Tell me honestly about your career as a teacher

[ChooseTheLifeYouLove]

I am looking for a career change and have considered teaching but I don't know what it's properly like day to day. I have a degree so could do a training course. I currently work in a technical field and earn approx £60k per annum so know I would have to take a pay cut but was hoping for a better work life balance and a long term career (what I do now is contracts).

If you can I would love to know the hours you do each week, your salary, best bits, worst bits and would you recommend overall?

Thank you.

I think the only way to really see what it's like is to get yourself a job in a school, and then decide.

I am a TA (Primary), and I know that becoming a teacher is not for me. I love teaching, love the school environment and the children and (most) parents. But the pressure is relentless, change is frequent and it's a political football.

Oh dear, OP, I wonder if this has totally put you off?!

The work life balance thing is a pipe dream in teaching though. I work Pt and I realised last term that I generally put in a 40 hour week. PT my arse! I have to work hard to ensure that I'm not doing school stuff or thinking about school (mental planning!) during family time. The school versus home guilt is a killer. I don't work all my school holidays but do work for several days/weeks depending on how long the holiday is. I'm in Scotland so am one week in to my summer holiday. I haven't worked this week but I have been mentally decompressing and recovering. Last term was manic.

There are many wonderful aspects of the job, otherwise no one would stick it. The relationships with children and colleagues, the incredible sense of pride and achievement when your students learn something new or master a new skill. In Scotland at least there is still a degree of autonomy which I treasure.

Long, long hours
7.30-6 then 9-midnight plus one day at the weekend.

Stress

Impossible targets

Constant dealing with bad behaviour from kids/trying to deal with the minority of pain in the arse parents while being fair to the rest.

Neglecting your own children to bring up someone else's.

Government constantly changing the curriculum so all your work is constantly undone for no benefit.

Poor working environment.

Not having time to go to the loo

MrsMook

You nailed it when you said:

"To survive, you have to love the students and your subject, be resilient, organised, great at politics and have a high energy level and few external commitments. Sadly a love of statistics and spreadsheets is becoming essential"

Yes. My class teacher has all this. She is great. Worked as a TA herself and had a City job, so went in with eyes open.

Haven't RTFT but HA HA HA HA work life balance. Yes, during the summer holiday I will balance looking after two children with writing 4 different exam courses.
Also, given your salary, you are looking for half wages to start and max of half wages.
BUT. I fucking love my job as a secondary teacher. I've been middle management and am happy not to be anymore, but I love being in the classroom, I love teaching.

I hate: the management, the government, the fact that the goal posts move daily!

Sorry *max 2/3 wages

Yes like others have said, lol at work-life balance.

Teach because you love working with children / young people and helping them to develop. It will break you if you try to do it for the holidays or work-life balance.

I have been teaching for 10 years. Got to the point of almost leaving earlier this year - am now back in love(ish) with it because I have left my SLT position and found a different school. Like another poster said I'm now over-experienced for the role I'm in which takes the pressure off and I'm just allowing myself to enjoy it - that plus working in a school with a great head. I work 3 days per week - 7.30-5 and then 5-6 evenings a week for around 3 hours each time. So basically working 3 days a week lets me 'only' do full time hours.

The holidays are good but they are not pure holiday as there is still work to be done. If you have children, you need to accept you will not be able to go to any of their school hours events, sports days, assemblies etc. DH teaches too so our kids just have to get used to no-one being there. I regularly have to tell my children I can't do x, y or z because I need to work.

Do it if you are really passionate about it...but your op doesn't sound like you are.

I think miss dreads description further up is very very accurate and I feel tired all over again just reading it!
Could you cope with the wage drop OP? I moved from industry too and tbh I REALLY miss being able to buy myself nice clothes, going on holiday etc - no money for these things now!

Long days, I work 8-5 at school and then a couple of evenings a week and one day at the weekend. Parents evening and other evenings like open evenings work out at every other or every third week after the first half term, tend to be until 8 or 9pm. During my school direct training last year I worked every evening and both days of weekends. Holidays are nice but expect to spend half of it planning, marking etc. So out of a half term mon-wed is spent working.

