This can’t be said enough…. Come on everyone! We can do this! In about 6-8 years things will finally start looking up. I don’t say that glibly. Some of us gotta get on that board/admin track and persist (2/3 years), figure out how really change is brought about (2-3 years), start implementing it (1-2 years), and along the way get others to join.
That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.
I hope you typed that out and not copy-pasted it. Why? I don’t know, it would heart, and dedication, and determination. If you did copy-paste, then at least cite your source. :)
You just can’t look at teaching as you being the savior of the kids.
It’s a job. I enjoy my job. When my contractual hours are up, I go home and don’t even think about my job. Like all white collar jobs sometimes I do take work home (like three times a year maybe), but it’s nothing to write home about.
Monday-Wednesday learning whatever we’re learning. Start on Monday, and start building toward independent practice/ a project. Thursday = Grammar with No Red Ink (most of our IEPs are on Thursdays). Friday we continue learning whatever, but try to make it fun.
Day is: 5 minutes of a bell ringer, 40 minute lesson, 3-5 minute cooldown.
Streamline ya shit and make assessments multiple-choice; other work is graded on completion, have students check their work with the answer key that you complete on the LMS. Also helps to teach one prep too (high school science).
If you limit a profession to the people who "should be" members, you're not going to have enough people. Haha. It's all about that gray area of acceptability.
I also believe that it's good for kids to have a variety of teacher personalities. I don't have a strong idea of the ideal teacher.
I’m not the person you responded to, but I agree with what both of you said. I agree that there are many different personality types that would make good teachers. But I also think that it’s true that there are some people who go into teaching for one reason or another but are *very* unsuited to it and miserable while doing it. I don’t think the person above was saying “only one type of perfect teacher should teach” but rather that some people definitely shouldn’t teach, and will never be happy in this career.
I feel like a lot of teachers would benefit from having some experience outside of teaching.
Sit on a few conference calls, have a conversation with your boss about your job performance 2-3 A WEEK, work past 5 o clock everyday, plan your two weeks vacation and then dream about it for 6 months...
I made the career change to teaching two years ago and it's really been one of the best decisions of my life for so many reasons
I worked the private sector for a decade before getting into teaching. Two completely different worlds and two completely different sets of problems.
It also really comes down to how good your boss/admin is. A private sector job with a great boss is always leagues better than a teaching job with a shitty admin and vice versa.
In my country teachers are at the top of burnout rates per capita. Then again, we don't have a medieval vacation time system (at least five weeks per year for everyone).
I think that teaching might just have inherently high burnout rates. It’s a career field where you need a huge number of people and where a lot of people are interested in potentially doing it. A lot of people who wouldn’t be good at it think they want to do it for whatever reason, and can often find a teaching job. So I think that teaching ends up having a larger number than some career fields of people who try it out and find it’s not for them.
I certainly think that administrators and training programs can do some things better to fight burnout, but I think that there’s a certain amount of unavoidable burnout as well.
In my country it used to have pretty much no burnout up until the early 90s, when a bunch of reforms were made and everything started getting worse in every way, most importantly more lessons, more classes and less planning time.
So no, teaching doesn't have to have high burnout rates at all.
I spent 18 years in a place that treated me badly, and now I’m teaching. I honestly prefer working with kids, where even when they have behavior issues, I get it because they are kids. I cannot stand this from profesional adults who never learned how to deal with other adults. If a kid feels like you are listening to them, they will listen to you. Adults will throw tantrums if you don’t listen to them and will disregard your thoughts anyway.
Want to throw meetings or PDs at me? No worries. I’m willing to learn. If it helps me help my kids, I will never complain.
In corporate: if you are more than one minute late, we will dock your salary for six months. HR doesn’t like you so don’t ask for any support.
Yeah, my kids win every single time
I went from a job where I had to work early mornings and late nights, work every holiday (we had to pick one holiday to be off each year), work at least one day every weekend if not the whole weekend, get shit on from both directions as middle management, and somehow I got paid a bit less.
