I am a teacher of 26 years and the pay is terrible. I got caught sleeping with a student. I am thinking of retiring.

I’m a first year teacher in third grade. The cons are that elementary school is pretty demanding as far as time. I haven’t worked less than 60 hours a week since school started. You learned exactly what you need to do in grad school, but there is no time to do it- and you feel guilty. No Child Left Behind says that you’re not trying hard enough and you need to teach more to the test. The expectations are high. The pay is low. There is a reason that 50% of new teachers leave the profession within 5 years- it’s tough! I can’t even imagine doing this with children.

The pros are that eventualy you build up a curriculum and you can do the things you want. I can’t think of another job that connects you as much to the community. It’s incredibly fun. The pay goes up every year. It’s very rewarding. If it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, it’s definitely worth it.

I don’t know about the other levels (secondary, etc.), but I hope this helped.

I am a teacher. Preschool to be exact, I really love my job. I was originally just shooting for an IECE certification but I would be limited to Preschool and Kindergarten. However, there are other fields that require a IECE degree besides teaching like First Steps or a developmental interventionist. I like that I am not limited in my teaching abilities. I love the children and my co-workers. Some con’s of teaching are the parents. They can be your bestfriend or your enemy. I love all my parents now. However that was not the case my first year because I was fresh out of college and I think that they doubted my teaching abilities. The county that I work in only has a 4 day school week so we get Mondays for planning. However we do have a very short summer. I think that people think of teaching as getting the summer off however this is not the case. If you are thinking of becoming a teacher I hop eyou truly have a passion for the job. The pay isnt bad either. People say teachers are poor. This is not the case in my job.

Personally I like teaching the younger children as opposed to the 5th and 6th grades (hormones) it is very hard to deal with.

I hope this has helped some. Good Luck!

First, I would advise you to do something you love and have a passion for. I graduate next semester and will be teaching high school English because I couldn’t see myself doing anything else in life. I became pregnant in high school and thought everything was over, but I’ve worked at it and finally made it. I took time off of school to get married, have two more children and was able to be a stay at home mom for a while—-but my heart has always been to teach. If you really want to teach I think you’ll know in your heart. I see teachers now that went to school for all the wrong reasons and are misserable teaching which is destructive for their students as well as themselves.

Take some time to yourself to really think about what your passions in life are and see if you can work in a field that would allow you to work with them. If you want to try out teaching maybe you can volunteer at your 7 year old school to see if that grade would interest you.

Good luck 🙂

An answer to your question would depend, in part, on what you would be qualified to teach. You should determine what would be required for each of the levels (e.g. secondary vs college) and what subjects you could teach. This will limit your selection. In general, however, (as a part college professor) I would suggest that you try to teach the highest level you can, and if possible community college or university. Typically the pay is better, since the student have to pay to be there most who are uninterested in learning have been weeded out and since at that level you are no longer responsible for their learning, you don’t have to be bothered wasting time “getting” them to learn.

Teaching is a satisfying job and very interesting cause you get to deal with students of varied abilities and socio-economic backgrounds but you must be prepred to face the challenge.Teaching requires a lot of patience and sacrice,

You need to put in a lot of time preparing your lessons.You got tobe a good orgarnser,creative,innovativeand competent.

I wrote about my experiences when I first decided to become a teacher, and then more recently explaining why I quit: