids without the politics.  Going rate seems to be $35/hr in rural areas, $50-$60/hr in most of the country, and as high as $75-$100 in NYC.

[Longwaytogo]

My DW teaches at a Title 1 (lower income) elementary school and she hates it. Were embracing mustachianism so she can quit full time teaching and become a domestic engineer and live on my income.
If you enjoy the following, teaching in the public school system is for you:
-Disrespectful and violent children that refuse to submit to any authority figure.
-Dead beat parents that blame you for their kid's issues.
-Gossipy, vile coworkers that will throw your name through the mud unless you play their games.
-Lose sleep the week of standardized testing week because so much rides on those damn scores.
-Administrators that pass the failures down to you for their poor leadership, but take credit when things go right.
-Spending your own hard earned money on basic school supplied for kids.
-Seeing your beloved summers eroded year after year with more in-service work.
-Work for 30 years for a meager pension that politicians/school board can slash whenever they want.
-Taking your work home with you to grade papers during your free time rather than spending time with family/hobbies.
-Making near poverty level income and become a debt slave to your student loans FOOREEVAAA.

Remember that telling someone, "I do it for the outcome, not the income" is good advise for someone who makes shit for money and lives near the poverty line. Teaching isn't a passion or lifestyle, its a BS job where you exchange your time and labor for currency, that's it.

Man, sounds like your pretty pissed off ): sorry your wife hates her job so much.

My wife has taught at a Title 1 school for 11 years and loves it. In fact 3 of the last 5 years it has been the POOREST school of the 140 elementary schools in our county. As a counter to a few of your points-

- of course there are occasionally some disrespectful kids but I'm sure the "rich kids" can be just as disrespectful. Luckily she has not experienced much violence (none towards her, a couple small instances between kids but I got in a few fights myself in my day)
- most of the parents are extremely grateful for the work she does
-I'l admit there are some gossipy annoying coworkers, but I don't think that's exclusive to teaching by any means
-She has never lost any sleep to a standardized test week to my knowledge, in general she has always had less stress than me when I was running my business
-She has had 4 principals and got along great with all of them
-Never spends much if any of our money on school supplies (average $100-$200 annual) and we write that off
-She spends her lunch time planning/grading and goes in early while kids are sleeping anyway. She's home by 4:30   4 days a week and 5:30 the day she has staff meetings. As others have mentioned if you work efficiently and minimize socialazation theres no reason you have to bring stuff home.

-Making near poverty level income and become a debt slave to your student loans FOOREEVAAA.

Have to disagree with you the most on this one. Making 70K a year as a 10 month employee is nowhere near poverty level. And she went to the University of Maryland for 4 years under the HOPE scholarship for free(only obligation was to teach in MD 1 year for each year you received scholarship, which of course she has already fulfilled) . So no student loans.

[alice76]

While public pays more than private on a national scale, this doesn't necessarily hold true in hot markets like NYC. Typically, private has no pension, but a well-funded school will have many teachers making over 100k and will have a generous tiaa cref contribution.

[Neustache]

@MrsPete

I appreciate the input....but maybe I'm a half-glass-full kind of gal (actually, this is a well-known fact) but are you saying that up to 50% of my students MIGHT ACTUALLY PAY ATTENTION!?! 

Holy cr@p! That's better than I imagined! 


I'm going to teach science (assuming I can pass the dang test!).  Science isn't everyone's gig, and that's fine.  If half of them daydream, it will be no different from when I constantly daydreamed in school.  But I still really loved school, overall. 

My biggest goal is for the kids to mostly learn the material.  If I can make the class great for a few of them, then that's an awesome perk.  I mean, seriously, if I get a few kids per semester who go home gushing about my class, that will be a major win in my book.

I guess I'm a weird kind of optimist.  Maybe I'm a happy realist?  I don't know what to call it.  I set my expectations low, and then I'm pleasantly surprised when my outcome is better.  Is that an optimist?  Sounds very pessimistic, but I'm not at all what most would consider pessimistic. 