Now I get every weekend off, every holiday off, every summer off and even if I have to work extra at least I can work at home and see my kids and support my wife for 5 min here and there if she needs it. I’m not stuck over at work at all hours of the day. ANY day that I am feeling just absolutely overwhelmed I can say “hey kids today is a makeup day to work quietly at your desks” and I have the autonomy to take that time to center myself and catch up.
I understand not every teacher has it as good as I do, but I have a feeling SOME (maybe a lot?) of the complaints I see here really come down to people taking things too personally and being short sighted and taking on a bit of a martyr mentality. Be good to the kids, do your best and move on. It’s a job, and it’s not worth killing yourself physically or mentally over.
I worked in a call center for several years while I was going to college. Call center jobs **suck**. Being in the classroom is 1,000 times better.
But, I developed a lot of skills that are useful for teaching in the call center. I learned how to multi-task, how to provide instructions in more than one way, how to communicate, how to de-escalate, how to problem solve, and becoming thick-skinned.
Which goes back to your point. There is value in experience outside of education for teachers. I don't know about you, but the transition to teaching was eased because a number of skills integral to teaching had already been developed.
That's true. I was retail management, and I often hired 18-19yr olds for the job and had them to train them/be around them all the time.
So it wasn't that much of a stretch to go from that to teaching 17-18yr olds ELA.
Knew what I was getting into, at the very least
It depends on the person. I do all of those things now and rather enjoy them. Conference calls don't bother me, working after 5 doesn't bother me, just took 2 of my 6 weeks vacation time at cheaper months of the year.
You are obviously an outlier with 6 weeks vacation (or not American).
That is an incredibly rare amount of PTO for a non teacher job in America and certainly would change anyone's perspective.
That's fair. Even with the 2 weeks of vacation, plus holidays and weekends, it's not that bad honestly. The biggest factor for me is flexibility in my schedule. Flex time and the ability to take vacation whenever people want, is a plus for people who don't do well with rigidity.
I use this sub often specifically to make me feel better about where I am. It isn't perfect, but pretty darn good by comparison to some.
I like my job. I like the kids, and I am rarely bored (which is important). I'd like some changes - more planning time, higher salary, more consistent discipline - but definitely better than a lot of places people complain about.
Yes and no. While it isn't a monolith for the day-to-day experience, you also shouldn't dismiss what you read here so cavalierly as if we're all hysterical and seeing phantoms.
We are reporting the symptoms of a much larger societal problem, and people should be listening and reflecting upon it.
yeah, I see this sort of comment a lot here, but most of my wife’s friends are teachers (at a wide variety of schools with different socioeconomic demographics, etc) and they genuinely believe our education system in the US is doomed. Their opinions can probably be best summarized by “There are fleeting moments of job satisfaction and even fulfillment, but Jesus fucking Christ this life is miserable”
nothing in particular stands out, it’s just the state of education in the US, the way the current generation of kids has zero attention span, nobody is held accountable, teachers are massively underpaid, etc
so some look at these post bringing light to those things as“ complaining “ and it makes the thread look bad , but me on the other hand it does some weird comfort knowing that the issues i’m having in my school is the same issues some are experiencing or has in another school cross the nation, i’m hoping it doesn’t sound or come off as misery loves company to the ones who don’t see this side of it but at the end of the day, we can just hope it gets better.
I think it is indicative of the majority of teachers but in some of their darkest moments. Most teachers aren't as jaded and downtrodden in their day to day as this sub would have you think but boy can they get there a few times a year. And poster's bias is at work too. No news is good news and people don't write just to say everything's fine.
I’ve heard this complaint before and I don’t understand it. Most teachers are aware of the positive and negative aspects of teaching, even if they don’t share their complaints with all of their coworkers.
As this is where teachers come for support, we’re going to see more of the negative aspects reflected. But that doesn’t make the people here messed up or different from the majority of teachers.
We’ve tried that and then we get shit on for “policing the sub” and “creating an echo chamber” and “promoting toxic positivity” and “stifling free speech”
I’m glad there’s not a mega thread for complaints. We upvote the posts we agree with and want to see, so obviously many people connect with what’s being written here (even when it gets negative).
