To want to change careers from nursing into teaching for better work life balance

[TwinklyRoseTurtle]

I’m aware both are highly stressful careers, I’m quite senior in my role and would be taking roughly a 15K pay cut. However it keeps niggling in the back of mind, from posts I’ve seen this on previously I’ve seen it commented that teaching means taking work home- in my nursing role this is also very common- you never switch off even on days off. I’m finding the shift work increasingly difficult but not just that, I still like helping people it’s my favourite part of the job but I just feel like nursing is not for me anymore, I’ve still got a long career ahead of me and can’t deny the fact I would prefer Monday- Friday hours and all half terms off for childcare also. I’m interested in hearing from anyone else who has done this? Is it an unrealistic expectation for work/life balance?

Teaching is often hard work on the behaviour front too.

But you're looking for a career change to end that. I was a teacher for 15 years but left after having kids as the work life balance didn't work. Its an amazing job, incredibly demanding but, I assume similar to nursing in that the hard parts are really very challenging. I wouldn't recommend on the basis of your values (wanting to help people) or better work life balance. Only if you genuinely felt called to it.

I’m sorry but I’m convinced the few people claiming to be teachers with a work life balance are trolls or fantasists. No teacher I’ve ever met thinks this and I met hundreds over my 20 year career. Remember it’s an anonymous forum and we have no way of verifying whether or not they are telling the truth.
Those claiming that teachers have nothing to compare the job too might want to reread the thread, lots of us are former teachers so we are comparing to other jobs! I can confirm that I never take any work home in my current role and I definitely don’t work more hours than I’m paid for. Of course there are other jobs where additional work is needed, it isn’t just teaching but these tend to be higher paid roles.

I'd like the teachers to imagine a job where they have to fight not to work all the holidays like nurses do! Imagine missing your kids opening their Christmas presents on Christmas day, big family dinners at Easter, missing out on parties because you're working the late shift on a Saturday, NYE..... I could go on! I can only imagine what it must feel like to work mon-fri! Even if you do have to do extra admin (which as a senior sister I also do plenty of!)

Many people on here have experienced both teaching and other roles. I know I have. Op is wanting a less demanding job and what people are pointing out is that teaching is likely to be similar in terms of workload, time, pressure etc. It isn't a competition, but it's helping op see that teaching will not necessarily remove the things she is finding hard. Many teachers I still know work 11 hours in school, several more at home afterwards, half the weekend and a good chunk of any holidays. Op wants something where she can leave work at work, which isn't something that happens in teaching.

I've done a range of jobs and have missed Christmas with my family, like many. As a teacher I also had to miss weddings, funerals and other important events as I couldn't take holiday except outside of term times. Neither job is great for that. I also had to work most of at least one day of the weekend, if not both, and most evenings. Probably 75 hours a week on average. These are both simply busy, stressful and not well paid jobs.

Thank you for this, very interesting. So the assumption that many people have, that teachers get 12 week’s paid annual leave a year is incorrect and their salary would be say pro rata’d to around 46 weeks pay spread over 52 weeks?

The OP says she’s senior in her role, assuming she’s a Band 7 with enhancements that’s one hell of a pay cut to a newly qualified teacher for what seems like very little, if any, improved work life balance.

I would also recommend the OP looks at other nursing roles. DD is now a Band 7 Advanced Practitioner and has her own clinical list Mon-Fri compressed hours over four days with 1-2 on call night or weekend shifts a month. She’s done years of grunt work and shit hours previously so this is her dream job.

Former primary school teacher here. There is no work/life balance in teaching. Also forget being able to use school holidays for anything other than lesson planning, catching up on marking, catching up on paperwork, etc, etc.

Teaching doesn't give you a life balance, im on half term and have38 pieces of coursework to mark and planning to do. What a holiday.

yes that’s it. Ideally a job advert would list a FTE salary. (This isn’t what you get due to about 7 weeks being unpaid holiday) and also the pro rata actual salary.
some adverts only list one which is why it can get confusing.
Approx 5.4 or maybe 5.6 weeks is paid holiday. The rest is unpaid.

You could move into teaching health and social care or Tlevel nursing at a college and they would pay for your PGCE training and you wouldn’t have a year unpaid.

I would contact local schools and colleges and ask about doing some shadowing. They’ll bit your hands off if you will also do some work based sessions while you are there. That way you’ll get a better picture of both environments and what works for you.

I did work with a teacher who never took any work home and did it all in his working day.