But seriously, this has been a great thread.  I wonder - for those complaining about politics/pay/etc. - what other jobs have you held?  Have you always been a teacher, or did you work in the corporate world prior? 

So far I've worked in white collar jobs, and while I've been low-paid I've never been unhappy with my pay, I've had some very stressful jobs, and some jobs full of very, very subtle politics.  Maybe it's more overt in schools? 

[BPA]

Tutoring is nothing like teaching -- nothing at all.  The tough part about teaching isn't presenting material to the students or coming up with creative ideas.  The tough part is managing a classroom of 30 students at once.  The tough parts are multi-tasking and being patient.  The tough thing is presenting your lecture while noticing that the kid in the back is texting -- yet again, and you want to smash the phone, but you can't -- while the kid by the window is watching the ROTC kids march in the yard and the kid on the front row has his head down.  It's taking care of all those things PLUS answering the office's phone call /writing a note to send Tommy to see the Vice Principal AND answering the door to accept the delivery of some books you requested from the library.  You must be able to do ALL these things AND MORE simultaneously. 

I clock in at 6:45 and begin teaching at 7:00.  I'm officially done at 2:15, and I typically leave around 3:00.  We get 26 minutes for lunch, and every other week that must be spent in the cafeteria supervising students.

Time spent grading is hard to generalize.  Some weeks I have very little ... and then comes paper week. 

Don't forget to allot time after school for meetings (average 2Xs per week) and sports duty and other mandatory after school extra-curriculars.

It is absolutely impossible to avoid politics.  The days of being able to close your classroom door and teach are gone.  We are all much more connected than we used to be, and the "powers that be" will occasionally stomp on you ... no matter what you do. 

Changing schools?  Easy, if a job exists.  First you want to get a job, then you want to get THE JOB that you want and THE CLASSROOM that you want and THE CLASSES that you want. 

I've always heard that you teach elementary because you like children, middle school because you're insane, high school because you like the subject, and college because you want the opportunity for research. 

No, my state does not pay a supplement for a teacher with a graduate degree.  No, my state does not pay more for teachers of certain subjects.  As a language teacher, I have to agree with that:  Knowledge is nothing if you cannot communicate what you know to others.  Paying more for math or science implies that they are more valuable than a well-balanced student. 

Consider teaching online; it isn't particularly good for the students, but it is cheap, so it's the wave of the future. 

I previously taught HS, high level science and math courses. The first time teaching any class is time consuming, gets easier every time thereafter as much of the planning is done. 

The first three years are SUPER HARD, but then you get into the swing of things.  You have a backlog of activities and study guides and tests, so you don't have to create everything from scratch every time.  It's never easy, but after the first three years it becomes easier. 

After that, every time you get a new textbook, or the state changes the curriculum, or you teach a new class, it will be hard again ... but never so hard as those first three years again. 

The main benefit of teaching is the pension.  Without the pension I would not do it.

True. 

Can one negotiate as with in industry?

If you were an experienced teacher, the principal might agree to some requests:  For example, you might ask for a classroom right off the bat instead of "traveling" on a cart.  You might ask for a specific planning period, or you might ask to teach Algebra 2 and never Geometry.  I know one highly-sought after teacher who said he'd only come to our school if his wife could also have a job. 

However, you will be subject to the state /county /city's salary scale, and it is set in stone.
Without experience, you will not be given any special considerations.
Unless you're a coach, and then you can write your own ticket -- coaches are solid gold to a principal.  Lots of people are qualified to teach Calculus; few are qualified to teach Calculus AND to coach basketball.

Research what impact teaching will have on your social security benefits.  In some states if you become a teacher you enter a public employees retirement system, the effect of which is you basically forfeit all the social security benefits you have accrued to date.  I'm not sure the ins and outs of this, and think it varies by state, but is a real think in KS where we live, and in MO where I have family who are teachers and know people who have decided to become teachers as a second career in their 50's and basically lost 35 years of social security accruals.  Be careful.  Be very, very careful.  If your SS is impacted, you might consider looking at some of the tutoring services that are becoming increasingly important as school districts continue to struggle with budget cuts (Sylvan, for example).  It's part time, or full time depending on your interest/time commitment, and is a private company not affiliated with any school district.  Good luck!