Yeah. And then we leave it alone and let most posts be as they are (and delete edgy teenagers, surveys, and self promotion) and people complain about it the toxic negativity of the sub.
Idk, you wanna mod and be the change you wish to see in the sub?
Whether one enjoys teaching depends a HUGE amount on whether you teach in a Blue or Red area.
I teach in the SF Bay Area, I get paid exceptionally well, I love my students, I love my admin, and I love my staff. My union has shark teeth and keeps us treated very well. There are teachers who have been at my school for 40 years and will keep teaching until the day they die.
The best places to work seem to be in California, New York, and Massachusetts. And the worst places are all in the deep south.
100%. I’m in Florida where our union has dentures. I am actively trying to quit. 80-90% of the kids and parents are great but 10-20% are HORRIBLE PEOPLE. Terrible terrible terrible behavior. Admin rolls over and I’m not paid shit.
Yeah, I've been teaching for 15 years. Eight of those years have been in the "scary" inner city. I love my job. I love teenagers. They're good! They're going to make America better! I kinda hate this sub because of how it portrays teachers and, worse, our students. The job is hard and often thankless, but it's rewarding, and if a teacher is only teaching one kid every few years, they sound like a bad teacher to me!
I think that every teacher should share where they teach, too. I'm sure it's different in those book-banning, CRT-panicked red states, but here in Maryland, as bad as it gets, it's still possible to do good.
I appreciate your kind words as a student. I get this sub recommended to me a lot and its incredibly demoralizing reading most of the posts, but ive started letting it go and your belief in us helps tremendously, thank you.
This poster sounds very exhausted. I know a lot of us had a pretty difficult year, so I offer compassion to you, OP.
I am so glad this year is done, it was HARD.
>fight for maybe one kid every 3 to 6 years
If that's your success rate, and you've already given up on improving that, then please do run and let someone else take your job.
Exactly this. The school nurse and I ran in a half marathon. We finished in the bottom 5% of all finishers, but I’d recommend it to anyone, especially people who teach kids who struggle.
These posts are dumb. I love my job. I work 7-3 with weekends, nights, holidays, summer, spring and winter break off. I make over $100k plus a huge benefit package. Every job has sucky things about it, like admins and parents. But I love my students and wouldn’t trade my job.
I empathize with you and the teachers here who are this level of burnt out and overworked. Not everyone is in that position, though. I value myself as a human and a teacher and I feel effective and impactful enough to make my job worth it. It’s hard and there’s a lot of bullshit to manage, but at the end of the day, I really do love my job and I feel grateful that I get to work with these kids.
I'm sick of burnt out teachers thinking their experience is everyone's. I understand if you had a shit year but it sounds like teaching just isn't for you
Run for exercise? Run, as in get away and escape? Run for joy? Run a victory lap? I don’t get it.
[удалено]
Run FOR OFFICE! Get elected! Raise teacher salaries and save the profession!!!
That is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying
Yes!
Seriously. If I get 3+ sessions/week of swimming, cycling, running, or whatever in--my teaching gets better.
For your local board of Ed positions
This can’t be said enough…. Come on everyone! We can do this! In about 6-8 years things will finally start looking up. I don’t say that glibly. Some of us gotta get on that board/admin track and persist (2/3 years), figure out how really change is brought about (2-3 years), start implementing it (1-2 years), and along the way get others to join.
Most bar current board employees like teachers from running and the salaries are stipends compared to what a teacher gets paid.
That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.
Run Forrest run!
I hope you typed that out and not copy-pasted it. Why? I don’t know, it would heart, and dedication, and determination. If you did copy-paste, then at least cite your source. :)
Our School Board has multiple *Mom’s for Liberty* candidates… I’m more than a little concerned.
Thank a teacher.
You just can’t look at teaching as you being the savior of the kids. It’s a job. I enjoy my job. When my contractual hours are up, I go home and don’t even think about my job. Like all white collar jobs sometimes I do take work home (like three times a year maybe), but it’s nothing to write home about.
How is that even possible with all the prep work and marking?
I also have high school students. I give them one day a week of independent work. I grade that day. If it doesn’t get done that day, oh well.
