<p>Seimron: Seriously? Teaching is low stress?</p>
<p>I suppose if you’re going to be a half-baked, unprepared math teacher it could be low stress, but the first several years you’re definitely going to be up late writing tests, making lesson plans, dealing with administration, and all that. All of my grade school math exams were non-multiple choice except for midterms and finals, so that’s out.</p>
<p>I taught Algebra 2 for six weeks over the summer and even in the ideal environments (chill boss, relatively good students, only one subject I had to make lessons for), I was so burnt out by the end. Teaching effectively is anything but low stress; I dare you to tell your favorite math teacher how unstressful teaching is.</p>
<p>Meh I think teaching is pretty low stress. So what if you have to make up some tests and correct some papers at home. You only work 25hrs a week for god sake. And get the summers off. That’s insane. Upgrade as much as you can by going to school in the summers and you’re golden. My mom makes like 85k working at an elementary school 25hrs a week 9months a year. Oh, and you get deadly benefits. Sure it might be a bit more tough in your early years but once you get some seniority and learn the ins and outs it seems pretty smooth sailing to me.</p>
<p>^Uh, no. Teachers are at school 25 hours/week (it would actually be more like 35 hours/week); they spend many, many more hours at home making/grading tests, coming up with lesson plans, grading homework, etc.</p>
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Where exactly do you live? I highly doubt any elementary school teacher makes $85,000/year.</p>
<p>While school teachers may only work 9 months out of the year, that three months is without pay unless you find another job or teach summer school. Low stress? Think again.</p>
<p>I do not recommend going into the teaching field until the political climate changes or at least settles down. I love my teaching job, but there is so much uncertainty right now about compensation, contracts, etc…it is definitely not low stress. I could go on and on about other factors which make it an increasingly stressful job as well. I have found that when starting any significant job, it is not “low stress” at the beginning…it takes quite a while to learn your craft and there is also a period of “paying your dues.” After a few years, those stressors are reduced, but others come up no matter what your job. The important thing is to find work that you enjoy and that you feel is valuable.</p>
<p>Wow so 5 less hrs than a normal work week. Tough stuff. And I clearly mentioned that in my post. Plus the teachers that have been teaching for a while pretty much wing it anyway. They have notes/assignments/tests from previous years and I doubt most make up daily lesson plans. If you’re lucky you even have a TA doing all your work. But that is just natural, like bluemomo said, you have to pay your dues in any job to get to the level of respect that the senior staff has and then you can kind of take your foot off the gas.</p>
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<p>Well you are wrong. It’s a small town in Canada. Teaching is one of the only professions that I know of where you get a higher salary simply based on your level of education. If you upgrade your license your salary goes up. So you get payed more for doing the SAME job simply because you have more education. But I won’t get into how messed up that is. Fact is she has two masters degrees which give her the highest level for a teacher below a principal. I don’t remember what her actual level is. I think it’s 7 or 8 or something. I think you would have to be insane not to upgrade your license but somehow most teachers don’t. Not only do you get an automatic raise, your pension goes up proportionately also.</p>
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<p>Ahhhhhh if you make 60-70-80k in those 9 months I don’t think you’ll be living off of water and ketchup sandwiches to survive the summers.</p>
<p>Also, as a teacher once you have some seniority at your school you can virtually do no wrong. There is zero chance that a new hot shot rookie is going to come in and take your job, even if he/she could do your job ten times better than you. I bet a lot of employees wouldn’t mind that kind of job security.</p>
<p>Honestly, it depends a lot on many factors: you, your environment, your co-workers, your family situation, etc. What’s stressful to one person may not be to another.</p>
<p>The person who replied “Soviet Russia” just flunked history for the day. (Hint: The Soviet empire collapsed two decades ago.)</p>