This "no SS for you" is not true for most states, but it would be a make-or-break item.  You should absolutely investigate this.

going to IM teacherwithamustache - I've long felt that some of the effort the teachers go into is not actually effective or efficient.  Want to get the most bang for my buck time-wise.

You don't always have the choice to do what's most effective.  This goes back to the politics thing. 

Answers to some questions:
Jr. High kids are excited to interact with you.  They may want to interact negatively, and some will have issues that make you uncomfortable (gangs, pregnancy and homelessness are hard things to see middle schoolers deal with).  High school students have a lot more variation.  They're basically people, only with less self control.

In my district they don't care about type of masters.  Pay at the public schools is union negotiated and published online.  I've also been involved in hiring, three years experience is worth way more than a masters.

Other observations: Teaching is a job, not a hobby and the reason there are teachers on the forum is that we are working to RE from teaching.  What make you think you'll like it better than the career you picked out initially? 

We've all met former engineers who go into teachig because they know that they can fix the system; don't be that guy.  Respect that your colleagues know more about teaching than you.

It may not provide you with the interaction that you want.  I don't spend much time with adults at school, maybe 15 min per day on average.

My favorite things about teaching are the autonomy, the unpredictability and watching the kids try things for the first time, like using fickle in a sentence, or making matrix puns.

My least favorite parts are being told how to do my job by people who don't know, doing things that are not useful (make a giant cross referenced spreadsheet of all material covered ever) and interacting with parents.

Any reason you aren't considering private schools?  They love advertising their employees degrees.

Yeah, good advice -- I do like the autonomy within my own classroom, I do like interacting with the students (most of them).  I do miss seeing adults, which is why I ALWAYS go to lunch to get my 26 minutes with other real people. 

I definitely hate people who don't have a clue telling me how to do my job.  And even though I'm one of the most patient people on the planet, I get sooooo sick of telling kids the same thing over and over and over again. 

Private schools pay less than public schools. 

I'm kind of exploring this right now.  I say kind of because substituting has shown me that it's probably not the right path for me. 

The problem is, I am willing to put up with just about anything to get the schedule of summers off, snow days off, random Monday holidays that no real job ever considers a holiday off, etc. 

For me, an introvert, it's just so exhausting having to be in aha agree of these NOISY little people all day.  I really enjoy teaching the material, but not for 35 hours a week!  Especially since I come home to my own kids wanting to talk to me! 

I'm an engineer by training, and I could get certified to teach high school math pretty easily and cheaply.  I've come to the conclusion that I can only handle teaching 50% time.  I've been putting the word out subtly at my school that I'm interested in a half time position if there ever is one. 

One issue I foresee with math is that the classes are taught in lockstep, so I don't know how much I'd be able to optimize grading and such. 

I am definitely highly interested in not spending a bunch of time at home on teaching stuff.  Maybe that sounds callous, or like I'm not in it for the love of teaching.  I guess I have a love of teaching to a certain point, and I hit that point well before the 40-50-60 hour a week mark. 

It seems like teachers have to spend a lot of time dealing with parents, and dealing with students who miss class then need stuff made up.  So you are spending your planning period helping kids who are confused/missed class, and not actually planning.  Then grading......  Math homework in my school is daily and they self-grade in class, but then you've got to put it all in every night, 7 classes times 25 kids.  That alone would probably take the whole planning period.  And you've got to write a test and make-up test for every chapter.  Etc. 

My district is affluent (if you couldn't tell, lol).

Subbing is a good way to get an idea of what teaching is like, but it falls short of the full experience:  You're managing a classrom,yes, but you're not planning the overall lessons /following the state requirements.  You're not responsible for giving grades, and -- trust me on this -- the worst part of this job is saying to a senior, "You have failed my class.  You will not be graduating."  I once even had a kid come to graduation IN A CAP AND GOWN and claim that she didn't know she'd failed my class.  The principal totally threw me under the bus and made me go talk to her family at graduation (even though they'd been informed multiple times, including face-to-face meetings and registered letters). 

