As a former classroom teacher, and a current professor of education, I’ve met hundreds, if not thousands, of current and future teachers. As in any profession, the people in it run the gamut from outstanding to how-on-earth-did-someone-award-you-a-degree. It benefits us all when we have strong educators in classrooms, because education improves society, not just the individual. I’m happy to say that in my time as a professor, I’ve run across very few students who shouldn’t be in the classroom. However, as a classroom teacher, I ran across quite a few more. In service of making sure that people who end up in classrooms actually should be there, here are a few reasons why you SHOULDN’T become a teacher.
- You just want a steady job. I hear you. Teaching is a steady paycheck, and it seems like anyone can do it. This is true. Virtually anyone who is currently breathing can pass out worksheets and keep a class full of kids alive through 3pm. What is much harder, however, is making the students LEARN something; this is a very difficult set of skills that is only mastered through study and years of practice. There are easier jobs with higher pay and less controversy than teaching. Go find one of those.
- You just love kids because ZOMGkidsaresooooooocute! They will stop being cute approximately 5 seconds after they vomit on you. Yes, if you are teaching the tiny ones, they WILL vomit on you. And paint on you. And wipe snot on you. They will also be adorable, but a teacher is not sustained by adorable-ness alone. If you want to have a job full of cuteness, go put pictures of cats on the internet.
- You want to be admired for your noble pursuits. Well, unfortunately, pretty much no one is going to admire you. If you teach the littles, then they will worship the ground you walk on, most of the time. But adulation from your fellow adults? That is a rare jewel, my friend. You’re going to hear a lot about those who supposedly can “do” and those who can’t. If you want to be admired, I would recommend perhaps something in the field of curing major diseases?
- You want to tell people what to do. If you become a teacher you can, in fact, wield power over WHOLE CLASSROOMS of students. You can be in charge of 30 or so children at a time! The power is practically maddening. In reality, though, if you want to do that whole “making them learn” thing I previously mentioned, you’re going to have to learn how to give up that power, not wield it like a demigod. You’re going to have to let students make decisions, and you’re going to have to be willing to apologize and sometimes be proven wrong.
- Summers off, bro! Sure, you might get “summers” off (which often ends up being the couple of short weeks between when the school year ends and summer school begins), but here’s what you’re going to do the rest of the year. You’re going to wake up around 5 or so, so that you can get yourself dressed, fed, and in your classroom by about 7. You’re going to spend around an hour dealing with paperwork and prepping lessons. Then you’re going to spend approximately 7 hours dealing with demanding, energy-filled young people. If you are very, very lucky, you might get a planning period during that time, which you will use to catch up on grading. You will get approximately 12 seconds to eat your lunch, as you walk to the front office to make copies and meet with a parent for an IEP. After that 7 hours is up, you’re going to spend an hour or more working with your students on remedial or advanced work. Following that, you will grade some more, do some more planning and prep, and leave for home somewhere around 5:30-6pm. Did you count those hours? That’s an 11 hour day, with virtually no break, 5 days a week, for the whole school year. This, of course, assumes that you don’t run any extracurriculars. Sports coach or music teacher? Even worse. But regardless of what you teach, every second of your vacation time (and more) will have been paid in advance by your work during the school year.
- You want to coach a sport. I can certainly understand that coaching is a passion for many people. However, if you’re teaching JUST to be able to coach, then you’re doing a massive disservice to your students. I can’t even tell you how many teachers I’ve met who coach a sport as if the world depended on the outcome of each game, but can’t be bothered to truly teach their academic classes. The problem is that those academic subjects that they’re coasting along in? Those are incredibly important, and students deserve more than assigned reading and the review questions at the end of the chapter. If your primary goal is to coach, then great; just make sure you teach as well as you coach.
So, given these reasons, why would anyone in their right mind want to become a teacher? Why would you willingly go into a profession that is fraught with controversy, that pays you less than you are worth, and that has a massive workload? Here’s why.
