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Careers: Elementary/Middle/High School Teacher 264 Views


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00:00

smell elementary middle high school teacher are one of those a la shmoop

00:07

a home in the Hamptons a private jet mountains of cash shiny bling I'll enjoy [fancy home, jet plane, vault full of money]

00:13

the pretty pictures people because if you decide to go the teacher route well

00:18

you're never gonna get your hands on any of this stuff there's no such thing as a

00:21

financially successful high school teacher hua masses great wealth or [teacher eating apple near yacht]

00:26

fortunes and names their yacht yo teach considering that most teachers are smart

00:31

individuals very few of them go into their professions thinking they're about [teacher dreaming about money]

00:36

to make Bank well sure you might make more dough teaching at a holy Torah

00:40

private school in Beverly Hills than you would if you were teaching in the inner

00:43

city public schools of Philadelphia but there's a ceiling on how much dough you

00:47

make and that ceiling is usually you know covered with spitballs so why [spit ball lands on teacher's head]

00:51

become a teacher then at all well if you've got a razor-sharp mathematical

00:55

mind why spend seven hours a day babysitting teenagers with a Dede when

00:59

you could be rolling in moolah as a Wall Street trader if your debating skills [man rolling in money]

01:03

are top-notch well why not channel that ability into a career as a trial lawyer

01:08

or a politician or a real estate agent well is there truth to that whole those

01:13

who can't teach axiom well not so fast first of all

01:17

money is nice having money makes life easier grants you comfort and security [child counting money]

01:21

adds value by giving you the freedom to take trips overseas and allows you to

01:26

post bail when you um you know make an error in judgment but for some well it [woman behind bars]

01:30

isn't enough for some people it's more important to change minds and lives to

01:35

give young people the tools to be the next great inventor or chemists or

01:38

architect or software designer rather than pursue those avenues for themselves [man lounging in pool]

01:43

and to have their summers off that's a perk for those willing to sacrifice a

01:47

certain lifestyle teaching can be an attractive gig let's look at some pros

01:51

and cons here Pro you work from 8 to 3 9 months a year with days off for [pros and cons on blackboard]

01:55

vacations yeah that's not counting the hours you

01:57

spend at home each evening grading papers and tests and preparing the next

02:01

day's assignments but you don't do that every night and the whole thing's not a

02:05

bad deal timewise four months out of the year you're able to do whatever you want

02:09

provided it doesn't cost too much money and if you want the opportunity to make

02:13

Ordo well the opportunities usually there you can teach summer school you

02:17

can coach a sport sell knockoff watches and the teachers lounge

02:21

so yeah freedom in the form of time off is a big eat and that usually doesn't

02:24

get calculated when they throw out those low salary numbers - yeah all right Kahn

02:28

you're gonna watch all of your students learn grow up and achieve all sorts of

02:31

amazing things that you never will you used to have all kinds of dreams but you

02:36

gave him up in order to teach well now you'll have to live vicariously through

02:40

your students whose dreams are still very much alive so yeah you're the kind

02:45

of yoda-like person - there Luke Skywalker biding your time and your [Yoda and Luke in a swamp with light sabers]

02:49

little swamp while they go traipsing all over the galaxy on various adventures it

02:53

can be tough you might have to pay a visit or two to a school counselor [woman cries on counselor's shoulder]

02:57

here's a pro those students are gonna remember you and thank you and a tribute

03:01

at least some of their success - you're above and beyond level of instruction

03:05

and inspiration and some of them will keep in touch with you over the years

03:08

considering you of Vital enough influence in their lives that they'll [woman on phone]

03:11

want to keep you there alright well there isn't much more fulfilling work

03:15

out there even if it does fill your checking account with fat stacks of cash

03:19

Kahn you're gonna have one long 50-year headache well first there are the kids

03:25

they can be rowdy subordinate and sometimes downright belligerent they [kids playing on bus]

03:29

don't really want to be there they'll disobey you simply refuse to complete

03:32

their assignments and disappoint you on a regular basis and some of them will

03:36

draw demeaning caricatures of you in their notebook but beyond the actual

03:40

classroom headaches are the ones that will be incurred by your superiors your

03:44

school's principal the district's superintendent whatever nutjob is

03:48

currently heading up the Department of Education and then there's the teachers [man with a squirrel head]

03:51

union well they make you pay a lot of dues the taxpayers and a whole lot of

03:55

politicians hate them and you're not really sure if they know what they're

03:59

doing the laws of the country seemed to always be changing and the whole thing [laws thrown into trash]

04:02

seems like a mess but for all the headaches the stress isn't that bad like

04:06

you may have a lot on your plate and plenty of people depending on you but

04:10

it's not like if you forget to grade someone's test paper they're gonna die

04:14

on an operating table low stress so yes education is important but the

04:18

day-to-day stakes are manageable certainly relative to other

04:21

professional careers alright here's a pro the money isn't as bad as you think

04:24

let's say your base salary is 58 grand a year unless you live in rural Iowa or

04:29

some other pastoral location where 58 grand is actually a lot of money your [cows in field]

04:33

family is probably scraping by on that relative pittance but it doesn't tell [family eating a Hershey's bar]

04:38

the whole story you've got health benefits like exceptional health benefit

04:42

Thank You union negotiators like 10 grand or more in value a year medical

04:46

dental vision psychiatric pet care it adds up it's good stuff and you've got a

04:51

pension fund called the Cloverdale where most schools contribute something like a

