Careers: Elementary/Middle/High School Teacher

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

vacations yeah that's not counting the hours you

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

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

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

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

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

can coach a sport sell knockoff watches and the teachers lounge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

never done yeah okay a little outdated in a lot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

intensive woodworking seminar so yeah while teachers typically clock out at

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

passing along of knowledge without teachers there would be no inspiration

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

making education a priority and for keeping us in business