Yes, the schedule is great, especially for a parent!  However, the general public is kind of pissy about it, and you will constantly hear things like, "It must be nice to have a secure, high paying job with great benefits and only work six months a year!" 

ALL classes are moving towards the lockstep concept you mention, but I do think math is leading the way.  So forget bring in efficient methods or helping the students who fall behind (or the ones who are ready for some enrichment). 

Yes, your planning period MOST DAYS will be used up in working with students who skipped your class, or contacting parents, or doing other such tasks.  Your actual planning will mostly happen in after-school meetings with other teachers who teach your same subject and/or at home.

Two things that'll help you with your planning:

- Be VERY organized.  Keep electronic copies of EVERYTHING you create so you can use it again. 

- In your first years, take time after every activity to ASSESS its effectiveness.  Frankly, in your first years, you're going to screw up a lot; pacing is super-hard at first -- some days you'll zip through your lesson in 5 minutes, while others you'll fail to finish what you expected to do in one class period.  Sometimes you'll realize that the students would've done better if you'd introduced the lesson in this way.  Other times you'll realize that they didn't need so much practice on ____, but they needed more on _____.  While these things are fresh in your mind, STOP and write them down.  You won't remember next semester or next year.  This is VERY HARD to do because your instinct is to drive on into tomorrow's lesson, not to slow down and consider what you should've done better today ... but if you do it, you will see real improvement semester after semester. 

I would respect that they know more about teaching than I do, but I am pretty near 100% sure the majority won't know more about the actual subject.  The teaching skills can be acquired.

Eh, not quite.  To be an effective teacher, you must come into the job with the right personality.  That cannot be taught.  Any person with reasonable intelligence can master any high school subject well enough to teach the material -- but not everyone can keep control of classroom behavior, can break the subject down into "managable bites" for beginning students, and can motivate students to do their work.  Teaching techniques can be aquired; that is, you can see an example of a jigsaw technique, you can learn to plan a Socratic seminar, you can be taught reading improvement techniques ... but if you don't have the teacher personality, you will fail.  This doesn't mean you're a good or bad person -- just that you're the right person for this job.

Are they wild maniacs or do they respect me?

That's up to you.  The first year teacher next door to me is a dear girl, but she foolishly allowed her first semester students to walk all over her.  At the semester break she BEGGED me for help, and she even admitted, "I thought I could give them a reasonable amount of freedom in the classroom and they'd react positively.  I thought I could reason with them like adults.  I was wrong.  Tell me how to do better next semester."  And she has shown MASSIVE improvement. 

If your state allows you to teach math you might be in pretty good shape.   I would definitely go for high school and go for the tougher upper level classes such as calc and stat and physics.

You're going to find that the older, more experienced teachers will be trusted with the advanced level classes, while the new guy's going to be assigned to 9th grade Algebra 1, including a couple remedial classes.  We all took our turn with that level.

I'm a teacher too, but my personal hero is a guy at my school who's FI and works as a teacher's aide. Starting pay for an aide is around $15/hour, but he's not doing it for the paycheck. He actually used to work hellacious hours in private equity, made his millions, FIREd, and now likes being an aide for some of the reasons you mentioned: he has the time, and he enjoys working with people and helping kids. As an aide, he gets to do a lot of the fun stuff without dealing with all the headaches like grading, conferences, paperwork, etc. Plus, he gets great benefits, and since he's been doing it about 10 years now, he'll get a modest pension. He always says that the money he made in finance is what he lives on, and his current paycheck is his fun money. Not a bad setup!

If you're interested in a school job, but not necessarily a teaching job ... plenty exist.  Bus driver, cafeteria worker, Special Ed teachers' aid (they drive the bus for the constant Special Ed field trips and assist with feeding /bathroom for the severe and profound class).

I love that!  I want a slew of demos like that for my first year.

