If you had your time over again would you still become a teacher?

[Want4dayhelp]

Seriously considered training to be a teacher after finishing my science degree. Decided not too and then dc/life got in the way. I now have a fairly stress free flexible job but it's not challenging at all. Every couple of months for the last few years I think about teaching again so I do some research and read the boards on here with all the posts about people wanting to leave teaching and it puts me off. I put it to the back of my mind again but it keeps coming back up.

If you are a teacher and could go back to before your training would you choose teaching again? Or something else?

Something-else.

Something else

Teacher.

Married to a science teacher who also votes teacher.

I’d choose teacher and choose the school carefully.

Teacher but it doesn’t have a lead in to anything else.

if I could be a teacher on a 0.7 contract in the PRU I first worked in 10000009% I would teach forever and a day.

If I had to teach full time in the school I trained in I wouldn’t last until Christmas

It’s all about the school

Interesting, fairly balanced at the moment.

How do you know if the school is a good one? Is it the kind of information you would know from working in schools in the area?

Absolutley not.

Id have been a Psychologist or OT. Really hard to retrain post kids :(

Yes. But I'd have done it sooner.

Yes but only because I am a specialist teacher and don't have a head teacher as a boss 😬
I would rather stick pins in my eyes than be a classroom teacher in this current climate.

Yes - but I'd have left in about 2005. I definitely wouldn't do it now.

Nope. Wouldn't touch the 'profession' with a barge pole given the chance to choose again.

Something else. I have left teaching after 8 years. I had worked ineducation for 4 years before that and in youth work before it.

The tipping point for me was managing a ridiculous school and family life.

Teaching has been great for me. I didn’t start off as a teacher - did 8 years in engineering, and my PGCE age 30.

If I had continued in engineering, I would have be earning >2x what I earn now with a prevailing wind.

But with teaching, I get 19weeks holiday a year, rather than 5. I have also taken 2 career breaks and had no trouble slotting back in.

Hard to say. I think I see teaching as my vocation, and attach a sense of social obligation to it; I have been making a difference in the lives of some very vulnerable and deprived children and their families for the last 20 years, and it is important to me that I have used my relative privilege well. However, if I take a step back and consider where this has got me in terms of salary and benefits, I feel like I have perhaps wasted my opportunities, and that my kids would have been better off had I pursued a more lucrative career. Teaching is poorly remunerated for the number of hours involved, has very little autonomy or scope for reinventing oneself within the structure of the job itself. But day to day it is glorious and you just can't beat it.

No. I had confidence in my subject issues and a shit degree (well, a very good degree from a top RG but in a shit subject for employability) - thanks for that, mum. The two ARE linked.

Teaching is fun (well, in my second career in a tiny primary) but I never feel exactly fulfilled because I only get the chance to be "good enough" because of time etc. I could always do more.

Oh, and dh earns 3/4 times what I earn. Grrr. We both work hard but I feel undervalued sometimes.

Something else. Currently working on a route out!

I’d choose teaching every time. I actually wandered into being a teacher somewhat accidentally. I thought I’d teach for a few years after my degree whilst I worked out what I really wanted to do with my life. I had a horrible second PGCE placement and was looking for jobs outside of teaching when my PGCE tutor sent me details of a job at a school where she knew the HOD and where she thought I might fit in well. She really encouraged me to at least apply and go for interview. I went for the job and knew as soon as I got to the school that I really loved the place. I’m now a decade in at the same school.
I’m so grateful to that PGCE tutor. I absolutely love what I do and feel so lucky to work in a school that values its staff whilst getting truly extraordinary outcomes for its students. In the right school teaching is an amazing career.
However, I know of two ex-colleagues who changed schools and were so miserable in their new schools that they left the profession entirely. These were people who were successful, committed and passionate teachers when I worked with them. They were totally ground down by the unreasonable expectations and lack of support in their new schools. I can totally understand why people in schools like that would regret joining the profession.

Definitely something else! Teaching is too much work for not enough pay. I'm currently looking to leave!

Forty years and still teaching full-time.

Would I do it again? The teaching, yes, the administrivia, no.

Something else. I enjoy teaching but I would have done something else if I had known in my 20s what other options were available.

I enjoy being a teacher but I wish I'd worked in other fields first, even if it had just been very basic office based stuff before going to uni. The pay progression is quick (but short lived) in teaching and I would struggle with the pay cut if I wanted to try other things now.

Something else.