Should I stop being a teacher?

[Sleepy27]

Hi,

I am a teacher at the moment and currently expecting our first baby. I went into teaching thinking it would be a good career for when we have a family.

Four years into the job, I have some responsibility but I'm not particularly enjoying it and feel that promotional opportunities have added stress and not been rewarding. My question is, is it worth staying in teaching for the holidays, or should I plan to go for something I would find more enjoyable. I want to have a rewarding career, but not at the expense of my family.

What would you do?

Honestly - stay in teaching. You can go back after the babies and if necessary do tutoring etc if really not enjoying teaching. Very, very few jobs have the holidays and speaking very personally, it's a complete PITA!!!!

sleepy i was in a similar situation but for different reasons...

i am a nursery nurse and after my ds passed away 2 yrs ago i felt that i couldnt look after children anymore...the guilt was killing me...looking after other ppls children and one of my own had become an angel and could no longer look after him....

i cried every night after work and in the end i gave it up....i felt relieved...only problem was i was also studying for a degree and needed to be in work to carry on with it....

3 months down the line the uni gave me an ultimatum...get bk in work or you are getting thrown out.....

i realised i had worked too damn hard to achieve this for it to be lost so the next day i got an interview and taken on the following week....

i love it now...and want to carry on with my degree to make the lives of children better....

i know they are completely different reasons etc but the main thing is

"why throw your career, you have worked hard for out of the window"

take a break and then see how you feel...best of luck in your decision xxx

Out of my own circle of friends (all of whom have professional careers), with the exception of the two friends who are GPs with very family friendly hours, every single mum has at some point looked into training as a teacher so that we can have a career that suits the family life. Unless you really cannot stand it any more then I'd say stay with it.

I'm a teacher, been in the job 7 years. My DD1 is 13 months old. I went back to work in January, 3 days a week, which I feel has been a good balance. DD goes to nursery for 2 days and to my mum for a day.

My first term back has been surprisingly fine, in fact, I've really enjoyed it. I had a wonderful mat leave where my DD was my absolute focus but it's been nice to get my teeth into some hard work and be 'me' again. Right now, I'm looking at 2 weeks off with my lovely daughter and then a load of bank hols - only actually working 5 days in April :)
Def worse jobs out there.

I'd stick it out a bit longer and see how you feel after the baby is born. I've learnt to sidestep a lot of the extra work I use to do. I stay in school til 5 to mark and plan, then do a couple of hours in the evening when DD is in bed. It's really honestly very do-able. Good luck x

The holidays are a massive bonus when your children are school age. But you have to love the job to make it work during term time I think. Can you take a step back and lose the TLR perhaps?

I rained as an art teacher and worked in a college teaching students of 16 years + until the stress got to me last year and I resinged.

I have one child at infant school, one toddler and my partner works full-time. I thought we'd be able to muddle through, but despite a modest lifestyle we just couldn't manage financially. I even had to turn a job down as I couldn't find childcare to suit and what I could find cost me more than the job would pay and that was before tax!

So now I have gone back to teaching on another course at the same college - and they have given me a heft pay cut to boot. It's humiliating to have to return cap in hand to a job I dislike but I didn't feel as if I had any other choice.

I'm not a teacher, but my partner is (Hd of dept) and in my experience the profession takes a massive toll on family life. DP's long hours during the week and often at weekends mean I'm often on my own with my daughter which isn't what I expected.

Also DP works big chunks of the holidays, so in 3 years together I haven't yet seen the great benefit of the shorter working day and long breaks at all. Admittedly, he's a bit of a perfectionist but a close friend of mine who's also a teacher also works v long hours.

I'm not saying don't go back - I love my part-time job most days - but don't be too idealistic about the amount of free time you have. This said, you know the job you've got and how much time out of school you have to put in. If you can keep it contained, then it should be the perfect combination.

I would be inclined to stay in teaching for the time being. Other posters are right- not having to find alternative childcare for 13 weeks of the year is a big bonus.

