Why do I hate Teaching?!?!

get the government out wrote:

Progressive public education is a parody of what real education ought to be. The system drives smart, motivated teachers out of the profession and rewards horrible educators who want to stagnate. The system as we currently know it cannot be fixed and will NEVER get better.

Spend some time at my school and you'll feel differently about it. Seriously, we have great students who get full education rides to top universities. I'm a Social Studies teacher and the students love hanging out in our office because we talk about social issues- such as gay marriage and gun control.

We're all liberal to moderate (obviously- we're educated in the social sciences) and the conversations are lively and interesting.

I don't know about you other teachers, but I always get laid off in the summer. Hell, I'd work if they needed me, but they don't even let me come in. Doors are locked. Nobody's there.

See, I have this crazy work ethic. Work work work! It's how you get ahead, right? SO I mean.. I try! I show up early, stay late. But damn. I just can't seem to convince the schools to let me work over the summer.

And... I can't even collect unemployment.

The system screws me.

runn wrote:

Spend some time at my school and you'll feel differently about it. Seriously, we have great students who get full education rides to top universities. I'm a Social Studies teacher and the students love hanging out in our office because we talk about social issues- such as gay marriage and gun control.

We're all liberal to moderate (obviously- we're educated in the social sciences) and the conversations are lively and interesting.

Discussions among political hacks are only interesting to political hacks - rational people do not find them interesting. Those kids will go to college, major in useless fields and destroy their minds with drugs and socialism.

You are paid over 9 or 12 months based on having 2-3 months off during the summer. Its built into your "time" whether you call it being paid for.9 months or 12.

dontflushwhileyousit wrote:

um, duh wrote:

Fact is, after working a few years, teachers make a years salary in 9months so in fact, you do get three months vacation even if it dkesn't read that way in your contract...and most teachers don't work 8 hour days.

Um, to call it a year's salary isn't necessarily accurate. I'm paid for my time, not for my time off. Yes, I might make more than the average salary in the nation, but that doesn't mean that I am paid for the whole year. If the school year were extended by three months, teachers would certainly get paid more. Well, actually, tons of teachers would be fired (and lots would quit) to adjust to the increased cost, but you know what I mean.

um, duh wrote:

You are paid over 9 or 12 months based on having 2-3 months off during the summer. Its built into your "time" whether you call it being paid for.9 months or 12.

And you obviously don't understand how the free market works...

Teachers are only paid for 10 months of work plain and simple. If they were paid like private workers the two extra months would be paid vacation time...that is not the case...THEY DO NOT GET PAID DURING THE TWO MONTHS OF SUMMER....private sectors workers get paid for their vacation (if you have a good salary based job)....thus paid vacation...If teachers got paid for the the two month summer vacation they would get two more checks....THEY DO NOT GET THOSE CHECKS...thus they are 10 month employees....You can extend the checks just like any private sector employee can with their own checks but they ARE NOT getting paid more for those two months....

This is really not a hard concept to understand....They make good money no one is saying other wise...But you are LYING if you think they are paid 12 months worth of work.

It is NOT paid vacation like you are trying to imply

Here's what we know:

1. 3 months of paid vacation

2. Almost no incentive to be good at what they do, thus the poor performance.

3. Public employees have a wall of secrecy around them.

This is foolish. They pay you x amount of dollars over a period so you don't have to work during the summer months. They just call it a 10 month contract or whatever. If you really think you or they think you really deserve that much money for a 10 month contract you are a total idiot.

Oh, and i forgot to ask...how many teachers file for unemployment during the summer months because they are not working technically? Oh, stop embarrassing yourself. They don't file because they aren't unemployed during those summer months, and it isn't really because of your contract length. My brother in law works for a power company. He used to get laid off 1 month a year. He could still file for unemployment even though he knew he was coming back to work in a month. Teachers can't do this. So while you think you get paid to work for 10 months, you are not.

SpanishArm wrote:

Just that question... Why does it suck the soul out of my life? Does anyone feel this way? Those poor kids.

I've been a secondary teacher for 15 years. The actual teaching component of my job, I truly love. I often underestimate the degree to which I am influencing the minds of young people all day long. It's an honour and a privilege.

It's all the non-teaching duties that I really dislike, as well as the fact that I teach in a school board that uses inclusive education; in other words, in my grade 9 English class, I have students who are reading and writing at a grade 12 level, as well as students who can almost be considered mentally retarded. I typically get 100 minutes of prep time per week TOTAL (that's on a good week, some weeks only 50 minutes). Generally, as a profession, we are constantly being asked to do more with less.

