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by jrgaston
1594 days ago
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Not all teaching stories are sad. I was lucky. I taught high school in northern California for almost a decade and it was a lovely job. Sure, the work expands to fill your nights and weekends, and part of every summer vacation I worked on improving my lesson plans, but it was an enjoyable job with good students, great fellow teachers, a supportive administration, a wonderfully diverse and accepting student body, and only the occasional annoying parent. Benefits were decent, pay was decent, and psychological rewards were tremendous. It was far more rewarding than the previous fifteen years I spent in software development. I felt I developed software not because the world needed it but just so some rich guy could get a little richer and maybe a bit of that richness would filter down to me. Not an inspiring reason to get up in the morning. I could tell right away I had an impact on my students, introducing them to new areas of knowledge (in my case it was chemistry). My goals were to be a role model; for them to know what kinds of questions chemistry addressed; and for them to just maybe fall in love with science a little bit. I had no illusions they were going to grow up to be chemists. I would have remained a teacher if I hadn't decided to leave the US. I am fortunate to have left before COVID because teaching online sounds really hard. Just my 2 cents. |
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