Also if you give up now and then change your mind- it might be very hard to find another job. Teaching jobs are fairly scarce at the moment (one recent primary post round here recently had 60 applicants) and as NQTs are cheaper and school budgets have been slashed more experienced staff may well struggle even more to find a permanent job. There isn't even much going in supply as many schools use HLTAs to cover staff absences and PPA time.

Would there be an opportunity to drop your extra responsibility or perhaps work part time when you go back after maternity leave? You have the right to ask for part time work and employers have to have a good reason for saying no.

I have been through periods where I have wanted to leave teaching- then I specialised and now work with Hearing Impaired pupils which I love love love. Perhaps a different direction within the teaching proffession might be another option?

Give it a go. Return after your baby and see how you feel. I went back part time 3 days a week, secondary school teaching.

For me, I didn't enjoy it after I had had DD - but for various reasons.

The holidays are a bonus but there is little flexibility in term time, so unless you have a very good head you may not be able to go to school plays, sport's days and assemblies, etc.

I found the stress and workload were harder to deal with when I had DD to look after as well, especially the day to day stuff. And I become less willing to put up with certain behaviours from children and management alike.

In the end, I left teaching when DD was about 3yo, after teaching for 10.5 years. I don;t regret the decison.

For about 2-3 years after that I worked in prison ed and qualified as an advice and guidance worker there. Was lecturer's pay so slightly less money than teaching. I was no longer on school holidays but had 12 weeks holiday used when I chose, and more flexibility over changing my days and hours to
be able to see DD in school assemblies, etc.

After that though the commute was getting tiresome - was over an hour each way. So, after chats with DH I left. I was able to do so because my DH was/is earning a much higher wage than I did, or ever will do.

I now work as a year 1 senior TA and I love it. I get paid a relative pittance compared to what I could earn as a teacher, but I get to do all the fun bits, have the holidays, have far less workload and although it can be stressful, it is less so than if i was the teacher. I now have far more energy and quality time with my DD, now aged 8y.

One day, when DD is olderm I may do a return to teaching course and go back as a primary school teacher. But not til I know I can give it my all.

The one thing to remember with teaching is that if you don't want to do it 100% it will be far harder.

Thank you for your replies!

treehugga - you've hit the nail on the head with what worries me. The working hours are very long and it is simply expected that the job will be done, no matter how much of the weekend it eats away at. It would be a great job if I decided that I don't want any responsibility, but I don't want to be on the bottom rung forever whatever job I'm in.

The idea of a job with set hours where I can leave it at the end of the day sounds lovely. (If one exists).

But then a different direction within teaching might be a good alternative and perhaps a lot more rewarding.

You have given me a lot to think about!

You've said two things that make me wonder a bit. One is that you want a job with set hours that you can just leave, and the other is that you don;t want to stay on the bottom rung of a career ladder.

I think in teaching, we think we often think we are the only ones who work long hours, but I don't know of many professional jobs where you can leave it all in the office at the end of every day. DH is an engineer and certainly works at home in the evening, as do friends who are solicitors, accountants, project managers and the like.

Hulababy - thank you, you make some very good points! I'm glad things seem to have worked out for you and you have found a good balance between work and home.

TheFallenMadonna - Don't get be wrong, I'm not afraid of extra hours usually. At the moment with pregnancy tiredness I guess I'm feeling it a bit more. I have worked previously as a engineer though and in that position the end of the working day meant I could go home and unwind. You make a good point that as you gain more responsibility the work load will naturally increase. But surely that is more doable if you enjoy your job. I'm head of year at the moment and that can be very stressful and may play some part in my wanting to leave the job.

My main concern is though, if I went back into a engineering or another profession after retraining, would I regret it when I'm struggling to find child care?!

I have five children and find that teaching is a brilliant career. I feel that I can live a 'double life' - WOHM during term time and SAHM in the holidays.

I do very little work at home -mostly trawling YouTube for interesting clips. I am at school, on average, from 8am until 5.30pm. I use a double period to do my planning for the week, and have a marking timetable. If I can't manage to fit everything in, I will get up an hour early and do some work while the house is quiet. This is quite rare though.

I would recommend carving up your day so you what tasks you are doing when, and if you overrun something, let it go. It won't be the end of the world. Sometimes you just have to tick and run.

Another former engineer here :)

DH, an engineer, works longer hours than me, travels a lot, and finds it difficult to switch off in the evening and when we go on holiday. OK, he gets paid more than 3x what I do :).

I think what is lacking on PGCE and CPD courses is decent time management and total quality training. I have found that what I learned in industry is a lifesaver in teaching.

I don't envy you as a Head of Year. I am sure you are not really in control of your own time in school as you have to react to whatever crisis arises. You must also take a lot of emotional baggage home with you.

I would consider returning to plain old teacher during these years when your family is particularly needy.

See what else you might do. It is certainly not one of the best paid careers for the hours you do but there may be nothing else you could readily move into.

I honestly think you would! The way I see it, DH has term time flexibility, and can take an afternoon off for sports day for example, while I get the holidays. My friends who both work have awful problems covering all the holidays. I am a secondary HoD (science) and understand about the stress, honestly!, but I would suck it and see.

Are teacher's working hours really that long? Are they perhaps just as long as other jobs with similar salaries?
Teaching does mean that there are a lot of opportunities for part-time working, in many other jobs part-time isn't a realistic option.

My hours are longer than DHs in term time, for sure. And he earns more than me. But the holidays...

I would say working in school/uni admin is much more family friendly than teaching, you get the same holidays (at least where I work) but no take-home work in term-time.

It's a real six and two threes situation. I've taught for the last 4 years but previously worked in industry. I went into teaching thinking it would be more family friendly - ha! PMSL - how wrong I was! Yes the holidays are great, yes I get home just after the kids, but then once I've cooked the evening meal, done homework, read stories, done bed and bathtime, cleaned the kitchen and sorted out tomorrows packed lunches I'm having to sit down and plan lessons and do marking. I got totally sick of telling my children that Mummy couldn't play with them as I had to work. I tried to get a part-time teaching job - but for science they are rarer than hens teeth - so I've ended up deciding to jack it in. Saying that my BF (she's HoD) and her OH are both teachers and manage the work life balance really well. Where they struggled was on parents eve as they were both at the same school so had child care issues on that evening.

In the industry job I had (Regulatory Affairs for a chem company) I didn't do work at home, bliss - but worked til 6pm every eve. I could also have some element of flextime. But, I had limited holidays....
I have to agree with HelenBBBS - I'm now looking at 'down sizing' to a school based Admin job - the term tiime working without the evening of lesson planning and marking. BTW - term time only Uni jobs are quite scarce also - we live next two big Uni's and most of the non-teaching jobs tend to be full time roles with just 25 days hol.

Have you tried chatting to other teachers with kids? What about your SMT? What amazed me on going into teaching was the level of machismo amongst the other teachers (mostly young, single, childless graduates) - it was the kind of attitudes I'd seen when OH worked for a Consulting firm 15 years ago1

You still have some time to work out what you want to do. You can always play it by ear once DB has arrived - enjoy your mat leave, and then possibly look at going back PT, if it's financially viable and you want to (although PT teachers always end up working far more than they're supposed to)
Let us know what you decide to do...

FWIW - a friend of mine is a former teacher, now a University researcher in Education. She recently did a big research project looking at how many hours teachers work.

Her findings were that teachers work around the same total number of hours as someone in another professional job (I dont know which professional jobs she calculated this from, I think it was a range), but that it's very compressed into term time working.

Unofficially, she also agreed that time management also should be looked at, and that there also seemed to be a culture of long hours and presenteeism in certain schools.

What about looking into supply teaching? If there is the demand in your area you can just turn up and teach - v little planning and marking and you avoid all the meetings/target setting etc. Also you would be keeping your skills up-to-date if you want to return to full time teaching later.

A friend of mine did supply teaching while her kids were very little, after giving up her full-time teaching job which she found too stressful (and wouldn't let her go part-time). She found the same as wot Constantly wrote. Same cash, much less stress, but kept her hand in teaching. She's now found a permanent part-time job in a lovely school.

Have you considered something like supply teaching (better pay and set hours, no weekend work or other paperwork) or alternatively working as a TA? Again, set hours, but terrible pay and no promotional opportunities...