Teaching as a new career

[BooseysMom]

Originally posted this on the Work page and was advised to move it to the staff room...
Can anyone please help set my mind at rest a little please? My DH has had a rough time career wise. He was made medically redundant from a physically exhausting job and decided he wants to teach. He has been accepted on a uni course and has started studying. The worry is that i read a thread recently where there were 26 pages of 95% negative comments about teaching and that there is a massive burn-out rate and therefore shortage of teachers esp in IT, maths and science. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves. This is basically DH's only chance to get himself a proper career. He already has the degree and is studying computer science to teach at secondary level and he gets a full bursary.
He has the makings of a great teacher. Can anyone say anything positive about teaching or is it all just doom and gloom?
Thanks x

@LolaSmiles I agree with everything you've said

@fedup21 are you a teacher, and if so, in which department?

I am a teacher, yes-in primary. We mark daily. My own children are all at secondary and books are marked pretty regularly for them as well.

Written marking daily seems an obsession in primaries.
Given research suggests that there's no benefit in extensive written comments I don't understand why. Well I do, because it looks nice and often involves multiple coloured highlighters too.
I have friends who have to write comments daily in y1/2 books.
I'm not sure what a y2 student gains from:

Www- Well done Sophie you have used adjectives to describe your character
EBI - Try to use more wow words from the word bank

on a daily basis. And I'm not sure whether doing that 30 times a day for maths and English is a productive use of teacher time either. If any secondary did that they'd have no staff left fairly quickly because it's not for the students' benefit.

@mizu

I work as an L3 in a large FE college. I thought it was a pretty standard wage! It's the top of the bracket:

@msjaneausten.. yes he officially starts Sept but it feels like he's started already as he's had an assignment, presentation and tests to get through. The English & Maths were annoying. He's already re-sat these GCSEs and passed with good grades but then he had to pass the course tests. The Maths he passed first time. The English took three attempts and seemed to be based more on luck than judgement. All the revision made no difference to the contents of the test. Apparently they are scrapping these tests in Oct! I'm just glad he's got through at last as if you fail more than 3x you have to pay £30 each time you sit it.

Thank you everyone for the comments and advice for my DH. It's really valuable to us.

@bumblingalonghappily.. great to hear you love teaching.

But mostly tell him that teaching can be a wonderful profession 😊😊..

Thanks for posting this...i need to keep DH motivated!

@heyha.. yes he was a postie for 7 years and the managers truly took the piss loading way too much on to the staff. Result..high staff sickness, long-term medical conditions and medical redundancy. He got pleurisy and was ill for months and in the end had to leave the job. I wish he'd never started there but he had no choice and after redundancies from IT jobs he wanted a change. Anyway he'll have a big change now!

@boomshakalak you've got me googling FE salaries and at my (also big FE college) we get nowhere near the kind of salaries I can see on UCU website - and don't follow those pay scales either. We have bands A, B, C and points so you can be on scale B point 15 for example.
We have had pay freezes since around 2009 and there is definitely no one in my department earning more than £25,000 / £26,000 a year teaching full time. I'm on a bit more as I run the department but it's an honorarium so I have to reapply for the post every two years

@mizu

Wow, my college must be doing well! I was in management and took a step back and retained some of my duties so it's a little bit above what the longest serving lecturers get.

Looks like I'll be sticking where I am.

From my perspective though, having friends in primary and secondary teaching - we have it far easier in terms of admin/marking etc.

@mizu

Wow, my college must be doing well! I was in management and took a step back and retained some of my duties so it's a little bit above what the longest serving lecturers get.

Looks like I'll be sticking where I am.

From my perspective though, having friends in primary and secondary teaching - we have it far easier in terms of admin/marking etc.

@mizu

Wow, my college must be doing well! I was in management and took a step back and retained some of my duties so it's a little bit above what the longest serving lecturers get.

Looks like I'll be sticking where I am.

From my perspective though, having friends in primary and secondary teaching - we have it far easier in terms of admin/marking etc.

Sorry for reposts!

I think I understand where you are coming from OP. I am considering retraining as a teacher with the Now Teach programme - set up to encourage professionals with "significant life experience" into teaching (ie. old people who are no longer wanted elsewhere). I have learned to avoid the teaching threads on mumsnet. I'm only here now as our redundancy money runs out next month and what we do next is keeping me awake at night. You may find some of the material on the Now Teach website more uplifting - although bear in mind that money is not a motivation for a lot of the people featured. It does however paint a positive picture about retraining, learning new skills, working with kids, stability of employment etc.