04:55

grand a month to that fund for you once you're established as a long-term

04:59

teacher you've got partial use of a secretary or admin or two so throw in

05:04

another five grand or so in value there you might only technically be making

05:08

fifty eight grand a year in salary that you can spend today but remember that

05:12

the state is quote forcing you unquote to put away 12 grand a year in savings

05:17

each year for a long time so you should have pretty decent

05:21

retirement dough think about it that 58 grand figure that's in your head is

05:25

completely false in fact to keep you employed you're actually costing the

05:29

state or taxpayers or whatever private school foundation is writing the checks

05:34

closer to a hundred grand a year to pay you that fifty-eight and that's for

05:38

about eight and a half months work with almost no weekends and all that isn't

05:42

including any extra summer school work you take on or bonus pay for coaching

05:47

football prepping the speech team or directing the student-written play why

05:51

I'll never make my parents happy so considering how much you take on and

05:55

what part of the country you live in you can actually carve out a nicely decent [saw carves money pile]

06:00

financial niche for yourself and your odds of hanging on as a teacher well

06:03

pretty good unless have video surfaces of you doing unsavory things to an

06:08

airline mire flask your job is safe and even if you are a poor teacher well

06:14

you'll just get moved to a poor school it's kind of how things work in the

06:17

teaching game unless of course you're tenured ie your job is protected because

06:21

you've been teaching forever without major incident in which case well they

06:25

really can't touch you would do anything to you okay so what does a teacher do

06:29

all day well don't they just magically appear at 8 a.m. for

06:32

first period and then justice magically vanish when the final bell rings well [teacher appears and disappears in a puff or red smoke]

06:37

they're not actual people with actual lives are they as someone who is likely

06:41

a student yourself you know roughly what a teacher does during work hours they [woman in grocery store]

06:45

stand up in front of the class and write important names and dates on a

06:48

whiteboard they pass out pop quizzes and evil gleam in their eyes they ask you to

06:53

stay after class just so they can exert their power and terrify the bejesus out

06:58

of you you're not going to college you're going straight to the TSA but

07:01

what about in the hours after the school day ends you've heard a woman's work is

07:06

never done yeah okay a little outdated in a lot

07:09

sexist but when it comes to teachers well it's a true statement a teacher's

07:13

work really is never done so say a typical teacher has 25 kids in her

07:16

classroom if each one has either taken a test or submitted an essay on a given

07:21

day okay let's make it 24 because it'll be a cold day in hell when Tommy [boy sleeping in class]

07:25

giardiniera does a lick of work that's two dozen tests slash papers you've got

07:29

to sit down and go through with a fine-tooth comb you can't just do a

07:32

quick skim job these kids put a lot of time and after it into studying for

07:37

their quiz or researching their paper and there's plenty riding on the grade

07:40

you give them for each of them the grade could be the difference between getting

07:43

into Yale or taking over their dad's rubber chicken business so you owe it to

07:47

your students to give long thoughtful consideration to everything they've

07:51

written which can take hours if you're a good teacher or 15 minutes if you're

07:55

either a bad teacher or a jaded teacher who used to be good and then you have to

08:00

prepare for the following day if there's a lesson or a lecture to be given you've

08:03

got a plan for it you can't just get up there and wing a speech about the Boston

08:07

Tea Party for 45 minutes if there's another test to be given you have to

08:11

create it type it up print it out draw cute little winking emoji in the corner [teacher preparing for class]

08:16

of each one to relieve some of the pressure you know could be another

08:19

couple hours but totally doesn't have to be you could just pull up a lesson plan

08:23

from shmoop in 30 seconds Food for Thought people anyway this is all [Shmoop website]

08:27

assuming that you didn't have to coach or direct or lead some after-school

08:30

intensive woodworking seminar so yeah while teachers typically clock out at

08:35

around 3:00 p.m. they generally don't clock in to bed until 10 o'clock or so

08:39

usually after experiencing in excess amount of eye strain well the good thing

08:43

is that you aren't going it alone there's almost a war like camaraderie [teachers in military uniform gather together]

08:47

among teachers you all know what every other teacher well and your department

08:51

at least does and you lean on each other so there's a good support system there

08:59

when the school superintendent is cracking down on the use of purple chalk

09:03

in classrooms your fellow teachers will have your back well when it comes down

09:07

to it there are two types of teachers those who color inside the lines and

09:10

those who venture outside of them you can totally beat one of the teachers who

09:13

stays inside the lines your students will probably pass their tests your

09:17

principal will give you a pat on the back and you will be well on your way to

09:20

becoming tenured but you probably won't be remembered you might add a little

09:24

value to some kids lives but you won't dramatically change them for the good if

09:28

you can on the other hand be one of the teachers who isn't restricted by the

09:31

usual rules and guidelines well who will act out the entire Gettysburg Address

09:36

rather than just tell you about it or take you all outside to blow up an

09:40

ostrich egg on the football field or flat-out tell you to question authority

09:44

and not even take anything they're saying for granted well then you've got

09:48

a shot at being a formative figure in the lives of some impressionable youth

09:52

who are just dying to have their sponge-like brains filled and when all [information going into student's brain]

09:56

is said and done you will be rewarded in the hereafter if you believe in such a

09:59

thing for your noble work and sacrifice without teachers there would be no

10:03

passing along of knowledge without teachers there would be no inspiration

10:07

to innovate without teachers so there would be no snub so yeah thanks for

10:11

making education a priority and for keeping us in business

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