You are going to be pursuing one of the few professions that will allow you to make a significant impact on hundreds, maybe thousands of people. You are literally shaping the future when you teach. Those young minds are watching you. They are listening to everything you say. They are, daily, making choices about their futures based on what you share with them, what you model for them, and the questions you ask them. You are going into the profession all other professions rely upon. Every doctor, lawyer, scientist, politician, firefighter, chef, engineer, artist, mother, and father was first a student. Everything they create or achieve is in some part due to their teachers. That Top 40 hit? That engineering marvel? That inauguration speech? They’re all due, in no small part, to a teacher. To many teachers. To all of us, as educators, working together to build the future. You’re going to be sustained, daily, not by the faculty meetings and state testing, but by the A-ha moments. You’re going to keep that dirty plastic tiger on your desk like it was the Congressional Medal of Honor, because it was a kid’s most prized possession, and they chose to give it to YOU. You’re going to get letters from students who tell you that if it wasn’t for you they’d have never made it: to college, to a good job, or sometimes just to adulthood. You’re going to see parents weep when their child achieves something they never dreamed possible. You’re going to go to bed every night totally and completely exhausted, and wake up the next morning itching to get into the classroom. By the end of the school year, you’ll be beyond ready for a margarita and a beach, but after a couple of weeks you’ll be stashing away school supplies again and planning the arrangement of your room for the new year. You’re going to boast about your students as if they were your own offspring. You’re going to rejoice with them in their victories and cry with them in their defeats. You’re going to make them believe that they can BE change in the world, and teach them how to do it. Sound cheesy? Sure it is. It’s beyond cheesy, but it’s also true. So if the first 6 points scared you off, this profession wasn’t for you anyway. But if you’re ready to do this right, then jump in with both feet; the kids are waiting for you!
edspiration.net 
Why did you flee the classroom and become a professor?
Great question! I didn’t flee the classroom at all. I simply teach a different population of students. I am not a research professor. Aside from my service work (committees and such), and the very small studies I occasionally do on my own time, my job is to teach teachers. I feel strongly that one of the best ways to improve education is to improve the training and support of teachers. I felt that I would be able to make a broader impact by inspiring and educating preservice teachers, who would then go out and inspire and educate their students. I may not still be in an LAUSD classroom, but I will always be a teacher.
Very right on!! Depending on the district, some are good and some are BAD. Here are “another things” when the school isn’t so good. Another thing to mention is the fact that you have to deal with administrators and other team teacher chaos. Where 4 different teachers think differently about what the punishment should for a certain kid in multiple classes. You also have to deal with administrators that do not have time to talk to you or feel very rushed and inconvenienced when you approach them. In addition, you have to deal with students that the administration refuses to expel despite leaving class without asking and overdosing on drugs. And yet it’s your fault if they leave and you have to stop class and call security. You also have to deal with evaluations (another word for micromanaging) that state that your lesson could use vast amounts of improvements despite the fact that your methods work for the class. In turn, when your methods change the nature of the class becomes unhappy because you are told by admins that think they know better than you on how to run a specific class. And then the wonderful stress going around in your head hoping you are doing everything right.
What’s up, this weekend is good for me, for the reason that this moment
i am reading this great informative post here at my home.
Reblogged this on All Day Kindergarten and commented:
Great arguments about why we should teach!
Although, you did answer Tim Fox’s question with a statement that sounded more political than genuine, I have the same question “why did you flee the profession?” You may say you are saving the classroom by training one teacher at a time and filtering out the rotten apple eaters one by one but the fact still remains, teachers who get results are teachers we need to stay in the classroom. If you got results and you left perhaps something was wrong? Was it the evaluations system, was it the time you spend working in your home for no pay, is it that you can never quite “turn off” being a teacher, was it the creating lesson plans and activities in your sleep? Please, do tell was it the surprise visits to your classroom for an unannounced eval if you made the principal mad for some minuscule reason. Teachers face so many challenges and like most tasks practice does create perfection. The more a teacher practices her craft (builds lessons, resources, manipulative) the better that educator can become. The problem in this sector is that the average number of years a teacher stays in the field is diminishing and I don’t think it’s because they took the job thinking that kids are so ZOMGkidsaresooooooocute! I believe it has more to do with lack of support, not written in the districts handbook but true genuine administrative and peer support. It becomes rather difficult for peers to support new teachers when they are stressed, overburden and under scrutiny from administrators. Therefore, we end up losing potentially good educators. Not so sure what your intentions where with this article but I didn’t find it amusing, or helpful. I truly believe the majority of teachers enter the field with the best intentions. As for don’t become a teacher because you just want a steady job, I’d have to say everybody seeks a career where their is longevity. Sadly; however, teaching is not a “career of longitude” for many anymore.
Yea, being a teacher really blows, especially when the district fails to pay you or screws up your paycheck. Then you have to wait days or even weeks before it’s processed. Corporate America and the private sector businesses can furnish a check immediately. Going through the school bureaucracy is a futile nightmare.
When I was in sales, which is a chickenshit profession, I would at least get a ramp-up of pay to boost my finances. This would help me get started so I could build my book of business. In teaching it’s the exact opposite. You pay to work from paying out of pocket all your certification, classroom supplies and training. You could even go as long as 2 months without getting paid starting out. Who can go two months without a paycheck while getting all this work heaped on you unexpectedly? It is really a shitty system and I hope it collapses and buckles for good.
10 year veteran teacher here.
