Career change: From university researcher to secondary teach

[midnightOK]

This is not a AIBU post, I mainly post it for traffic.

I am currently doing research in university. I am on a fixed contract and I am over 40 years old. I keep feeling that research jobs are not sth suitable for me. On one hand you need to keep learning new stuff, which becomes difficult when u become older and often distracted by kids or housework. On another hand, my job is not a permanent one and the lack of job security makes me worrying all the time. I am thinking of retrained to be a secondary teacher, but not sure if that would be a sensible move? English is not my native language and I am worried that it might be difficult to deal with teenagers, especially when I have to consider cultural differences and language barrier etc. Can anyone pls advise me? Many thanks for wisdom Mumsneters.

Or in case you have any good suggestions for my next career? I have a PhD in engineering. I have tried to apply for some data scientist positions, but deeply in my heart, I don't want to do jobs which you have to keep learning. Thanks

@Carboholic You're speaking from a position of ignorance about the amount of learning required to keep teaching. You have to keep up to date with pedagogy, school systems and new ICT. Teaching is a constantly evolving job, particularly in the last 2 years. The first 5 years of teaching you are learning daily. I'm 11 years in and learning all the time.

Surely a big pay cut would be required? Assuming you are an experienced post doc you must be on high 30's. Teachers start in the 20's. Or is there a bonus for your subject area.

I think there are loads of other career opportunities outside academia for someone with your skills. All of them far better paid and lower stress than teaching. You need some careers advice. Or try looking on indeed job site to see what's around. Freelance work might be a possibility as well (can be quite lucrative).

I am in a similar position to you, fed up of temp contracts, almost 40. There are actually lots of opportunities out there. You just need to have a look.

In the nicest way, if you want to avoid stress, don’t want to constantly be learning and are struggling for time/pulled in all directions then I don’t think teaching is for you. I’m a secondary head of department and dh is a primary deputy head. Teaching has all of those things that you don’t want. It can be pretty brutal. There are times of very high stress, there is NEVER enough time to do everything, it interferes with home life and things are constantly changing. Plus the training is intense. I mentor trainees who do a schools direct type route into teaching and to do it well requires a huge amount of time working outside of school hours. I would highly recommend trying to spend a good amount of time in schools (not just a week) before making a decision like this.

Teaching doesn’t have job security.

@Hercisback I have a teaching and research job at a University and know the amount of learning required for both. I don’t teach in school so there’s less pedagogy but I teach 1-2 new classes every year and we have new systems (eg virtual learning environments, online learning etc) coming in all the time.

I acknowledge that a lot of learning is required for the teaching job. The difference is that the research is always new - by definition, the moment you understand something properly, you write it up as a paper, submit to a journal, and move to the next project. So 100% of your time, which is likely to be cca 60h / week, is spent confused and trying to understand something new. This is incredibly mentally taxing. There is never a “routine” part of the work. So this is an entirely different level of “learning new stuff” from that required in other jobs. Literally- your job is to be confused.

So I don’t think the OP means that she never wants to learn on the job, as she would not have ended up with a PhD and doing research in engineering if she was resistant to learning. I believe she means that she wants a job where she is not on completely unknown territory 100% of the time (while also being paid for only 80% and on short term contracts because of the lack of funding for HE).

Yes, job security and the long holiday. The pay is decent too, I think. I can't afford a big salary cut. I don't worry about learning new things or handling stress in teaching. Teaching is quite different from my current research work. Although there will be new things which have to be learnt, they will be fairly easy and manageable for most people ( I assume)

No. Teaching is hard work, can be very stressful and is the kind of job you have to really really want to do. Otherwise you will hate it. Everything you have said indicates that you have absolutely no idea at all about what teaching in a secondary school would be like. And the fact tyat you have young children and an unsupportive partner would make it even more inadvisable. Sounds like a very bad idea tbh.

Thanks all mumsnetters for your very informative replies. I think I basically have given up my naive ideas of becoming a secondary school teacher. What I need to do might be to look for opportunities in other areas, where my skills and expertises can be transferred and applied, rather than focusing on research-related areas, which are easier for me to grab a job, but may not be a long-term solution to the fundamental dilemma I am facing. Many thanks .