Keep in mind that your better, motivated students will LOVE those things, will beg for more, and will go home and talk about you in exited tones at the family dinner table ... but a good 50% of your students will text while you're throwing solid gold at them.  That will eat at your soul.

+1 to all of this.  I've been teaching for 19 years and love the kids and most of my colleagues.  Changes in education policy particularly those which crush creativity and dictate how I teach, lack of support from adminstrators which leads to parents and students having more power than they should, and issues with how my union operates (and I've been a union rep for 14 years) are the reasons I'm burning out.  I will miss the actual classroom teaching and connecting with young people, but it is impossible to get away from the rest of the bullshit.

[fartface]

I have been an educator for 18 years: 10 teaching + 8 administrative. I'm also an adjunct professor at a nearby university. I instruct graduate students (they already hold bachelor's degrees in unrelated fields, and are now working towards teacher certification in my state).

I have interviewed, hired, mentored, and coached dozens of new teachers.

You'll rarely be asked, "How good are you at solving X math problem?"

We once had a bright, gifted 'engineer' type completing his teacher certification.  Sadly, he was unable to relate to students....particularly the struggling learners who didn't "get" a skill or concept the first time taught. His borderline abusive language, pedagogy, and delivery of the content were so poorly done that he was asked to leave the school and never return.

A good teacher must meet a student where he/she is at and scaffold learning from that point to the desired outcome. Being a gifted mathematician does not necessarily mean you'll be an effective educator; however, if you're willing to be mentored and coached in this area, you'll have a high likelihood of success.

Oh, and you can't take yourself too seriously. I have a grrreat sense of humor...just look at my screen name!

At any rate, here are some 'typical' interview questions for you to ponder...

1. What do you want to accomplish as a teacher?
2. How will (do) you go about finding out about students' attitudes and feelings about your class?
3. How do you go about deciding what it is that should be taught in your class?
4. A parent comes to you and complains that what you are teaching his child is irrelevant to the child's needs. How would you respond?
5. How do you go about finding what students are good at?
6. Would you rather try 'experimental' teaching strategies or try to perfect the approaches that work best for you? Explain your position.
7. Do you like to teach with an overall plan in mind for the year, or would you rather just teach some interesting things and let the process determine the results? Explain your position.
8. A student is doing poorly in your class. You talk to her, and she tells you that she considers you to be the poorest teacher she has ever met. What would you do?

[MrsPete]

Have to disagree with you the most on this one. Making 70K a year as a 10 month employee is nowhere nheear poverty level.

Check your own state's salary scale.  Unless you go into administration, you'll never top 50K in my state.  Of course, we're also a low cost of living area. 

- of course there are occasionally some disrespectful kids but I'm sure the "rich kids" can be just as disrespectful. Luckily she has not experienced much violence (none towards her, a couple small instances between kids but I got in a few fights myself in my day)
-Never spends much if any of our money on school supplies (average $100-$200 annual) and we write that off
-She spends her lunch time planning/grading and goes in early while kids are sleeping anyway. She's home by 4:30   4 days a week and 5:30 the day she has staff meetings. As others have mentioned if you work efficiently and minimize socialazation theres no reason you have to bring stuff home.

Having taught literally thousands of students over the years, I can assure you that rich kids and poor kids are each difficult in their own ways.  Equally true:  Students strong in academics and students weak in academics are each difficult in their own ways. 

I probably average $100-200 for school supplies, but I have the occasional $400 year. 

Aside from PE teachers, I don't know how you'd ever avoid bringing work home -- even if you do use every minute of every day efficiently. 

While public pays more than private on a national scale, this doesn't necessarily hold true in hot markets like NYC. Typically, private has no pension, but a well-funded school will have many teachers making over 100k and will have a generous tiaa cref contribution.

I suspect pensions are going to die out -- not immediately, but within the relatively near future.  I suspect school systems will be forced to go to a two-tier payment scale:  Those of us who've been "in" a while will remain on the current schedule, while the new teachers will receive more pay ... but also no pension.  I see our state legislature working towards this end. 

