[quote headintheproverbial]@EnidSpyton - I don't really thinking you are comparing like for like.
You say that in an 'office job' you can just drop things and do it the next day. Maybe in an entry level admin role but in a professional job requiring the level of education a teacher has hours are likely just as long and also include evenings and weekends. The 'basic' hours are likely 9-5 but there are early : late meetings, emails, deadlines all of which mean more hours are required for many people over entry level on a regular basis.
Even if you lose a few weeks of your holidays to prep, class moves etc you're still likely 6 weeks ahead of most people across the year in terms of annual leave (let's be clear that's more than double what most would have).
I'm sure there are a ton of reasons not to be a teacher - but really I don't think time available to your children is a good one to hang your hat on! [/quote]
Until you've done it you won't get it.
I worked in an office - in a senior role - before becoming a teacher. There were deadlines. There were occasional early starts and late finishes. But most of my days I was free to work to my own schedule. I had time and space to think. I could plan ahead and block out time to get work done. I wasn't constantly interrupted and neither did I have my time taken from me at short notice to sort out fights/missing children/safeguarding issues/deal with irate parents/insert other unplanned for shit here. I didn't have thirty people trooping into my office on the hour every hour looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to teach them something. I wasn't working with people who couldn't control their own emotions or behaviour. I had control over my time in a way I never did as a teacher.
I'm not saying teaching is the most difficult job in the world. But until you've experienced the sheer mental exhaustion of being 'on' all day every day, of having to be the responsible person in the room for thirty other people all day, of always having to be patient, kind, encouraging, creative, flexible, inventive, calm, unflappable - even when a child is shouting at you, throwing stuff at you and/or swearing at you - for never knowing what the day is going to throw at you, because no day is ever what you plan it to be - from something as innocuous as having to lose the free period you were planning to use to do your marking to cover a sick colleague's lesson, to a child coming to you with an allegation of abuse and you then having to call the police and launch a child protection investigation, all while being calm and supportive and kind because you can't be the one to fall apart when a child you care deeply about suddenly reveals they've been sexually abused - and then when the working day is finished, despite all the shit you've had to deal with, having to put in the same hours again to prepare for the next one, because it's all going to start again at 8.30am, you really don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Teaching is physically, intellectually and emotionally exhausting in a way an office job just isn't. It's really hard to go home and be present for your children after a day like that. And yeah, our holidays are longer, but we need them to recover. Honestly, I'd rather have 30 days off at a time of my choosing to go away on a nice break rather than 12 weeks I have to take when everyone else is on holiday too, meaning my holidays always cost a fortune, half of which I lose to sleeping in order to recover from exhaustion, and to preparing work for the next term. I never got to have a long weekend, or a random day off just because I felt like it, never got to go to term time weddings, etc, because my holidays were dictated to me. So it's not all as amazing as you might think. In fact, I found it incredibly restrictive.
Obviously every teacher has it different, and some people will have a much easier time of it depending on their school environment. But there's a reason why half of teachers leave within the first five years. You really can't compare an office job to the level of stress a teacher faces on a daily basis. It's not just the hours. It's the emotional and physical exhaustion of the nature of the job that takes you away from your family, too. Like I say, people who haven't done it, just don't get it.