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?

I'd like all non-teachers to imagine not being able to take a half day to watch your child's school play/assembly/sports' day. It works both ways! I am primary and now only do supply work because full time teaching was too much for me healthwise (chronic health condition which causes fatigue). When I was a class teacher I was working around 60 hours per week. Never switched off. Never went out because of exhaustion/having to be up at 6:30/prepping and/or marking to do etc...

Try and think of something other than teaching because you may well pay to do your PGCE and then decide it's not for you. What about something like speech and language therapy?

Most schools have pulled out of doing the BTEC Nat in H&S because it's on the defundung list.

@Longtimelurker1980
But not ridiculous to expect us to believe that you are the exception to the rule? Not a chance I believe that you are a teacher! 😂

Could you go into lecturing at Uni? Most of the lecturers from my Uni nursing course were nurses themselves.
There is so much variety in nursing. I appreciate you may be more senior than this but I'm a clinical nurse specialist...we are bands 6 and 7...we do outpatient clinics which gives us the patient contact, and also office work involving lots of telephone calls to patients. The hours are basically 9-5 ( although there is some leeway in this) Monday to Friday. No nights or weekends...bliss!
obviously we don't get school holidays off but always Christmas and Boxing day. And my colleagues who had school-age children were mostly able to get half term off, but admittedly that's due to an accommodating boss, and those of us who didn't have kids/ kids grown up.

Plenty of jobs you can’t get a 1/2 day off to watch your child’s school play/sports day etc. Our rota is done to January if I suddenly wanted a 1/2 day in December and I was meant to be at work the chances are I wouldn’t be able to go and I have a very accommodating boss. My friend a nurse requested a day off to go to her child’s award thing in a few weeks and didn’t get it.
My ex DH never attended anything he was working ditto my investment banker ex SIL and BIL. Not being able to attend children’s activities is very common for people working full time Monday to Friday.
Im not sure what world teachers live in if they think everyone else has employers happily letting people take time off all over the place to attend nativity plays and sports days.

I honestly think community nursing is the hardest field of nursing to be in. Ultimately the buck stops with you, if anything happens to your patient, you were the one who saw them last.
There is so much safeguarding and onward referring.
I don't think having the spectre of revalidation hanging over nursing, helps with staff retention either. At least when the GTC got scrapped that particular hurdle was removed from teaching.
Both careers are brutal though.

Would you consider working in a nursing home? My friend has done this. Now she works in a 5 star environment and is treated like a human being instead of a robot, the pay is better too.

@mugglewump I'd like all non-teachers to imagine not being able to take a half day to watch your child's school play/assembly/sports' day

You think this is limited to teachers😵‍💫.

I was lucky when teaching that my DH had a ‘normal’ job (not teaching or nursing) and he did all of the emergency stuff-looking after kids being ill/snow days but also the as hoc things like sports days and assemblies. His job has flexibility.

I don’t think teaching is harder than any other job. I agree nursing is hard as well. There are plenty of other jobs out there though! If you are fed up and want more work life balance and you’re not getting it in nursing, jumping into teaching seems an odd choice-I’d cast your net a bit wider.

any prep from home was just ordering resources or sorting plans/marking.

JUST sorting plans/marking?

Have you any idea how long it takes to plan and create differentiated resources for a lesson @4timesthefun ? Hint: it's significantly longer than it takes to actually teach the lesson

Your relatives would have been WFH before WFH was a thing.

I think there is a very significant difference in the time it takes people to do different things, in all professions. I work in psychology, where many of my colleagues have gone to AI note taking and say it saves them 3hrs per day, which was what they previously spent on doing their own notes. I can’t even fathom spending 3hrs a day on notes. Perhaps I’m a worse clinician for not taking anywhere remotely close to that time on writing session notes, I’m not sure, but I do think there are different approaches. My siblings are possibly similar to me and don’t spend 35hrs per week (on top of the 40hr work week) on planning and marking. I’ve lectured at universities and have done a tonne of marking in my time. It’s never been something that I’ve found onerous. I might be flamed for this but I often marked 200ish major 3500 word university essays in less time than some of the teachers in this thread have spoken about needing to mark work in the school holidays, including primary school teachers who are unlikely to be marking 200 + students or 3500 word essays. I’m not saying that it isn’t a tough gig, but for some people it is a manageable one. I have a few friends who absolutely love teaching and wouldn’t do anything else. I also have some who find it completely draining and are on the edge of burnout. It just sounds to me like the OP is someone who could have a good experience in the profession.

I think the number of teacher & ex-teachers stating much the same thing shows I'm not being dramatic.

Plus, have you seen the percentage of new teachers that are still in teaching after 5 years, or the number of teachers who leave teaching each year? They are truly staggering. Figures like those exist for a reason.

I understand that experiences differ but I taught in inner city schools and my experiences where most certainly not unique.

God don't do it!! My husband career changed into teaching (teaching high school science), he then career changed out of it 7 years later as it almost broke him. Utterly ridiculous workload and no time to spend with his own children. He was constantly exhausted, leaving everyday at 7am, not getting home until 6pm, then getting work out again at 8pm and working until bedtime. His missed every sportsday, every assembly, school play etc in school time. He was run into the ground for very little financial benefit, it was awful.

He now has a 100% wfh job, he's paid a lot more and he can take our children to school, he can attend sportsday, assemblies etc with ease, he has great work-life balance and no stress. He has time to spend with our children, energy to exercise and he is much happier and healthier. I would never advise anyone to enter into teaching now, it's awful. Unless you teach an easy subject like art or similar where there is little teaching, marking and no pressure to meet targets like there are for core subjects I just wouldn't.