I did flee education and am not ashamed at all. Here’s what drove me out after a decade in investing my time and energy into helping YOUR kids:
*cell phones: get them OUT of schools entirely like France did. Spare me your argument about safety. If you’re my age (39) and went to high school in the 1990s. Cell phones were barely in existence. We found ways to communicate. This new generation can too.
*administrators who were weak-willed, uninspiring bureaucrats who only carded about data, the budget, and standardized testing. Grow some balls. Fight for your teachers.
*teacher work Nazis: the people who claim that unless you were working from 6am to 6pm teaching, planning, doing paperwork, coaching, etc, then you are a lazy jerk whose heart isn’t in teaching and should be fired.
*ridiculous evaluations: I could write for 100 pages about how badly some evaluators eff up their job. #1 reason they suck? Standoffish, aloof attitudes. We are supposed to be a team. When you witch hunt me and hen-peck me to death over every sentence I said in a 50 min lesson, it makes me wish you were dead and I was fishing and drinking Modelo beer.
*meaningless paperwork: it goes in some file no one ever looks at but it took you 8 hours of your weekend to complete.
*exhaustive lesson planning: some schools require teachers create binders with color-coded tabs where they document every breath they take and word they say or write in a given lesson.
*parents who think they run your classroom. Stay out. It’s mine. The kid belongs to you, so you have a say over his safety/ well- being, but if Johnny didn’t do his homework, he gets zero credit. If you, mom and dad, are in sales, do you get paid a commission if you didn’t make any sales in a quarter? No is the answer? Ah ok. Then shhhhhhh…. have a seat and collaborate like a grown-up. Don’t steamroll and demonize me. That won’t improve johnny’s grade. And no, coaches shouldn’t play your kid if your kid sucks at football/ hockey/ whatever. Coaches job is to WIN, not do what you say. It’s not your team. Do you tell NFL coaches how to run their team? No again? So, shhhhhhh…. take a seat and enjoy the game. Tell your kid to practice harder. Next time, maybe he’ll EARN a spot – a spot he doesn’t deserve just because he showed up to the first practice.
*pay: it’s $hite for the amount of work you do. Other adults, particularly corporate drones, look down on you; think you wasted your life. Low teacher pay Shows how much faith we have in USA ever improving academically, socially, and economically on the world stage. If our educators aren’t respected and comfortable enough to support their own families, how are they supposed to teach 35 kids, 5 classes per day and not burn out?
Impossible.
*lazy, disrespectful kids: how is it MY fault if YOUR kid won’t do a lick of work? If a student refuses to work, I can’t help him and shouldn’t be obligated to help him. I’d rather focus in kids who want to learn academic subjects. The rest can learn a trade. Stop screwing up classrooms for kids who care. And parents… YOU raised your kid, not me. If they’re a total a-hole, that’s in you, so don’t even bring your BS about how I’m not properly motivating them. Have you taught 250 kids per year? Been responsible for keeping all those records? Managed class rooms of 40? No? Ok, so again… Shhhhh….. hush now and let the guy who knows what he’s doing run things.
*getting assaulted: some girl with a diagnosed mental illness punched me in the face. The admins wanted me to press charges. Her life was already screwed up enough. She didn’t need me adding a charge to her rap sheet. Another kid swung a yard stick at my head. Known gang banger. I didn’t try and grab stick because hes in a gang and I didn’t want to piss him off and get shot. Do you, parents, deal with that in your finance and accounting jobs? What’s that? No you don’t? That’s what I thought… so… shhhhh….. you’d soil yourself in fear after 3 minutes inside an urban school. Cushy life. Cushy, inaccurate opinions
*guns!! I’ve dealt personally with 2 gun issues. One was a kid who brought his dad’s hunting rifle to show a buddy. The other was a gang banger who had a flock and was going to shoot another kid. We talked him out of it. Do YOU have that skill set? I doubt it. Stay in your cube and stare at your FB page.
Being accused of falsifying grades: FOUR times in my career, I was accused of boosting kids grades because so many of my kids excelled. I was a really good teacher. Not the best, but among the top. Always got strong letters of rec from principals. Colleagues of mine reported me to department chair who then formed an investigative committee to examine all my materials and determine whether or not I had committed academic fraud. Exonerated ALL FOUR TIMES because I didn’t do it. One woman who accused me resigned out if embarrassment. She came to apologize. I told her to screw and shutmy x classroom door in her toxic, caustic, gross face. Try talking to your colleagues rather then accuse them. I am sure she is at some other school being terrible.
I could write for days…
Just stay away from this job. The whole system is imploding. We need to let it collapse and build something new in its place. I’d rather spend my time building an effective new system than restoring or revamping a total POS.