@ritatherockfairy...ah, that's brilliant thank you! I'll get DH to check it out. I think i know where you're coming from as we only have my rubbish part-time admin job wage and DH's redundancy money and it keeps me awake too. I wish you all the best going forward

I think he'll be ok in CompSci. The teachers of that subject I've worked with have been quirky and allowed to get on with it as no-one know what they do (or wants to do it!) My two top tips are that he should seek out other teachers of the subject by any means possible - on his course, at events, online, subject associations and training courses, on here - and get their emails. He's quite likely to be the only subject specialist in his school and it can get lonely. He should also bear in mind that most people don't know the difference between CompSci and IT support, so prepare for a lot of questions about why the printer isn't working and how to use Outlook..

If he can maintain his health he'll be ok. He must try to set a reasonable bedtime, eat properly, get fresh air and take a full day off at the weekend (he will have to work one day and should expect to work Sun-Thur evenings. I hope that doesn't sound patronising, but I went into secondary teaching age 39 and had a baby the next year - you have to play the long game or problems pile up. I have still got a chronic foot problem as a legacy of one job where I couldn't get time to go to the doctor.

He needs to take the advice he's given this year with a pinch of salt. Much of it will be conflicting or impossible to implement, but there will be some gems in there.

@Phineyj makes a great point about subject associations. My subject speciality (Geology) is not something taught at GCSE but a few schools teach it at A Level. I managed to find an online teachers forum and through that a school locally that offers it at A Level. Similar forums must exist for CompSci.

@Phineyj... thank you for such valuable advice. I'll let DH know. He's pretty proactive and is def blossoming in this field after years of drudgery in a physically exhausting job. I wish he'd gone into this years ago but he says the government have only just made it possible for him to apply by offering the bursary. I think if he's lucky with the school he works in, he'll succeed as it seems that so much depends on support from the SLT.

@ritatherockfairy.. Geology must be fascinating to teach. Thanks for the advice re. forums...i'll pass on to DH.

after years of drudgery

This is how I feel in teaching tbh. Good luck to your husband though-we certainly need more trainees.

@ritatherockfairy - with respect, a website of an organisation commissioned to recruit people into teaching is going to be positive about the profession and about training, whereas mumsnet threads tend to be answered by those already in the profession without a recruiting agenda. Avoiding reality may be a huge part of the enormous drop out rate amongst new teachers, regardless of their ‘significant life experience’.

I have learned to avoid the teaching threads on mumsnet

How bizarre-I would want to read everything I could written by people actually already doing a job I was considering. Reading a website with the sole aim at trying to sort out the flagging recruitment problems is hardly going to show the ‘warts and all’ role.

How will you feel if you come on here in a year or two saying-‘teaching is serious nothing like I thought it would be-I wish someone had told me?!’

Teaching does contain some quite strong ideology and when you're a newbie it can be quite hard to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to advice. Probably best to arrange a few days' experience in the type of school you'd want to work in - they vary so much - rather than asking a random sample of people on here.

It's never bad to be aware of potential downsides, however.

TBF when you are training, you have to avoid some stuff that is just negativity- otherwise you'd wonder what the point was! The discussions on this site about pedagogy and educational issues are really interesting, though!

I'm not saying to dismiss what experienced teachers say, but just that it's not a good idea to constantly read about people who are unhappy in teaching.

There will be times when it gets tough- February/March was a pinch point for a lot of my cohort. I think it was a combination of teaching larger timetables on placement, having big assignments to do, having to apply to jobs and deal with everything that comes with that, and the time of year- weeks of leaving in the dark and arriving in the dark can mess with you a bit!

But I think if you are prepared to pick up the slack around these times, then I'm sure that will help a lot.

He does seem to have started work very early for a PGCE, but that might bode well for the Christmas and Easter holidays.

I would be a little bit wary of being so optimistic so soon- presumably he hasn't been into school yet, which is when things start to get tougher! But it's great that he's enjoying things at the moment.

As a bit of practical financial advice, don't forget that the bursary gets paid in 10 monthly installments at most unis, so he needs to save a bit to cover next summer as he won't receive a bursary payment, and won't get paid from his NQT job until some point in September.