But the benefits outweigh the positives. I don't have kids of my own so have a lot more disposable income than my colleagues and am able to travel to marathons all over North America and Europe during my holidays. I live in a northern climate where it gets dark at 4 p.m. in the winter, but if I have to, I can start my run before it gets dark and then finish my planning/grading at home afterward, so there is some flexibility. It could be a lot worse.

99s wrote:

Here's what we know:

1. 3 months of paid vacation

2. Almost no incentive to be good at what they do, thus the poor performance.

3. Public employees have a wall of secrecy around them.

Here's what I know:

You're an uninformed tool.

1. 12 month contract for 185 days of work. No paid vacation. See, that's when you take time off (your choice) and still get paid. Teachers aren't offered work beyond the 185 days. Not a vacation. The only equivalent is my five personal days - which, I'm sure, is much less than the typical white collar job in the private sector.

2. It's not 1974. Any Race to the Top school (Rttp) is required to implement performance-based pay. In Ohio, this means 4 tiered licensure (Novice up to Lead Professional), and performance evaluations based 50% on student test scores (value-added data, not achievement). Many other states are following this model.

3. There's full transparency in public education. You need records, you request them. You need personal files, you request them. Any union protection simply means you are guaranteed due process before firing - not unilateral job certainty. But of course, tools like you choose to ignore this reality and spin tales instead.

So yeah. You couldn't be more wrong. Dolt.

99s wrote:

Here's what we know:

1. 3 months of paid vacation

2. Almost no incentive to be good at what they do, thus the poor performance.

3. Public employees have a wall of secrecy around them.

3. Maybe, but you can look up the salary of any public employee. The information is available on couple of news websites in my state. You can see the name of the teacher, the school that they work for, if they have a ba or a master's, and what their salary is before and after benefits. I'm pretty sure that in other countries this information is more private.

spanish arm,

you are weak minded.

Here's the bottom line. Teachers who know their content, are creative, and like kids enjoy teaching.

So you don't understand what you're supposed to teach or you can't find a way to get thought to your students or you hate kids.

But, you are probably just expected it to be easy.

I taught and coached in the public schools for 8 years before becoming a collegiate cross country and track head coach. I loved my college gig, but gave it up for my wife and to start a family. Things have not worked out for us and I am still teaching at a middle school and looking for that college gig again. I can tell you this much. It really depends on what your passion is and what kind of school district and school you are in. Us teachers are paid for 9-10 months of work. Unless you are teaching in a year round school, which I was for 9 months and these are becoming more and more common! I can tell you that those who do not teach and who never have just don't get it and what us teachers have to deal with in the classroom these days. I love to teach. I love kids. I just get tired of the disrespect, kids not caring or having any desire to learn or be taught, and the attitudes of students and their parents. I love to teach but don't feel like I teach on most days like I used to. I am more of a glorified babysitter and have to constantly discipline students and it is non stop. I could make 60k next year as a teacher and coach in the district I am in. But I am willing to give up 20-22k to go back to college coaching. That's how bad it is on most days.

Those of you that think that 2 months off in the summer time is something that teachers take for granted. All I have to say about that is after 9 months of doing what I do everyday I have to have that time off or I would not make it. And I am sure most teachers would agree. And those that teach in a year round school like I did, well I am sure they are not the teachers they could be with some break away from the constant stress and politics.

Just wondering if any of you have ever taught at a prep school - some exclusive place like Phillips Exeter. I wonder what that would be like. Seems like it would be a great job - smart kids, beautiful environment. But maybe not.

I'm a doc and generally love my job - even tough call nights are ok. My wife teaches high school in a very poor district - she doesn't hate her job but I do feel sorry for her sometimes. Long hours. Most kids have very low to zero aspirations. Generally toxic, pompous and incompetent administrators. But it seems like she always has a few kids who want to learn and have some goals in life, and she seems to take a lot of pleasure in trying to help those few - I think she does a lot of life counseling in addition to just teaching her subject. And she tries to do a lot of extra things like after school clubs, organizing trips, etc. I sometimes wish she could work in a better district, though - it's tough enough working with the kids, but when the administrators put roadblocks up and institute dumb policies, it just makes it that much more difficult.

