Should I become a teacher?

Yoozername.

I’ve seen posts from teachers saying they’d tell people looking at the job to run for the hills and others who seem ecstatic in the role. I’d love to see a general consensus on the topic, preferably from currently serving teachers.

I’m 31 now. I earn €46,000-€47,000 p/a, this usually increase 2-3% p/a. Plus 10% employer contribution to my pension.

I work shifts, 07:00-15:00 and 15:00-23:00 rotating weekly.

I get a bonus of 8% on top of this. I get VHI for my spouse and me (insurance is obviously taxed as BIK). I work in a science related field and would be eligible to teach physics at LC and JC science.

The perks are obvious, short day, start after 9 and finish before 3 on many days, good holidays, pension wise I’d be working until I’m 65, do if I do my HDIP and start when I’m 33 I’d be working for 32 years, my pension would be (32/80)*€70,000=€28,000, this is in addition to state pension contributory. €70,000 will be the top pay band. Pay rises are collectively bargained and even if I’m in the TUI, I can still avail of pay rises negotiated by the ASTI.

Negatives would be finding it hard to get CID. But once you’ve served 3 years you get all the perks anyways. The second is abuse from pupils and parents believing little Johnny or Janey can do no wrong.

I’m sure there are more negatives that I’ve missed and I’d love to hear from teachers on this one. Especially if I’ve misunderstood or over exaggerated the perks.

Thanks all.

2011abc

Youve got your pension calculation wrong ,thats based on an older system .Now its career average and basically a tax .You might get half what you 'planned'.Youd have to live to be around 150 to break even on contributions .

As for the rest...No ,in fact Hell No!

Geuze

You don't get the (32/80) pension PLUS the State Pension.

The State Pension and the PS work pension are integrated.

Yoozername.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118693179#Comment_118693179

That’s not that great then 😕

Yoozername.

If a person only works 12 years as a teacher then they’ll be entitled to ca. €12,000 p.a. That’s pretty much what the state pension is anyway.

But back to my original question.

Would you do it again if you could start over?

Would you advise prospective teachers to run away or follow the path?

HazeDoll

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058234758/should-i-become-a-teacher

I've been teaching since 05. In that time I have twice had a timetable where I started after 9, but only one day a week each time. This year is the first year in ages that I have finished early on one day. I finish at 2:45 on a Thursday. I teach until 4:00pm for two days and until 3:25 the other two. I understand that this might look like a short work day but I rarely get out of the building before 4:30 any day of the week. I have 'homework' every single night, sometimes only half an hour, sometimes a couple of hours.

On top of that there are the 'extras'. School shows, graduations, parent/teacher meetings, careers events, masses, training for anything extra curricular, open nights, committee meetings, Croke park hours. These very quickly eat into your evenings. If you fancy teaching because it looks like a light workload you're barking up the wrong tree.

Now if you are sick and you let the school know you won't be in, they want to you post up work for your students before you contact a doctor, or heaven forbid, take your sick self back to bed. This work generates communication from students and if you're unlucky their parents, time consuming and all utterly, utterly pointless.

The holidays are a huge plus, of course. But now you get emails and circulars and enquiries about booklists during the holidays.

The least worthwhile thing you can do is show up every day and teach your classes. Unless you are willing to invent a new 'initiative' that will get your mug in the papers, or at the very least onto the school website, your contribution is not valued. You will be supervising classes and picking up slack for somebody who is too busy spearheading some cultural appreciation programme or has worked the most recent buzzwords into an anti-bullying campaign.

If you are good at managing classes you will wind up facing down twenty or thirty outlaws because you 'have such rapport' with them. Somebody else, no doubt a few years your senior, has demonstrated their helplessness so now they have small groups of willing students and their job is exponentially easier. Fewer copies to correct, fewer parents to deal with, fewer special needs to work around, fewer pointless emails to keep track of.

I don't know how many stupid committees I have been put onto. Something to do with wellbeing, I think, and something to do with student consultation. At least two others. I'm on one about the school's development plan but I've accidentally been left out of an email group about that and I'm going to keep quiet and hope nobody notices. Each one of these committees involves lunchtime meetings (at a time that suits somebody else's schedule, of course) and each one generates more emails and little bits of homework that keep me up late at night.

When anything goes wrong - pandemic, economy collapse, a student with a serious issue - you will be hung out to dry by parents, politicians, newspapers, your own pompous principal.

I used to love teaching. I made the mistake of allowing it to become a big part of my identity. I'm completely broken now, and I'm trying to figure out how to put myself back together so I can get out while there's still some of me left.

gaiscioch

No; don't be silly. Get into a protected profession where they have loads of barriers to entry and therefore can reduce competition and maintain obscene prices. If it has arcane language and is built upon obscurantism that would be a perfect one. If any attempts to reform it are met with the words "undermining justice" and its variants, and if the possibilities of its being reformed by the government of Ireland are accordingly precisely zero, then that's precisely where you should go. Get a niche wherever you go and be the best in whatever area you go into. Supply and demand. There are a huge number of slackers in every profession, as I'm sure you're acutely aware already.