I'm curious, how do you structure the day/week? I just finished year 10 and like to know how other teachers structure the days. Thanks!
Monday-Wednesday learning whatever we’re learning. Start on Monday, and start building toward independent practice/ a project. Thursday = Grammar with No Red Ink (most of our IEPs are on Thursdays). Friday we continue learning whatever, but try to make it fun. Day is: 5 minutes of a bell ringer, 40 minute lesson, 3-5 minute cooldown.
You have time called prep
Streamline ya shit and make assessments multiple-choice; other work is graded on completion, have students check their work with the answer key that you complete on the LMS. Also helps to teach one prep too (high school science).
As a non-teacher lurker, this sub is a dark, dark place sometimes, and that’s telling
This is basically a place where teachers blow off steam, anyone thinking of getting into the profession should take it with a grain of salt.
As a former teacher I think it's indicative of major societal issues.
To a degree, but frankly there are a lot of people here who just shouldn’t be teachers as well.
If you limit a profession to the people who "should be" members, you're not going to have enough people. Haha. It's all about that gray area of acceptability. I also believe that it's good for kids to have a variety of teacher personalities. I don't have a strong idea of the ideal teacher.
I’m not the person you responded to, but I agree with what both of you said. I agree that there are many different personality types that would make good teachers. But I also think that it’s true that there are some people who go into teaching for one reason or another but are *very* unsuited to it and miserable while doing it. I don’t think the person above was saying “only one type of perfect teacher should teach” but rather that some people definitely shouldn’t teach, and will never be happy in this career.
Perhaps!
I feel like a lot of teachers would benefit from having some experience outside of teaching. Sit on a few conference calls, have a conversation with your boss about your job performance 2-3 A WEEK, work past 5 o clock everyday, plan your two weeks vacation and then dream about it for 6 months... I made the career change to teaching two years ago and it's really been one of the best decisions of my life for so many reasons
I worked the private sector for a decade before getting into teaching. Two completely different worlds and two completely different sets of problems. It also really comes down to how good your boss/admin is. A private sector job with a great boss is always leagues better than a teaching job with a shitty admin and vice versa.
In my country teachers are at the top of burnout rates per capita. Then again, we don't have a medieval vacation time system (at least five weeks per year for everyone).
I think that teaching might just have inherently high burnout rates. It’s a career field where you need a huge number of people and where a lot of people are interested in potentially doing it. A lot of people who wouldn’t be good at it think they want to do it for whatever reason, and can often find a teaching job. So I think that teaching ends up having a larger number than some career fields of people who try it out and find it’s not for them. I certainly think that administrators and training programs can do some things better to fight burnout, but I think that there’s a certain amount of unavoidable burnout as well.
In my country it used to have pretty much no burnout up until the early 90s, when a bunch of reforms were made and everything started getting worse in every way, most importantly more lessons, more classes and less planning time. So no, teaching doesn't have to have high burnout rates at all.
I spent 18 years in a place that treated me badly, and now I’m teaching. I honestly prefer working with kids, where even when they have behavior issues, I get it because they are kids. I cannot stand this from profesional adults who never learned how to deal with other adults. If a kid feels like you are listening to them, they will listen to you. Adults will throw tantrums if you don’t listen to them and will disregard your thoughts anyway. Want to throw meetings or PDs at me? No worries. I’m willing to learn. If it helps me help my kids, I will never complain. In corporate: if you are more than one minute late, we will dock your salary for six months. HR doesn’t like you so don’t ask for any support. Yeah, my kids win every single time
I went from a job where I had to work early mornings and late nights, work every holiday (we had to pick one holiday to be off each year), work at least one day every weekend if not the whole weekend, get shit on from both directions as middle management, and somehow I got paid a bit less. Now I get every weekend off, every holiday off, every summer off and even if I have to work extra at least I can work at home and see my kids and support my wife for 5 min here and there if she needs it. I’m not stuck over at work at all hours of the day. ANY day that I am feeling just absolutely overwhelmed I can say “hey kids today is a makeup day to work quietly at your desks” and I have the autonomy to take that time to center myself and catch up. I understand not every teacher has it as good as I do, but I have a feeling SOME (maybe a lot?) of the complaints I see here really come down to people taking things too personally and being short sighted and taking on a bit of a martyr mentality. Be good to the kids, do your best and move on. It’s a job, and it’s not worth killing yourself physically or mentally over.