Actually this is wrong, teachers do not get paid over the summer. You can elect to have your monthly pay adjusted in order to be paid over the summer so there is no lapse in income, but the contract states the days you are paid for, and it does not include the summer.

sssssssss wrote:

Because you don't think that 3 months of paid vacation is enough?

runn wrote:

get the government out wrote:

Progressive public education is a parody of what real education ought to be. The system drives smart, motivated teachers out of the profession and rewards horrible educators who want to stagnate. The system as we currently know it cannot be fixed and will NEVER get better.

Spend some time at my school and you'll feel differently about it. Seriously, we have great students who get full education rides to top universities. I'm a Social Studies teacher and the students love hanging out in our office because we talk about social issues- such as gay marriage and gun control.

We're all liberal to moderate (obviously- we're educated in the social sciences) and the conversations are lively and interesting.

This sounds like some sort of backwards trolling. Instead of being negative someone posts abunch of super positive statements.

Before you stated that you dont know how someone could NOT like this job?

Leave your job in the lilly white suburbs and go teach in the inner city. They'll stomp on your rose colored glasses and feed them to you for lunch.

I got a job with a government agency that regulates the insurance industry in my state. So yeah, Im one of those hated government workers. But I make about as much as I did teaching only w/o the Summers off.

I like that I am allowed to be an adult at work. Sorry but for me being a teacher was only a half turn difference from being a HS student all over again. I was stuck in the class room all day. Couldnt grab anything to eat when I wanted, couldnt chat with co-workes, couldnt leave for lunch, couldnt even go to the damn toilet when I wanted. Taking off was a HUGE deal, having to arrange for a sub etc..

My experience was pretty negative. I didnt really like many of the other teachers. It seemed a good deal of them really got off on having power over the kids. They'd brag about catching X do Y and how they wrote them up, blah blah blah..

It seems like a lot of folks that went into secondary teaching were trying to "keep the dream alive". Meaning they were big deals in HS so they went back to it as soon as they graduated college. Many had little if any experience doing anything else, they were in HS, they went to college and then bam- right back in the HS setting. It's all they know.

I've posted before in teaching threads, but I'll reiterate my story for the OP's benefit.

Straight out of college I spent four years teaching high school, left the profession and now sitting three years past working in a job in sales. I think that teaching is a great profession to gain valuable life skills. As a teacher you are in sales, management, justice, administration, etc. However, I think to be a teacher of 5+ years, or even 10+ years requires that your personality matches up with the job, otherwise you will be a miserable human being (I know that we can all think of more than a few of those teachers we all had at one point).

Here's three things I miss and do not miss from the teaching profession.

Miss:

1) Interacting with high school students - it is awesome to be a person of influence in young people's lives. I truly miss not only teaching them curriculum but my own life lessons and wisdom I could impart to them

2) Actually teaching - in currently high schools the actual teaching of subject matter is probably 40-50% of the job. I loved my subject, I am very knowledgeable, and loved seeing kids learn what I was teaching

3) Being a member of the community. I really do miss shaking hands with parents at a football game, or being recognized at the grocery store as someone who is investing a career back into the people of the community.

Do not miss:

1) Other teachers. 10% will be your best friends, the rest are miserable terrible people that are afflicted with "everyone's out to get me" syndrome. The majority of teachers are constantly worried that administration just did an observation, or Johnny's mom sent me a nasty email, etc. Issues happen 100x daily as a teacher, some teachers seem unable to "let it go"

2) Working in the "system". Every job, corporate, government, local and otherwise has a "system" in which they operate. The public school system does not encourage best practices and top performance. This can easily escalate into a political discussion so I'll leave it at that.

3) The grind. I am with whomever stated that they dreaded their alarm going off. Every day is a monumental task - the second you drive your car onto school property, you have 100 things that all happen at once. When I taught, I lived weekend to weekend and break to break. Again, it takes a special person to appreciate and cherish their teaching job Monday-Friday. I was not that person.

Lastly, working in sales, I very much appreciate free market economics which seemed absent in the public schools in which I taught. If I do a good job and treat my customers well, they treat me well. If I do poorly, my customers will stop buying my product and I will be fired. It really is as simple as that. That simplicity and elegance is 100% absent in a public school.

I hope the above both encourages and discourages anyone thinking about a teaching career.

Also, lets cut the horsesh*t with the summers off discussion. Public schools have summers off, period. Its not worth debating. There is not merit or deserving factors, its just the way it is.

Thank you.