99% of the kids are fine, 1% aren't. 80% of the parents are fine, 20% aren't. Just have a look at the parent posts on here, it gives you a good idea of what is to come.

Schools are now run like a business not a school. Everything is about making/saving money. This is achieved by employing unqualified teachers and a lot of NQTs!

You start on £22,000, the adverts about wages on TV are total rubbish.

If you love your subject you may stay, if not you probably won't, liking working with kids isn't enough. 50% of teachers quit within the first 5 years. Out of my course of 13 trainee teachers only 8 finished the year.

There is NO work life balance. Hahahaha!

You will do three times as much work as you do now for a paltry £21k starting salary. I speak as someone who is not much bothered about earning highly but I despair at the way we are undervalued like this for the amount of work and thinking time that is put in.

You will NEVER switch off.

Nothing will EVER be good enough for some of your managers.

You will realise that there is very little you can do to make that 'difference' that new teachers think they will make. Motivated kids will learn, demotivated kids will learn slowly and unpredictably. No one is ever like the Robin Williams character in Good Will Hunting and you'd never be allowed to be like that in a state school. You just have to do whatever is fashionable that term.

Oh and you'll spend a lot of that pathetic £20k on resources. Imagine nurses going into work with dressings in case they need them that shift? Or accountants buying paper for the printer because their firm had exhausted its paper budget?

I retrained in my 30s and it was a huge mistake. I hate it. Love the kids, hate the job.

I teach secondary and am feeling totally disheartened at the moment - marking new style papers on which some groups have done terribly as they're not used to them, and facing observations and appraisal which have been left far too late (not my fault I hasten to add!)
I won't leave though as I love the lightbulb moments that happen and don't know what else I could do that would give me the same income...
Realistically, you talk about work / life balance. There is none. In primary, there is a massive workload in terms of marking. I know as I worked as a TA for two years.
In secondary, it's the pressure of results, ongoing assessments and endless spreadsheets recording them, and endless meetings to tick boxes for various forms of CPD.
If you're off sick, you will still be expected to set work for your groups in a form that someone else can deliver - you are not legally required to do so, but even so it is an expectation. It takes me a minimum of two hours to call the company I have to report sick to and complete cover forms and set work etc. Much of the time I go to work even though I'm not well enough as its just easier to go and try to tough it out rather than go through the whole rigmarole.
I'm so ready for a break I could cry (but won't - I will survive until the end of term presenting my 'professional face') but it is very demanding in a way that other jobs aren't.
You would be wise to go and observe in a school (primary or secondary as appropriate) for a couple of weeks to get a good feel of what really happens, and then decide.
Sorry for the long post - but you did ask!

I did 12 hour days and have done 12 hour weekends as well
20k starting salary salary linked to exam results
Have taught 5 murders, rapist and loads of drug gang members
I believe the stress made me infertile ( my Ivf doc said she treated a lot of teachers )
BUT!! Great camaraderie, great sense of satisfaction . been doing it for twenty years! Good luck x

Agree totally with what MrsMook says.

I was in teaching from 1981 to 2014 with a period of part-time temporary work between 1985-1991 (had two kids and moved area). I was in secondary. By the end I felt that I was never completely in control (not particularly of the kids, but of what I could teach and how and the tonnes of paperwork) and whatever I did was never quite enough.

In 2014 I took voluntary redundancy and now I work part time in a primary school - but even that weighs on me a bit - not the classroom bit (I love that) but the school improvement plans, data work, policy writing, scheme of learning writing - all the other shite I have to do.

In 1981 it was about what you did in the classroom and you had a lot more freedom as to how you delivered lessons - now it is all so micro-managed.

Just to spell it out:
It's 8am ish until 4.30-5ish in the classroom. The real work of planning, marking, reviewing, emails, data, communication, displays, everything starts once the children have gone home.

You're looking at a good couple of hours work every evening (maybe not Friday) and at least half a day at the weekend.
So easily 50-60 hour weeks.

Most half terms and holidays, you'll have the lurgy known as end-of-term-itis.

Your own family will come second to the job, no matter how hard you try. Even on family days out, your head will be mentally 'in the classroom' thinking about work things.

