Career change, mad to or mad not to?

[New2Mumming]

I'll lay out the bare info as best I can:

Current job:
About to go full time hours but flexi
£45k
Marketing, low pressure
Family friendly
1 day pw in office, 1.5hr commute each way
Restructure coming up, not clear if I'll be affected

DH wants me to train to teach from September for the sake of the family:

-We live in an area of good schools so best time to do it is while we're here for my CV
-Currently 20k bursary for my subject
-Teachers needed everywhere in country and abroad, means flexible to move

• Holiday with kids

Im not against being a teacher itself, but my reservations

• 2 kids in nursery right now. If I train I won't get any funding or VAT relief. My mum would have to have them both 2 days pw to be affordable
• No guarantee of a job at the end of it, at least not locally

-DH commutes 4 days pw

• Are the daily hours good for a parent ie starting work at 8 finishing around 4 or working nights and weekends? Especially if I had to commute in even 25 mins
• what if my kids are ill?

-Training year and first few years seem hardest, while kids are small

• 31k starting salary seems the norm, which is low for 5 days pw without wfh benefits at this stage in my life
• missing kids events in week
• have read mixed reviews of teaching, mostly negative.

I don't know. I'll apply for September. DH said I shouldn't do it if it's only because it's his idea. I really struggle with this in general because then i feel selfish (hes not being manipulative, am aware that i am working rither way)
I get his points and it's not that I necessarily wouldn't like teaching. But I don't see how it would work rn
I hate the idea that he could be right and I'd lose my job and do this in 7 yrs time, feeling even further behind
But I also struggle with this philosophy of panic about what might happen When things are about to be better for us (new house, a bit more cash with me going Full time in two weeks)

Am I being selfish if I don't do it? That's how I feel.
If I hate it then where am I? Could be hard to get back into my job.

I work 8 til 4 as a teacher to accommodate school run/after school club. I then cannot work again until my kids are in bed. So I'm regularly up til 11pm working. I also work Sunday afternoons. The holidays are great, yes, but if I knew what teaching would be like 16 years ago when I trained now (changed so much) I wouldn't. I'm now wage trapped.

Also being in the classroom is exhausting. There is a current crisis of funding and attendance. These put huge pressure on staff.

Honestly don't do it. You will be stressed to the eyeballs for the first five years minimum. Your husband is wrong to pressure you into this. Your current job sounds more flexible.

I have more more SEN than ever before in every single class now and I have not had a TA / LSA in years.

Your DH will regret this suggestion when you’re super stressed, earning less than you are now and don’t have the flexibility of wfh when you have young children.

What would you teach? Are you proficient in that subject? Do you have the skills needed for teaching? You can't just 'train in a nice grammar', you will be placed in a school.or schools.
To pass the training year and the two ECT years, you need to demonstrate that you are proficient in your subject, able to plan sequences of lessons, contribute to the school beyond your lessons, apply marking policies, understand SEN needs, keep up with current pedagogy, build relationships etc etc etc. You can't just get by on 'my husband thought this was a good idea'.

which subject would you teach? Unless it’s one of the core subjects, you will find there aren’t that many jobs around the country and abroad. The requirements to teach in other countries are sometimes higher than the uk, too.

You’re in the UK at the moment, in London? And have a flexible well paid marketing job.

Your DH does a job he hates, but is well paid and wants to leave the UK.

How would you being a teacher help this?

Please, unless you really want to teach, don't do it. It's full on and you never switch off. 10 hr days often plus parents evenings and other events.
If this is about being around in school holidays, then get him to admit that fact and make alternative plans for the kids. Reality is 2 weeks being exhausted, 2 weeks holiday, 2 weeks winding up to go back. Time over every weekend doing marking and prep, writing reports and doing admin.
Teaching is the best job but it can also be the worst if it's not what you envisaged/difficult students/not taking time off when ill because it's harder to sort lessons than simply go in and teach.

Well you say no on the basis that your own career satisfaction is important and you don’t solely exist to facilitate the existence of other people. That your husband has ended up in a job he hates is a him problem and for him to resolve.

Have I read this right OP. You are quite content with ur job. U earn well, u have a career in marketing.

ur OH hates his job and is not content. So he’s looked around and thought what can I change in order to make me feel
better. And rather than focussing on his job, his career, his life hes decided to dramatically change ur life instead.

and u do have a career - in marketing - so rather than upskilling in an area of marketing he’s suggesting u absolutely tear up ur own career.

For what?

OP this is weird. Fine have a conversation with your OP about what they want and thier hopes. But you do you.

and tell him to have some respect for your job and your career.

As the spouse of a career changer into teaching my life has had to change a lot to accommodate it.

It's a really demanding job with no flexibility whatsoever. It's not family friendly. We don't often go out during the week as there's planning, marking, meetings. It was a lot worse during training. For 2 years I did pretty much everything round the house.

I may have been a lot less supportive of this change if I had realised what was coming.

However DH works for a MAT and he asked to be started in the middle of the band because of his previous experience. He's now on UPS and HoD 6 years after starting training. If you do go ahead, I would look into a SCITT programme.

I don't think either of you have a clue about teaching if you think it will give you greater flexibility! There is nothing flexible about teaching. You must be in school 1265 hours over the course of a year, some of those hours are to accommodate Parents Evenings, which you will have no influence over the timing of. If it falls on your child's birthday, that's tough, you'll just have to have the party on a different day.
It is a fallacy that teachers start their day just before the children and leave the school just after them. There is at least one mandatory evening meeting weekly, often more than one, especially in secondary education. There are 5 days per year when teachers have to be in school when the children don't, which could mean up to 10 extra days when you need childcare, if you don't work in the same school that your children attend.

Every evening and lots of weekends are spend, planning, preparing and marking work.

I think it would be useful for you and your DH to spend some time with teachers to find out more about the working life of a teacher - you might find it easier to approach a retired teacher, they have some leisure time!

Teaching is not just a practical skill you can learn! In some ways, your whole life needs to lead up to the point where you are ready to do it, and it will not only enrich the lives of those you teach, but enrich your life too. It isn't simply an alternative to working in a supermarket, being a parking attendant or driving a van.

Teaching is not family friendly, so unless your DH can step up to take on more child care, don’t.

It isn’t 8-4 with marking in the evening. It’s 7/7.30 to 5 with marking and planning in the evening. Mostly. There will be those who say they don’t do that, but the majority do.

Your husband really has no idea how it is.

I feel like he is approaching this entirely the wrong way, he’s locked straight into a potential solution to a problem with total tunnel vision. This isn’t actually about you being a teacher. Break it down. This is about:

1. Him not liking his career
2. Wanting geographical flexibility for where your family lives

You becoming a teacher is such a weirdly specific ‘solution’ that only creates other problems, the biggest being that you are very likely to be miserable being a teacher if it’s not something you want to do!

Anyway it sounds like you both need to chat through what the actual issues are and start problem solving together. If you don’t want to be a teacher I suggest you take it off the table from the get go. There are other options for both of you, it’s not teacher or bust.

My dh is actually in marketing. His working day ends at 4.30pm. He can work from home. My dc are in a school in a different town to where I teach. Our feb and oct half-terms do not match. I have tried to move schools but i am considered too old expensive. Trainees get the jobs instead.