I don’t know who in their right mind would want to be a teacher. Bad pay, hard work, ungrateful students and parents, and limited opportunities for growth.
The median wage for teachers seems to be equal to the median pay for college graduates, maybe a bit higher if you account for benefits.
It's not terrific by Hacker News standards, but should be a living wage in most places especially if you marry or room with someone who can split housing costs with you.
Media entry level wage is typically pretty good. The problem is it doesn’t scale as fast as most other professions. Look at mid-career salary and it is a bit different story.
Remember educators also have to get a master’s within 5-10 years in most states.
The $ per hour and quality of life at work are terrible though. You do not get to browse the internet whenever you want, take on enormous liability dealing with children, and of course, entitled parents.
The number of synchronous commitments teachers have every day would be a disqualifier on its own for me. Teachers have a highly structured schedule of daily "meetings" (class sessions), and they are conducting every "meeting" rather than being just a participant. And they are probably doing so on their feet. That just sounds exhausting.
That wasn't really necessary? Your point is taken and some of us are indeed grateful (and I don't doubt GP is or was), but I think we're in the minority. And it seems a general thing in Western societies? There's a lot of teacher bashing in France too, and also a difficulty to find ones. The pay, the teaching conditions, the permanent bashing and ridiculing by the elites, the ruling class, and any class really...
I mean, when your secretary of education tells teachers during the first covid lockdown, most of them fighting to keep classes running, to go help pick strawberries instead. Err... When you can't even fund 5 kn95 masks (to be reused) for every teacher and you relax all covid constraints because the economy is grinding to a halt. 15 euros... Not even that. Even my company pays for 2 daily kn95 masks and I'm not exposed to kids.
Yes, it's a woefully underappreciated and underpaid job. But unlike what must of us fully-hatched adults do with our lives - I do feel that (good) teachers are in fact doing something very valuable and important, and ultimately, at least some of their students will appreciate their efforts long after the fact.
It’s definitely not hard work relative to other fields. That plus 3 months off and a relatively short day and low barriers for entry make this a no brainer for many, many people.
I think it would be mentally exhausting dealing with ~30 children all day. It's not a job where you can take a quick mental break if you're feeling overwhelmed since the kids will be there regardless.
> relatively short day
Citation needed. Teachers I know spend a ridiculous amount of time prepping, marking, and going to meetings outside of class hours.
I work less than half as much over the course of a year as a senior tech consultant than I ever did as a public school teacher. No question. And my salary doubled within 2 years, is set to hit triple now in year 6, and my stress is so much lower as to be negligible.
Teachers have a lot of vacation, sure. But all the teachers I had were at school from 7-4 minimum every day and worked much, much harder than I ever have as a developer. And I make 3 times as much as any of them.
Massive drama but low probability; twice as many people are killed by lightning strikes every year. Beyond that, the "mass shooting" tallies often include gang fights and cartel wars, which most of us do not need to worry about.
Low probability, but it happens each year and several times. Just in 2021 it happened 32 times. I bet that each time a mass shooting happens in a school it affects emotionally to all teachers in the country.
As teacher is normal to deal with problematic, or even very twisted children sometimes, but the feeling in Europe is very different. I can perfectly understand somebody that leaves after experiencing such traumatic events non-stop each ten days.
Because it’s something you can actually react to. There’s almost no chance a tornado will hit your school but schools do tornado drills. All schools and businesses do fire drills. There was a time they did nuclear bomb drills and many buildings from the era have fallout shelters.
So yes it’s unlikely to occur. But it could and it requires very little effort to be prepared.
The main effect of these drills is to cause kids stress and anxiety, but I also wonder if it's possible that there may be some marginal benefit of increasing awareness and vigilance of warning signs among the kids and teachers.
Older American folks here may remember doing nuclear attack drills in school, where the kids were told to crouch under their desk.
It's not terrific by Hacker News standards, but should be a living wage in most places especially if you marry or room with someone who can split housing costs with you.