Stay away from teaching. If you're any good at it, all the financial incentives (without exception) will be to move you out of the classroom and into management - something they never tell the 20-year-old idealists. And all the so-called reform in education never proposes financially rewarding inspirational teachers. So, don't bother with this "follow your heart" nonsense if you're going to basically have to become a manager in a school to get paid better and avoid less capable eejits telling you what to do or throwing crap classes on your timetable because other people are too incompetent to manage them.

At most, you get great respect from the students and that does your ego good. But when you have to pay €300 of your nett income - i.e. you have to earn €600 - to a medical or legal consultant for a single meeting, you realise how little value all your work and dedication has and for the same level of commitment in a more protected career your work would be far better rewarded.

And, yeah, forget about the holidays unless you want to become a serious writer or artist or look after your young kids for those months. The holidays are the big carrot at the start of a career, that beat you further down the career road when you end up working for much of those holidays to cover a variety of expenses. If you own your own house and have a trust fund, teaching can be a genuinely great vocation where you can make a difference to lives, especially in poorer socio-economic areas. It can give immense meaning. But bear in mind management will often have different concerns on their timetable than giving the most capable teacher the most appropriate class. So the job you love can be taken off you. We lost a brilliant teacher in the past two years because he was given the toughest classes year after year while less capable people got easier classes precisely because they were less capable. Bizarrely, one of them saw teaching LC classes as a status symbol to assert in otherwise chaotic classes. The guy just got sick of being taken advantage of and left. He was a genuine loss to the school community.

HazeDoll

I don't know how to quote part of a post and there's no point in quoting everything Gaiscioch said.

You're so right but I never really thought about it before. All the financial motivations are to get out of the classroom. There is nothing apart from grinding away at your increments to reward a career of teaching. I have no aptitude for the management end of things, and no interest in finding out the extent of my limitations. I like my subject and most of my classes but that in itself is no longer sufficiently motivating.

As you have said, people who fail at teaching fail upward. Have a tearful meltdown in front of a class because somebody questions your methods, and you'll be giving in-services in classroom management by September.

Show up, day after day and provide thirty different types of support to thirty kids for nine classes while getting material covered and you will have grit your teeth and attend the in-services given by those failed teachers.

What's the solution? You can't give financial rewards for high marks, that'll motivate ruthless teachers and ruthless schools to offload the low achievers. The low achievers deserve the best teachers too. I know myself that results I have been most proud of have all been Cs achieved by kids who looked like they were going to fail or drop out.

Let principals decide on rewards? In our school management has made it very clear that slogging away at copies and course material is for drones. Getting publicity is what makes a teacher great.

Let parents have input?

Students?

ascophyllum

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058234758/should-i-become-a-teacher

"The perks are obvious, short day, start after 9 and finish before 3 on many days,"

Lol, don't know where you got this from, in my school, most of us start between 8 and 8.20 and leave between 4 and 4.30, then you could have anything from 1 to 3 hours work to do at home most evenings, if you're a Science teacher, there are no lab assistants in Irish schools unlike every other western nation, so you'll be prepping experiments and cleaning every week.

It's a super job, very rewarding and the holidays are great but don't be fooled, the days can be very very long.

Yoozername.

Thanks for the informative posts all.

Out of interest, how exactly is the pension calculated for new entrants? Does anyone have the formula?

alroley

"The perks are obvious, short day, start after 9 and finish before 3 on many days"

Where did you get this from? I get to school at 8 and leave around 4.30.

Yoozername.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118699482#Comment_118699482

Shows what I know and the grass isn’t always greener. Do your lessons start at 8 or does stuff need to be done behind the scenes beforehand?

Do teachers have a free medical care group like Gardaí, prison officers and An Post?

alroley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118699688#Comment_118699688

Classes start at 8.45, but you need time to set up, see if you are covering for anyone else's class that day etc.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118699688#Comment_118699688

Gardai don't have a "free medical care group".

They have a health insurer that insures Gardai, which they pay premia towards, just like anybody can buy health insurance.

It is not free.

https://www.medicalaid.ie/

https://www.medicalaid.ie/pdfs/Benefit_Guide_2022.pdf?v=1.0

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118699442#Comment_118699442

All public servants hired since 2013/14 join the new Single PS pension scheme.

https://singlepensionscheme.gov.ie/#

Here is some information:

https://singlepensionscheme.gov.ie/for-members/scheme-information/

Random sample

What’s your undergrad in? Teaching is a very different job in different subjects.

Some have lots of prep time, others have lots of correcting time. And critically, some will get a 22 hour contract with ease, others will take years to get there.

I love my job. I get a buzz from chatting to kids, from seeing their faces when they get something, working out yet another way of explaining something so that they can understand what I’m saying, making out worksheets that will allow all of them to do some of it… I’m not sure I’d love it as much if I had spent years waiting for a full contract while moving from school to school and interviewing repeatedly for jobs that may be 2nd year cid for someone else and not knowing whether that job was available or not, putting my life on hold while I would figure out where I would eventually be working. Things are very different for new entrants.

spurious

Would I do it again? Hell no.