The point:  I'd not go into teaching NOW assuming that you'll earn a pension. 

@MrsPete

I appreciate the input....but maybe I'm a half-glass-full kind of gal (actually, this is a well-known fact) but are you saying that up to 50% of my students MIGHT ACTUALLY PAY ATTENTION!?! 

Holy cr@p! That's better than I imagined! 


I'm going to teach science (assuming I can pass the dang test!).  Science isn't everyone's gig, and that's fine.  If half of them daydream, it will be no different from when I constantly daydreamed in school.  But I still really loved school, overall. 

My biggest goal is for the kids to mostly learn the material.  If I can make the class great for a few of them, then that's an awesome perk.  I mean, seriously, if I get a few kids per semester who go home gushing about my class, that will be a major win in my book.

I guess I'm a weird kind of optimist.  Maybe I'm a happy realist?  I don't know what to call it.  I set my expectations low, and then I'm pleasantly surprised when my outcome is better.  Is that an optimist?  Sounds very pessimistic, but I'm not at all what most would consider pessimistic. 

But seriously, this has been a great thread.  I wonder - for those complaining about politics/pay/etc. - what other jobs have you held?  Have you always been a teacher, or did you work in the corporate world prior? 

So far I've worked in white collar jobs, and while I've been low-paid I've never been unhappy with my pay, I've had some very stressful jobs, and some jobs full of very, very subtle politics.  Maybe it's more overt in schools?

No, I wouldn't call you a weird kind of optimist or a happy realist -- I'd say you sound just like every new student teacher.  Optimistic, yes.  However, also inexperienced and naive. 

Other jobs I've held?  As a child and a teen, I always wanted to be a teacher.  Backup job:  Librarian.  Yeah, really.  However, right out of college, I worked briefly as a Technical Writer, then I was in Human Resources for a couple years, and I was good at both -- but found them dull.  Same thing day in, day out.  Also, when I got married and knew I wanted children, I couldn't imagine not working ... yet I also couldn't imagine working a typical office schedule, so I started thinking about teaching again. 

All jobs have some politics-issues, but I do think it's more overt in schools.  I know I deal with more of that mess than does my husband. 

[retired?]

I have been an educator for 18 years: 10 teaching + 8 administrative. I'm also an adjunct professor at a nearby university. I instruct graduate students (they already hold bachelor's degrees in unrelated fields, and are now working towards teacher certification in my state).

I have interviewed, hired, mentored, and coached dozens of new teachers.

You'll rarely be asked, "How good are you at solving X math problem?"

We once had a bright, gifted 'engineer' type completing his teacher certification.  Sadly, he was unable to relate to students....particularly the struggling learners who didn't "get" a skill or concept the first time taught. His borderline abusive language, pedagogy, and delivery of the content were so poorly done that he was asked to leave the school and never return.

A good teacher must meet a student where he/she is at and scaffold learning from that point to the desired outcome. Being a gifted mathematician does not necessarily mean you'll be an effective educator; however, if you're willing to be mentored and coached in this area, you'll have a high likelihood of success.

Oh, and you can't take yourself too seriously. I have a grrreat sense of humor...just look at my screen name!

At any rate, here are some 'typical' interview questions for you to ponder...

1. What do you want to accomplish as a teacher?
2. How will (do) you go about finding out about students' attitudes and feelings about your class?
3. How do you go about deciding what it is that should be taught in your class?
4. A parent comes to you and complains that what you are teaching his child is irrelevant to the child's needs. How would you respond?
5. How do you go about finding what students are good at?
6. Would you rather try 'experimental' teaching strategies or try to perfect the approaches that work best for you? Explain your position.
7. Do you like to teach with an overall plan in mind for the year, or would you rather just teach some interesting things and let the process determine the results? Explain your position.
8. A student is doing poorly in your class. You talk to her, and she tells you that she considers you to be the poorest teacher she has ever met. What would you do?

Fartface (I just had to type that),

Thanks for potential interview questions.  It is certainly about meeting the students' learning needs.  i.e. a successful teacher is not one who knows the material best.