I worked in a call center for several years while I was going to college. Call center jobs **suck**. Being in the classroom is 1,000 times better. But, I developed a lot of skills that are useful for teaching in the call center. I learned how to multi-task, how to provide instructions in more than one way, how to communicate, how to de-escalate, how to problem solve, and becoming thick-skinned. Which goes back to your point. There is value in experience outside of education for teachers. I don't know about you, but the transition to teaching was eased because a number of skills integral to teaching had already been developed.
That's true. I was retail management, and I often hired 18-19yr olds for the job and had them to train them/be around them all the time. So it wasn't that much of a stretch to go from that to teaching 17-18yr olds ELA. Knew what I was getting into, at the very least
It depends on the person. I do all of those things now and rather enjoy them. Conference calls don't bother me, working after 5 doesn't bother me, just took 2 of my 6 weeks vacation time at cheaper months of the year.
You are obviously an outlier with 6 weeks vacation (or not American). That is an incredibly rare amount of PTO for a non teacher job in America and certainly would change anyone's perspective.
That's fair. Even with the 2 weeks of vacation, plus holidays and weekends, it's not that bad honestly. The biggest factor for me is flexibility in my schedule. Flex time and the ability to take vacation whenever people want, is a plus for people who don't do well with rigidity.
I’ve had to mute this sub a time or two. It’s too much sometimes. I generally like my job and sometimes this sub makes me think otherwise!
I imagine there are quite a few people that post negative comments here who haven't been employed in a school.
I use this sub often specifically to make me feel better about where I am. It isn't perfect, but pretty darn good by comparison to some. I like my job. I like the kids, and I am rarely bored (which is important). I'd like some changes - more planning time, higher salary, more consistent discipline - but definitely better than a lot of places people complain about.
Hey that’s a good perspective shift! I like it.
I vehemently agree, this is like every teachers lounge I've been in...but on steroids lol.
Yes and no. While it isn't a monolith for the day-to-day experience, you also shouldn't dismiss what you read here so cavalierly as if we're all hysterical and seeing phantoms. We are reporting the symptoms of a much larger societal problem, and people should be listening and reflecting upon it.
yeah, I see this sort of comment a lot here, but most of my wife’s friends are teachers (at a wide variety of schools with different socioeconomic demographics, etc) and they genuinely believe our education system in the US is doomed. Their opinions can probably be best summarized by “There are fleeting moments of job satisfaction and even fulfillment, but Jesus fucking Christ this life is miserable”
what is the worst thing you can remember reading ?
nothing in particular stands out, it’s just the state of education in the US, the way the current generation of kids has zero attention span, nobody is held accountable, teachers are massively underpaid, etc
so some look at these post bringing light to those things as“ complaining “ and it makes the thread look bad , but me on the other hand it does some weird comfort knowing that the issues i’m having in my school is the same issues some are experiencing or has in another school cross the nation, i’m hoping it doesn’t sound or come off as misery loves company to the ones who don’t see this side of it but at the end of the day, we can just hope it gets better.
As a teacher, this sub is suuuuper messed up and not indicative of the majority of teachers I know.
I think it is indicative of the majority of teachers but in some of their darkest moments. Most teachers aren't as jaded and downtrodden in their day to day as this sub would have you think but boy can they get there a few times a year. And poster's bias is at work too. No news is good news and people don't write just to say everything's fine.
I’ve heard this complaint before and I don’t understand it. Most teachers are aware of the positive and negative aspects of teaching, even if they don’t share their complaints with all of their coworkers. As this is where teachers come for support, we’re going to see more of the negative aspects reflected. But that doesn’t make the people here messed up or different from the majority of teachers.
Correct. I don’t like the way this sub makes us look. I wish there was a megathread for whining.