Starting again I would do something like plumber or mechanic. Series of short 'fix it' jobs, no taking work home, no dealing with the politics of staff rooms (arse licking and bullying both), the threatened and actual violence of the little darlings, or misinformed joe public thinking they know all about my job and what a doss it is.

jimdemp

Yes it beats a real job

Yoozername.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118701205#Comment_118701205

Science.

I did biology for semester 1 of first year and didn’t touch it since.

I did maths for the first 2 years.

I did physics and chemistry for the entire 4 years.

I might be eligible to teach JC science but I’m certain I could teach LC physics and or chemistry.

spurious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118701362#Comment_118701362

Make sure the Teaching Council agrees before committing yourself to expensive courses.

ascophyllum

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118699688#Comment_118699688

Our classes start at 8.45 also, some days you have supervision duties at 8.25, also you might have a lab class at 2pm but you have no break before that so you might have to set up experiments for 30 students, have it all ready to go beforehand. Or prepare differentiated activities to accommodate all the different learners. This could be 3 or 4 different activities for some classes. It's what's demanded by the inspectorate. In the UK and pretty much every other country you have lab assistants to set up labs but in Ireland the teacher has to do it.

None of this is complaining btw, teaching Science is lovely according to my colleagues and I love teaching my subject but just to clarify the hours are long. Best of luck with whatever you do.

Yoozername.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118701552#Comment_118701552

Goes without saying 😉

Typo btw. I meant to say maths instead of maybe.

dory

I start at 8.05 most days as I do supervision before school. New entrants can't opt out of supervision and substitution.

I usually have 1-2 hours of prep / correcting in the evening. As others have said those hours you mention are not correct. I don't know if I would do it again. I'll have done 10 years this summer, and I'm taking a career break to look around and see what else is out there. It was a great job in my 20s. Long holidays spent travelling. I didn't get too involved in committees etc that take up most lunch times. Then, when I got older I started getting involved in things and it's genuinely very hard. Going in to teach 2-3 more classes in the afternoon without having had time to sit and eat. I feel my blood pressure is constantly a little too high when I teach. Constant feeling of "do I have what I need for the next class", "wtf am I teaching the gang at 2pm" "Oh shoot I meant to write notes on something for the group at 12.10 but I was busy correcting their tests". I've an office job lined up for September and I'm so excited about having time to drink tea during the day.

That's all before I mention the new JC and the upcoming new LC that are absolutely terrible. In short I think I would do it again, but I'm probably going to leave now to do something a bit more chilled, and with more financial incentives for my work. It all depends on your personality, if you can handle the pressure and constant negativity from the public. And the school needs to be a good fit for you as well.

Yoozername.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118701817#Comment_118701817

Do you get paid extra for supervision and after school study?

Is exam correction and and exam supervision worth it for the large lump sum?

There’s lots to consider before taking the plunge but from what I can see I’m better off where I am.

spurious

'Large lump sum'?

dory

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118701884#Comment_118701884

No, you don't get paid extra for supervision. You get docked pay if you don't do it (but you won't have the option to not do it). Yes to after school study. I get about €180 a term! We share it among a large staff so we don't do it too often.

I haven't done exam correction. I think its about €1500 after tax for working during July. The hours seem torturous and there's a lot of deadlines to keep up. That, and I just hate correcting! I got about €1300 for working last June in the exams. Worth it if you're single and don't have travel plans. From colleagues who have kids they say it's not worth it as it would just go on childcare.

Yoozername.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118701938#Comment_118701938

Not worth it then. Far away hills are green as they say. Thanks again to everyone for the insight.

dory

I hate to sound so negative. If it's what you want to do absolutely go for it. I've done a fair few 3 month stints in Asia/South America because of my job, that my friends are planning for when they retire in 30 years time. I'm planning on a month in Spain and a month in France this summer. But I have a way cheaper car than those friends, travel very cheaply (they do big 2 week very expensive holidays), and I'm not trying to pay a mortgage or for childcare. Just don't be fooled into thinking it's an easier job than what you have. Teachers can't get covered for stress under salary protection insurance, because it's assumed that we will be very stressed. The summers are amazing but it's a very long 9 months of work if you're not cut out for it.

amacca

In a way I think teachers now as a collective are a bunch of morons for letting it get to the stage where its normalised to feel constantly under stress and give up lunches etc, its not as if it does anything for academic standards long term imo, never mind your health.....+you can see what real thanks all the extra curricular etc gets with constant "reforms" designed to reduce pay/conditions that a lot of the time are only pandering to the various interest groups as it conveniently leads to cost savings.

The divide and conquer posts for organising x and y often during what should be free time and employment insecurity are doing their job.......

All the while less and less support or meaningful ways to tackle continuous misbehaviour and seriously dropping educational standards etc

We only have ourselves to blame for not having the balls to say no but I can understand it when the system is geared to reward the yes men and women and isolate anyone with independence and standards.

To the OP, unless you really are cut out for it and love the idea, have a back up plan/some form of financial independence you should run a mile.....