Current Events > 45% of teachers quit within 5 years. I might be one of them

(+) Yeah! (+)

And people wonder why folks with money try to separate themselves from rabble

---

i never knew teachers were paid THAT badly. i seen in michigan on average it's like $36k to start for a teacher. know michigan i lower than some places but like damn. like i know you get the summer off and like christmas break and stuff but you still have to spend way more than the 40~ hours you're in school a week on work. all that time at home grading papers and coming up with lesson plans and whatever.

i know some that can get like $100k or maybe close to it. i know in high school we only had 1 teacher that taught calc and physics and he was old so i know he made the most out of any teacher. not sure if he made that much but he had to be up there.

Have you consulted with your school psychologist? On paper, behavioral consultation is one of their skills.

---

Yep I'm part of that 48%. Taught high school for 3 years. Public schooling is a complete shitshow. Admin don't do fuck to students but they sure do harp on teachers to do things certain ways, teach certain ways, etc. I felt like I had a damn leash on myself the entire time.

---

As someone who suffered through a year of hell teaching in an inner city school (I literally wished I would get cancer so I didn't have to go back), a change of scenery can make a big difference.
I now teach in a rural school, that still has a ton of behavior issues, but I don't hate my life every day.

---

I didn't know it was so many teachers here , that is pretty cool. Too bad the job sucks for most of you guys/gals.

---

https://www.abacusnews.com/digital-life/china-putting-surveillance-cameras-plenty-schools/article/3000524
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/17/chinese-school-uses-facial-recognition-monitor-student-attention/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7153981/Chinese-schools-use-facial-recognition-gates-monitor-pupils.html
https://futurism.com/smart-eye-china-facial-recognition

China is already having Facial Recognition + Pupil Detection on students and AI tracking how often they are paying attention to the teacher.

That will be the future tools available to many teachers where you have camera's everywhere monitoring students and recording ALL interactions so that they can be held accountable for every word they say and every action they perform. Privacy is DEAD.

In the future, I wouldn't be surprised if teachers are required to wear Go-Pro like body cam's to monitor all encounters to prevent "He Said/She Said" BS.

---

ASithLord7 posted...

You can teach community college or be a lecturer at many 4-year unis with a Masters. Full-time? Definitely harder, but possible.

Not even gonna dignify the in a science part

That's definitely, not the case. Have you looked at Education lecturer jobs?

For the record I worked as a lecturer at the University of Washington for 2 years (PhD in Neuroscience).

---

Rural schools are getting just as bad as inner city schools.

---

ssjevot posted...

That's definitely, not the case. Have you looked at Education lecturer jobs?

For the record I worked as a lecturer at the University of Washington for 2 years (PhD in Neuroscience).

Do you mean lecturers in the field of education? Im not talking about that specifically

---

ASithLord7 posted...

Do you mean lecturers in the field of education? Im not talking about that specifically

I assumed that because you told him to get a master's and his undergrad is likely in education. He would have trouble getting into an unrelated master's program. Grad school is very competitive despite the relatively bad outcomes compared to the past. It's not a cakewalk and there won't be great lecturer jobs just waiting for him after. At a community college a master's might be enough, but even in Seattle all of them were requiring PhDs. I didn't just move to Japan for the culture. The academic job market in the US is shit.

---

Guess OP want homeschooling now.

---

Teachers should be allowed to be teachers. Whats the point of school if misbehaving kids cant be disciplined and classes are too large for individual students to get the support they need

---

The 30 student class sizes are bullshit and just a way for schools to save money by not hiring more teachers. No one can manage that size.

---

Rika_Furude posted...

Teachers should be allowed to be teachers. Whats the point of school if misbehaving kids cant be disciplined and classes are too large for individual students to get the support they need

Academia isn't much better. University of Washington makes it near impossible to punish students for cheating and has offices setup to basically always support students accused of it. They also allow students to request a grade audit if they get a bad grade. The whole system is designed to extract money, not educate.

Also I literally taught 400 person classes sometimes. Me and two TAs, with 400 students.

---

ASithLord7 posted...

Get your masters and teach college.

Adjunct professors actually make less than most high school teachers. Seriously I heard being an adjunct at a community college pays like $25k a year in some cases. Can't really live on that.

---

Drumiester posted...

The 30 student class sizes are bullshit and just a way for schools to save money by not hiring more teachers. No one can manage that size.

There are also no teachers. There is a national teacher shortage due to low pay, high class loads, and the ridiculous amount of accountability required on the teachers part.

---

Politics posted...

Adjunct professors actually make less than most high school teachers. Seriously I heard being an adjunct at a community college pays like $25k a year in some cases. Can't really live on that.

I do adjunct part time in addition to my full time job. It's nice additional pay, but yeah you can't live off it. They limit how many hours you can teach.

---

I was getting $30k a year as an adjunct in Seattle. I lived in a dude's spare room (not even a proper bedroom). It sucked.

---

ssjevot posted...

I was getting $30k a year as an adjunct in Seattle. I lived in a dude's spare room (not even a proper bedroom). It sucked.

ARe you trying to get full time ?

---

cjsdowg posted...

ARe you trying to get full time ?

Was. They have a full-time lecturer position at UW, but I just left for Japan because I am an assistant professor making $55k a year now and the cost of living is way less, and I can get tenure. I don't even teach currently, on the third year of a research grant.

---

I teach high school. It has it's own share of pros and cons. The amount of students you get that give no ****s whatsoever about their grade is staggering. Administration seems to care more about graduation rates than actually teaching the kids anything. Kind hard to improve graduation rate when half the kids in your classes do nothing in every class they have and are failing everything. Parents suck to deal with regardless of what level you teach, they're just as terrible at the HS level trust me.

I also coach and get to make some pretty cool relationships with those kids. Summers are brutal for coaching though, at least it was for me last summer. We were doing basketball stuff 5 days a week for 2 of the 3 months off we had. If the head coach wants to do that **** again this summer I may stop coaching. That summer off is crucial for teachers IMO, at least for me it is.

I've got it pretty good, but teaching definitely isn't for everybody, especially if you're not in a good spot you're comfortable with. I would never teach elementary, **** that. You have anything tying you down where you are TC? If not there are some cool options you have that a teaching degree can help with. Teaching English over seas for example. Some countries pay well and you get an apartment paid for by the school. Really good way to just make money and save a lot as well since you don't have to pay for anything but utilities and food.

That was always what my plan was going to be when I got my degree, but started a dating someone and later got married which obviously changed plans.

---

closetkpopfan posted...

Teaching English over seas for example. Some countries pay well and you get an apartment paid for by the school. Really good way to just make money and save a lot as well since you don't have to pay for anything but utilities and food.

This may be true in some places, but most people I know doing it in Japan are basically living paycheck to paycheck.

---

ssjevot posted...

Was. They have a full-time lecturer position at UW, but I just left for Japan because I am an assistant professor making $55k a year now and the cost of living is way less, and I can get tenure. I don't even teach currently, on the third year of a research grant.

How do fall into line of work? Do you to be educator to do it. I mean I would love spending time researching something. Suck like many of others here my job sucks. Just the horror stories of you teachers just got me to thinking about how much I hate my job.

---

cjsdowg posted...

How do fall into line of work? Do you to be educator to do it. I mean I would love spending time researching something. Suck like many of others here my job sucks. Just the horror stories of you teachers just got me to thinking about how much I hate my job.

You need a PhD in a relevant field. Actual teaching ability is largely irrelevant (though I got an award once from UW for high evaluations it did nothing for my job prospects or pay). Some smaller schools you might be able to with a Master's degree, but honestly I think that's just the way the ads are posted and the reality is they get so many PhD applicants it isn't enough. It's shitty though. I don't think you should go into it. Go private industry or leave the US. If you are a top tier researcher you can do well, but teaching is basically a useless skill in academia these days. They would rather hire expendable adjuncts to do it and if you are a professor no one cares about your teaching, they care about your research.

---

If my English wasn't horrible I think I would like to go Asia teach. That just seems like it would be so cool. But with my issues with writing I couldn't do that. Oh well. Thanks for information.

---

cjsdowg posted...

If my English wasn't horrible I think I would like to go Asia teach. That just seems like it would be so cool. But with my issues with writing I couldn't do that. Oh well. Thanks for information.

Oh, to just teach English you only need an undergraduate degree in basically anything. For a job like what I have it was required to be fluent in Japanese as that's the working language of my university.

---

ssjevot posted...

Academia isn't much better. University of Washington makes it near impossible to punish students for cheating and has offices setup to basically always support students accused of it. They also allow students to request a grade audit if they get a bad grade. The whole system is designed to extract money, not educate.

Also I literally taught 400 person classes sometimes. Me and two TAs, with 400 students.

There really needs to be classroom size caps

---

Drumiester posted...

The 30 student class sizes are bullshit and just a way for schools to save money by not hiring more teachers. No one can manage that size.

scorpion41 posted...

There are also no teachers. There is a national teacher shortage due to low pay, high class loads, and the ridiculous amount of accountability required on the teachers part.

I mean, it sounds like there would be plenty if conditions weren't such shit. If nearly half drop out that's not a shortage problem.
---

I know this is selfish and so not ok of me to say, but Im surprised people even want to be teachers. Absolutely nothing about that is appealing to me. Dealing with rotten kids (when I think back to how some of the kids I went to high school with were... ugh), low pay, having to work on your own time... no thanks

---

I subbed for a few years. It is night and day between some districts. I have seen students in 11th grade who couldn't do math the special education kids could do in 6th grade (on average) at another district.

Seen kids out of control in one district and completely orderly in another. In fact, seen transfers from the out of control district to the other district and them fit in well with the orderly district.

It comes from the top down.

Would you find it hard to believe the out of control district punished a student who choked a substitute teacher (not me, a small female) with 3 days "out of the school" but not suspension because he had a basketball game coming up?

(Not to mention that school had two teachers fired for inappropriate behavior with students while I subbed there and I know at least one other was also. Lol)

---

ssjevot posted...

This may be true in some places, but most people I know doing it in Japan are basically living paycheck to paycheck.

If you're an NES qualified teacher with teaching experience in a western country you could make $4,000+ per month including an apartment and other bonuses in China, UAE or Saudi.

I heard Korea and Taiwan pay really well. Hell, in Bangkok you can make $5,000/month if you can get on at a tier 1 international school.

---

cjsdowg posted...

If my English wasn't horrible I think I would like to go Asia teach. That just seems like it would be so cool. But with my issues with writing I couldn't do that. Oh well. Thanks for information.

Teach kindergarten then.

---

They need to bring back letting teachers swat kids with a ruler.

I tapped out after two years. Loved teaching at university, hated teaching high school.

---

Corrik7 posted...

Seen kids out of control in one district and completely orderly in another. In fact, seen transfers from the out of control district to the other district and them fit in well with the orderly district.

I'm almost positive there's a study on herd mentality that explains that actually.
---

Regarding teaching at the collegiate level: I'm currently a part-time lecturer at a university and receive $3,800 per course taught. So basically teaching three classes a semester - if you can somehow manage to score that many classes in an extremely competitive market with tons of educators willing to work for peanuts - will get you just about $23k a year and zero benefits.

It's just not a livable situation (from my limited experience, part-timers often struggle to get more than one class a semester, let alone three), which is why I need to continue working as an accountant and hope that a full-time lecturer position one day becomes available. Full-time lecturer with benefits is a pretty sweet deal, but it's also a total dangling carrot. Those opportunities are insanely rare.

And it might seem as though I'm complaining here, but I've loved my experience in academia despite the incredible barrier to entry. I have it so much easier than K-12 teachers who must deal with a sea of problem children and irresponsible parents.

---

I am one of the teachers that quit. I made it three years teaching in a public school in a major city before quitting to focus on a career that had a much better earning potential and less administrative B.S. I honestly miss the actual teaching aspect of it and think that at some point I would like to teach again, to some degree, but not in public schools. Too much bull shit for too little pay and not enough opportunity to make real money. I could have taught for 30 years and would not be making what I made the first year after switching careers.

It sucks for the kids and the system because I think a lot of good teachers leave the system. I wanted to get paid for the effort that I wanted to put into my career and you just can't do it as a teacher.

---

I quit before I even got started. Was just wrapping up my last semester and finished my TA hours but the job I had at the time had an opening in sales and the position was offered to me. Could not turn down being paid double at that young.

---

https://www-1.kansas.com/news/local/education/article218190440.html

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2005/02/14/administrators-eat-up-too-much-of-education-budgets-2/

How much of your school is wasting money on too many administrators?

Why are there so many? What do these "Administrators" do that justify so much pay for so little output?

Shouldn't there only be 1x Administrator in a district to handle the paper work?

Why are there so many people to do busy work?

Shouldn't the computer age have modernized most of this paper work?

---

^
Yep.
Admin are massively overpaid to do not much, especially principals. Most cases assistant principals handle the discipline issues. The main principle goes to lots of meetings, and have the nerve to tell us teachers how to do our job.

---

Most schools I teach at the Assistant Principle is also teaching a grade typically.

---

This thread has been really enlightening/depressing, especially the description of college level teaching...

fohstick posted...

teaching is the least respected profession

That's because the US in general treats education (especially public education) as a joke and doesn't properly fund it.

---

Teachers can also lose their job for "moral turpitude" such as if a parent sees you drinking a beer somewhere or wearing a bikini on a beach.

---

KamenRiderBlade posted...

https://www-1.kansas.com/news/local/education/article218190440.html

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2005/02/14/administrators-eat-up-too-much-of-education-budgets-2/

How much of your school is wasting money on too many administrators?

Why are there so many? What do these "Administrators" do that justify so much pay for so little output?

Shouldn't there only be 1x Administrator in a district to handle the paper work?

Why are there so many people to do busy work?

Shouldn't the computer age have modernized most of this paper work?

To be fair, almost all jobs have too many administrators/management.

Solar_Crimson posted...

That's because the US in general treats education (especially public education) as a joke and doesn't properly fund it.

They pay the most per student in the world. It isn't really a funding problem per se.

---

Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

In my area we also cannot fail a student without parental approval

Lol wut

---