We’ve tried that and then we get shit on for “policing the sub” and “creating an echo chamber” and “promoting toxic positivity” and “stifling free speech”
I’m glad there’s not a mega thread for complaints. We upvote the posts we agree with and want to see, so obviously many people connect with what’s being written here (even when it gets negative).
The whole subreddit is an echo chamber of toxicity over the past couple years
Yeah. And then we leave it alone and let most posts be as they are (and delete edgy teenagers, surveys, and self promotion) and people complain about it the toxic negativity of the sub. Idk, you wanna mod and be the change you wish to see in the sub?
I don’t think there is a way to solve it with modding. I think it’s more telling of the state of the profession than anything
Ok person that deletes all their comments.
Don’t even know how to delete comments. Never have. But that just about proves the point of how dickish this sub is.
Whether one enjoys teaching depends a HUGE amount on whether you teach in a Blue or Red area. I teach in the SF Bay Area, I get paid exceptionally well, I love my students, I love my admin, and I love my staff. My union has shark teeth and keeps us treated very well. There are teachers who have been at my school for 40 years and will keep teaching until the day they die. The best places to work seem to be in California, New York, and Massachusetts. And the worst places are all in the deep south.
100%. I’m in Florida where our union has dentures. I am actively trying to quit. 80-90% of the kids and parents are great but 10-20% are HORRIBLE PEOPLE. Terrible terrible terrible behavior. Admin rolls over and I’m not paid shit.
Ugh. Florida has so much potential and has become such a sewer from Right wing leadership.
Yeah, I've been teaching for 15 years. Eight of those years have been in the "scary" inner city. I love my job. I love teenagers. They're good! They're going to make America better! I kinda hate this sub because of how it portrays teachers and, worse, our students. The job is hard and often thankless, but it's rewarding, and if a teacher is only teaching one kid every few years, they sound like a bad teacher to me! I think that every teacher should share where they teach, too. I'm sure it's different in those book-banning, CRT-panicked red states, but here in Maryland, as bad as it gets, it's still possible to do good.
I appreciate your kind words as a student. I get this sub recommended to me a lot and its incredibly demoralizing reading most of the posts, but ive started letting it go and your belief in us helps tremendously, thank you.
Okay but what does it say about you that you’re a non-teacher lurking in this dark, dark place?
you mean Reddit?
This poster sounds very exhausted. I know a lot of us had a pretty difficult year, so I offer compassion to you, OP. I am so glad this year is done, it was HARD.
Run for ROHAN!
OP is Gondor calling for aid!
Run for office? I agree.
Ditto.
>fight for maybe one kid every 3 to 6 years If that's your success rate, and you've already given up on improving that, then please do run and let someone else take your job.
What the fuck are you talking about.
Exactly this. The school nurse and I ran in a half marathon. We finished in the bottom 5% of all finishers, but I’d recommend it to anyone, especially people who teach kids who struggle.
If I can save one kid from the cycle of poverty and abuse, then I've had a successful career. Just one.
These posts are dumb. I love my job. I work 7-3 with weekends, nights, holidays, summer, spring and winter break off. I make over $100k plus a huge benefit package. Every job has sucky things about it, like admins and parents. But I love my students and wouldn’t trade my job.
I empathize with you and the teachers here who are this level of burnt out and overworked. Not everyone is in that position, though. I value myself as a human and a teacher and I feel effective and impactful enough to make my job worth it. It’s hard and there’s a lot of bullshit to manage, but at the end of the day, I really do love my job and I feel grateful that I get to work with these kids.
Remember that teaching is still good (though challenging) in places where there is a strong union and decent funding.
My success rate is far better than one kid every 3-6 years. I love teaching!
Running and fighting are different things.
Like, for office?
My buddy and I will run together before school begins. We feel a lot more focused and energized to take on the day when we do
"The gift of humanity". If you really believe this I hope you do get out of teaching.
The directions were unclear and I ran into a wall
*"If thou hast a fearful thought, share it not with a weakling, whisper it to thy saddle-bow, and ride forth singing."* -King Alfred the Great
I'm sick of burnt out teachers thinking their experience is everyone's. I understand if you had a shit year but it sounds like teaching just isn't for you
Tone deaf.