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?

OP, these threads always bring out the fantasists, I don't know why - see the weird fever dream about how teacher salaries have to be calculated, WTF.

Basically, it's a brilliant job and I love it, teenagers are fantastic, and you are obviously used to high stress and workload. I think the thing that might hit you like a truck is the performance element of it - on a day I have no frees I basically run 5 hour-long improvised performances back to back, which destroys most of your neurons - and the behaviour management, which destroys the other neurons - even hopefully assuming you're very good at it, you're running micro-decisions about how to handle things every second that there are children in front of you, and it's exhausting. It's also a very dysfunctional profession in terms of how little your professional judgement is trusted in a lot of schools. I think those are the main stressors that you might find a bit unexpected, and it's worth doing more thinking/researching around those.

(Also teacher training is fucking awful, the first year or so will suuuuuuuuck.)

I switched from nursing to podiatry. Its 9 to 5 weekends and bank holidays off. Progression up the bands is very quick due to podiatry shortages. I dont find it stressful particularly.
There is also private podistry. I did that for a year and averaged 10k a month before tax.
I prefer nhs though.

What about a post grad in another healthcare profession, as they are mainly 9-5 months to Friday.
Same pay, same pension and you can use knowledge you have to really good effect.
My siblings teach and are on their knees with workload and kids who frankly, are not suitable in a social environment due to behavioural problems that are dangerous.
Physio or OT or SLT all sound way better than teaching.

Overtime is not paid anymore where I work as NHS desperately trying to save money, if you raise the issue you have worked late then it’s turned back to you as a time management problem- a lot of us have excellent time management skills it’s a lack of resources/ staff etc.

lol, I mean you’re joking right?!

Do you have a degree in all of those subjects?

Wrong job
It's brutal

OP have you considered teaching nursing in a university? It would be more of an “apply for things that come up and see”, but probably a bit better pay on entry. Obviously it will depend if there are unis near you who are hiring and/or offer relevant degrees. But it’s quite common to switch from practitioner to uni lecturer in some fields. I know nurses, lawyers, artists, tv producers and broadcasters who have done it.

But your annual salary is your annual salary, regardless of holidays.

You don’t need a degree in that subject to teach something at secondary school. My biology degree sister was a science teacher and was then told she also had to teach maths due a lack of maths teachers.

she was told she can teach anything as long as she has a qualification one step ahead of the level she was teaching. So she had maths A level and could teach up to gcse in maths.

I have huge admiration for nurses, and witnessed first hand how incredibly hard you all work when you cared for one of my children in the NICU, and cared for me round the clock when I was rushed to hospital with a potentially life threatening infection. Thank you all again for everything you do.

Having previously worked as a teacher, and having seen how hard nurses work, I think you are one of few professions I’d say are more likely to find switching to teaching slightly easier and better for your overall work life balance.

Wishing you the very best of luck either way 💐

Teaching is not the job if you want a better work/home life balance
Many teachers are in at 7:20, leave at 5:45, then have to do several more hours in the evening, not to mention the time taken at weekends. Half terms usually mean lots of data, reviews, assessment analysis and planning for the next term. You are never really away from work as a teacher. The behaviour reports are atrocious and the safeguarding is often really awful, with many teachers reporting sleepless nights worrying about a child in their class. Then there's the parents. Don't even start on the abomination that is the dark cloud of Ofsted.

I think most people are aware what long hours nurses work, I think they are surprised that you want to go from that, to another job that’s also known for having no work/life balance.

There are hundreds of other careers out there…why choose one w has a huge drop out rate for the reasons you’re leaving nursing

I’m a secondary English teacher in Scotland and that would never be allowed, and rightly so.

im a nurse married to a teacher with lots of teacher friends. I also used to be a teacher. They get paid a lot more than me!
also the salary is not pro rata, officially you are contracted a set number of hours for what you are paid but it’s BS as teachers work far more than this. Teaching assistants get paid pro rata (the advertised salary is not what they come out with) so they often have other part time jobs ro top up their pay. I have never heard of a teacher needing to do this.
I hated teaching. Nursing is also stressful in lots of ways but you are not ‘performing’ in the way you are as a teacher, eg you can ro a certain extent be yourself as a nurse whereas teaching you have to put on a persona, it’s extremely critical- from teenagers makimg personal comments to being observed a lot- and i felt permanently burned out. As a teacher thats really all you can be whereas there’s lots of variety in nursing.