You would be much better side stepping in what you already do, either retrain in something with better hours etc, I know quite a few nurses who retrained as health visitors, they all have children and love it, no more shifts, 9-5 and much less stress. I also work in public health with lots of nurses, they earn well (all band 8's+) and have 9-5 jobs, most are 100% work from home too. Obviously they don't practice anymore, but working in population health is still helping people, just on a much larger scale and not directly patient facing.

I'd do anything but teaching, it really isn't worth the holidays.

I did this - retrained to be a Primary teacher in my forties after a successful but demanding career in marketing and sales. The training year was the toughest of my life. After that, I soon realised that, especially during the first years of your career, teachers work about a 70 hour week in term time, and a 40 hour week during the shorter holidays (but flexi-time). It's relentless - it can take 2 hours to prep a one hour lesson, then another hour or more to mark the work. There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up. Your stress, powerlessness, and feelings of inadequacy in the face of constant scrutiny, results pressures, admin, data drops, twilight meetings, and excessive management oversight, can be unbearable. The actual teaching bit is wonderful, but the other +50% of the job is soul destroying. I also wanted to help people, do something more fulfilling and have some more time off. Teaching is absolutely, definitely not that. My solution? I work for a children's education charity part time. Yes, a big pay cut. But rewarding, fantastic, and gives me my life back... Tread carefully.

Try to get a nursing job in OPD. I never worked weekends as the Consultants didn't want to! Never worked Christmas or any of the Bank holidays. Those with children have to book their annual leave a.s.a.p when the diary is released. I thoroughly enjoyed working there and it was rarely boring. My favourite specialties were Colposcopy and Gynae. However I worked in Orthopedics, ENT, Dermatology, General surgery etc. It was lovely to be able to chat to patients putting them at ease when they were undergoing minor ops and procedures. I also learnt an awful lot from all the different consultants and Dr's. The nursing staff often had to advise junior Dr's on procedures too when the Consultants threw them in at the deep end! This is of course if your particular clinic has OPD in house. Some hospitals have satellite clinics. Definitely worth consideration!

Are there plenty of jobs where you get hit, bit, sworn at regularly and then you have to act as if nothing has happened the next day.
Last day of half term for example a pregnant colleague was shoved over by a sen 8 year old, concussed and had to go to hospital for monitoring. SLT reaction, ' you must have got in his way'.

Another good point - it's always a teacher's fault and there seems to be no such thing as 'zero tolerance' as there are so few consequences these days.

Teaching is a wonderful job but the work life balance is appalling.

Onbdy
I'm not so sure about this. Dealing with life and death on a regular basis has got to be very different to teaching. And dare I say, more distressing.

Distressing, possibly, but not done by groups of 30+ at a time, with a different group in every hour. SEND children who need 1 to 1, or to be in specialist education or at least small groups rather than trying to cope in big mainstream classes. Parents who believe their child can do no wrong, challenging every decision and prepared to believe their child's account of what happens in school and needing long explanations before they might just give you the benefit of the doubt. And all the time pressure to achieve the most aspirational exam grades. As I have said, holidays just give breathing space to catch up. Curriculum, attitudes and precautions constantly changing. It is relentless.

I think with either profession you have got to have a passion for it and want to do it. They are both very tough and unless you enjoy the job/work it's going to have a high chance of leading to burn out.

Neither are a job to fall into because you're looking for a good work/life balance.

Partly because neither have a good work/life balance (except maybe some clinic 9-5 type nursing jobs but these may have a lot of paperwork). But mainly because you've got to want to do the actual job and be genuinely passionate about it. I think both kids and people needing healthcare deserve that.

If I just wanted a job with a good work life balance I'd find some sort of office job

For Secondary you need a degree in your subject. You mentioned Science or Health and Social Care. Is your degree in nursing? I don't know if that would work. There likely would only be one class of Health and Social Care in Year 10 and one in Year 11. That wouldn't fill a teaching timetable. I guess they might give you Year 7 Science, but I can't see a PGCE course accepting you on that basis. Maybe you have researched all this. It just didn't sound like you had, as you mentioned various different subjects and secondary, and it doesn't work like that.

So off the top of my head: police , ambulance drivers, paramedics, carers, (on minimum wage and often not paid for the time when not actually standing in someone’s house e.g. driving between visits) nurses, doctors, shop workers (DS’s girlfriend worked in a supermarket during uni she was regularly spat at pushed and shouted at by customers management did nothing), chefs (notorious for abusing each other) social workers, GPs, and I’m sure there are many more.
No one including teachers should experience abuse when at work but many sadly do and are expected to carry on as if nothing has happened, management should support you when it happens but frequently they don’t or as you say blame you but this problem is sadly not unique to teaching.

It's really not the same. Expect a minimum of 3h a day marking/planning/doing admin/attending meeting/ dealing with emails and phone calls ON TOP of your directed hours from 8 am to 3.30 pm ( approximately).Every day. Including at the weekend. And that's a minimum. Reports take at least 4 full days to write for a class of 30. Marking test papers for multiple classes if you're secondary is a shocker in terms of how much time it takes. Don't expect to relax much in the holiday as teachers use this "free time" to catch up or get ahead of the game by planning and organising their classrooms and resources/systems. Don't forget the amount of time during and outside teaching time dealing with behaviour issues and having to log everything and liaise with colleagues and parents. And there are still break duties, pastoral care, parents evenings, school trips etc... that would of course add to your hours. I would not recommend. It's a very hard job and mostly thankless unless you strike lucky with your school/kids/parents/colleagues...