He was utterly rubbish at his job.

The workload is not even the worst thing about being a teacher.Not even close!

I think this is the attitude that worries me. That if I am not struggling then I must be lying. Which is quite ridiculous. I just don’t think that it is the crazy hotbed that some teachers make it out to be. Yes it’s hard work, yes some of our service users are very needy and demanding, yes it can be tiring being ‘on’ for 6 hours straight. But so are myriad other jobs. It is not an exceptional career in that respect and I think people who haven’t worked elsewhere have a distorted view of the world of work.

OP, you already have experience of a demanding career. Teaching will give you significantly more down time through the vast holidays and no shift work - that in itself will make your life so much easier. And you will already be well prepared for the difficult conversations, the crowd control, the attention to detail and the need to put the hours in. If you can, talk to teachers in real life, including ones for whom it is a second career and who may have wider experience of the world of work to draw on.

Career changers are less likely to complete their teacher training than those who come straight out of uni. And anecdotally, my career changer trainees fell apart because they didn't expect it to be so hard.

Sounds like out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Not all teacher experiences are the same. Work loads differ depending on subject. Also the support is SLT and the school ethos. Some great teachers command respect instantly, others have to work at it but it’s there, others struggle. Some schools have “easier” students with supportive parents. Others are battling parents constantly.

A great supportive school, in a good area combined with an excellent teacher who has good classroom control, will lead to a different perceive when answering this question- with all the different shades of grey in between.

Im interested to know in which schools teachers have full hour lunchtimes to spend in the staff room. Even years ago you’d be lucky to get 15 minutes to grab food and hit the loo. Interested that nursing also involves crowd control. I can’t imagine it is similar in that you’re trying to get 30 people, many of whom don’t want to be in the room, to behave and also to teach them something. Despite some posters not believing how hard teaching is now, theres obviously something wrong as teachers are leaving in droves and newly qualified staff don’t last long. The same could apply to the NHS.

Hi, perhaps think about family therapy training. You need a foundational profession and nursing qualifies. It’s a 4 year training and will give you a range of areas you can work in. Interesting and varied work, has its own stresses but you can also work privately after you’ve gained some experience. As your children are older you could make it work around them.

This is a bit dramatic. I’m a primary school teacher with 3 children and of course you can have a work/life balance. School holidays are for my own children.

Make enquiries at your local FE College. Many will take you on to teach practical subjects (such as Health & Social Care) and will pay for you to do a PGCE in lifelong learning, while you teach. Find out more about the possibilities and then decide. Teaching these days is not for the faint-hearted - it’s tough!

Your local FE college would bite your hand off- you could deliver T level health, access to nursing, etc. they’d also probably train you up as a teacher and I personally think FE has a better WL balance than the other education sectors.

I fully accept that I'm going to get savaged for this.

I'm a teacher. Retrained in my early 50s. Rapidly promoted, made HOD by the end of my third year. Secondary. Non core. Joined the school when it was in special measures, now rated good. Serves a white working class community that's in the top 5% for deprivation.

I'm fine. Brought my laptop home twice since the beginning of September - 3 times if you count this half term. I work 7.30 - 5.30, so that is a 50 week, and this is more than enough. My behaviour management is good. School challenging but not toxic. Lots of job satisfaction. I'm already UPS with quite a hefty TLR.

The thing about teaching is that it's relatively predictable. I know that sometimes I'll have to work like a dog, e.g. mocks followed by progress evening when none of the other stuff stops either. It's rough then, but it can also be anticipated and planned for.

I would say, though, that being older really helps. My kids are all in their 30s and I've been married for coming on 40 years. In other words, there's not a lot of other movement in my life. No ageing parents to take care of either. So yeah, I have a good work life balance because my life outside of work is calm. Plus, my husband WFH so can field most day to day stuff. I'm not sure how well I'd manage if I was juggling childcare and both of us were working balls to the wall, with loads of additional responsibilities. I rather suspect this is where a lot of the struggles come from.

Also PGCE is like a unique form of torture. Never worked so bloody hard in my whole life.

If you can teach the 'Anatomy and physiology' unit of BTEC health and social care you will never be out of work.

If you go into FE teaching you work and take your teaching qualification part time over 2 years.

Imagine doing what you do now for 34 people all at the same time, 4/5 times a day, 5 days a week. That is just the face to face work. You then have all the additional prep, recording etc on top. It sounds like you are already convinced though so go for it....let us know how it goes.