I can understand that nursing must be very stressful but teaching is equally as stressful with a higher workload. You won’t get a better work life balance in teaching. If you’re keen to get out of nursing then look at alternative careers.

Please do not. I know about 6 others who have tried it and all have either left within 6 months because of the micromanaging or have been sacked for not meeting their unrealistic targets. If you pursue that career path, you will constantly have a non clinical (micro)manager who has no idea about healthcare breathing down your neck pushing you to assess people faster so their KPIs are met. My friend was also a recruitment consultant for agency nurses. He said a huge number of their calls were unemployed nurses wanting to register after working a few months as a PIP assessor and then realising that it was a terrible place to work and the grass certainly wasn't greener.

I’m a nurse. I did a PGCert Practice Educator course. I thoroughly recommend it. You teach students who really want to learn.

My brother in an English teacher, or should I say he was. He burnt out due to very disruptive kids, trying to teach inappropriate literature when some children could barely read and pressures from all directions.

You would be nuts to go into teaching kids.

Yet you are way behind England in the academic ranking.

I’m an English teacher in a secondary school and have zero work/life balance.
I can only start work when my children are in bed which is getting later and later as they age.
Most school holidays I go into work and have at least 2-3 sets of assessments to mark, often classes of 34 essays.
I’ve been teaching 20 years so am familiar with mark schemes but each class set takes around 4-5 hours, it took much longer when I was a newly qualified teacher.
I get bombarded with angry emails from parents during my evenings asking me to justify why I have issued detentions.
If you are after a work/life balance, this isn’t the right career change.

Most schools employ staff as a ‘teacher’ as opposed to a ‘teacher of English’ so that they can be forced to cover subjects where there is a shortage rather than hiring more specialist teachers. It’s all about budgets (or lack of).

Have you thought about becoming an NHS school nurse? Sociable hours and you visit lots of different schools. It sounds as though you could easily train in this? You would stay in the NHS pension scheme and you can progress within the role.

Out of the frying pan into the fire I fear. And I know what you mean about taking your work home as a nurse and it being on your mind, but I think that’s slightly different from tangible 60 bits of marking to do at home. (Not a teacher but just what I imagine!)
I would have thought side stepping in nursing to lecturing, training, administration, district nursing, private healthcare, even care home, might be better and not the pay cut.

Are you secondary? What subject(s) do you teach and are these the subjects you are qualified in?

I am interested because my friend has taught her subject part time, increased her hours at the school’s request and has since found her timetable is vast majority a subject (including practical) that she has no knowledge or experience, let alone qualifications in.

OP, we are desperate for secondary science teachers. The workload is significant but you would bring some really good transferable skills with you, and if you survive the PGCE, you'll be okay, and if not, then you'll have your answer. I am not sure how you could teach English without a degree in that subject . I appreciate that previous posters have highlighted that teachers sometimes have to cover other subjects but that should be an emergency measure not policy in state secondary schools. Private schools are a different matter but are quite 'private' sometimes about teacher's actual qualifications.

I don't think teaching offers better work life balance than anything, in all honesty, but you might like it more and then it won't feel like a chore. Plus teenagers might be challenging but very rewarding and entertaining. You sound like your love of nursing has burnt out. Teaching might work for you, and you might have some time management skills that mean you prioritise well, and that might be the difference to enjoying it or not.

The only thing you might want to consider is annual leave. It is not flexible in teaching. You get lots of weeks off but if you just want to go away with friends/to an event in school time, you won't be able to go unless your authority are flexible. Mine has got significantly less flexible and that might be the thing that eventually makes me leave, not workload/ofsted/behaviour management.

Better to regret what you have done rather than what you haven't, I think. If you have a yearning to do it, you should. You could really help out in a subject with a skills shortage, and what teachers can do is have a massive impact on the futures of some young people. I know some secondary teachers have had a positive impact on my DD and I'm very grateful for that.