Oh yes, another infertile teacher here, fertility doc said caused by stress.

Love the kids, teaching Science and my colleagues. However I'll be leaving at Christmas after eight years, going on supply (while looking for a part time job outside of teaching) in pursuit of a work life balance. I honestly wouldn't recommend it as a career at the moment, especially if you have a family or commitments outside of work.

Don't do it! You'll be working just as hard for half the money. Teaching does not give you anything like a semblance of a work life balance. You earn good money doing what you're doing and if I was you I'd stick with it.

I think there are lots of good reasons not to teach here, but I'm not sure the hours thing is a huge problem. Somebody already earning £60k a year is very unlikely to be doing standard 35 hour weeks at the moment. They're also highly unlikely to have 12 weeks holiday a year though and that makes a huge difference to work life balance when you have kids of school age.

I retired two years ago after forty years teaching in primary schools. I wanted to be a teacher all my life from being a little girl.I loved it and would never have wanted to do anything else. The hours were long, very long, I worked at least forty five hours in school, eight until five.Added to those hours were hours of marking and lesson preparation at home.Add to that school parent evenings,concerts, football, netball, rounders matches etc. School took over my life and I truly think my own children should have had more of my time.On top of all that was the stress, stress and more stress.
Would I do it all over again? Yes.

Rewarding but tough going- better work life balance - I think not- kids great - mostly - some great staff some not so great -recent changes means it can be hugely stressful and your experience will be hugely dependent on the h/t ethos -huge pay cut from what you are doing now- try doing some p/t volunteering if you can to see what you think.

Not a lot else to add but as a teacher of eight years I would say:

Pros- the teaching, the kids are what I do this for as I adore being in the classroom; always different; being able to do a subject I love; my department who are the best group of people I've ever had the privilege of working with; the holidays

The cons: lack of consistency from SLT; ridiculous expectations; hoop jumping; targets to meet that are sometimes laughable; kids who just will not engage no matter how hard you try; marking; losing a lot of holiday time to marking; the fact people tell you how much time off you have without realising how much of it you have to use to actually catch up on where you've got behind; work life balance being so unpredictable you can't always plan ahead.

If you want a better work life balance I can only assume yours is currently non existent as if you think you will have a better one in teaching I can't imagine what you have now!

I went into teaching as a second career. I have a great work/life balance. My school is wonderful and the kids are great. Enjoy everyday. I DO NOT teach in the UK.

Just don't! Every single person I know at uni who studied for a pgce has quit the profession citing a number of reasons, but the common ones seem to be:

Crap work / life balance
Stress
Crap pay
Ofsted
Crap parents
Weak management
Eroded pension provision
Constant new initiatives with every government
Working weekends
A sizeable minority of awful kids
Etc.......

You do not go into teaching for the 'work life balance'!

I'm in primary. 60-70 hour week is normal.

I left a previous career to seek greater job satisfaction, taking a £15k pay cut. The job satisfaction in the classroom is amazing.

Everything else is s#!¥.

I didn't get a pay rise because my class's progress wasn't good enough. I had more children with EAL and SEND than my colleagues but had the same overall target to meet.

I've been attacked by a parent outside school.

We had to move one of the DCs to a different 'club' because the leader bullied them in retaliation to perceived issues with me and their DC in school.

I've had time off sick with stress. The Head was principally concerned with whether I'd get the reports written. They have actively avoided me since my return.

I'm leaving teaching in 2 weeks' time ... to seek work life balance.

5 years state secondary. 50ish hour weeks, very stressful, hideous amounts of paperwork, behavioural problems, lack of professional freedom. Reasonable pay (not by the standards of your current profession).
3 years international school. 40ish hour week. Good work/life balance. Reasonable professional freedom. Very few behavioural issues. Demanding parents. Excellent pay and conditions.
5 years independent UK. 70ish hour weeks. Horrendous work/life balance, lessons 8-5 plus meetings etc, Saturday school, but slightly longer holidays. Less paperwork and greater professional freedom. Moderate behavioural issues. Very demanding parents. Pay slightly lower than state. Discount for kids' fees.

Next will be another international move. I don't have the energy for this UK teaching any more, and my family is suffering from it.