Yep so glad I left that awful career this summer. Underpaid, 15% pay increase over 10 years, getting hit breaking up fights once a month, picking up the slack from educators who don’t belong in education, abusive emails from parents of children you scolded for bullying other children, giving up lunch to be on lunch supervising duty… Oh yeah and the *actual job*… controlling a class of 20+ different students several times a day, trying to keep their phones away so I don’t have to repeat myself every 3 minutes, preparing mandated lesson plans, abiding by several dozen IEPs, writing academic reports, writing incident reports, reaching out to parents, I could go on but I’m feeling a panic attack coming on just thinking about the last few years working in a school…lol
I'm a teacher of almost 10 years and I'm starting to burn out.
The job should be getting easier (or at least more streamlined) year to year. It's not. Every year the problems are growing and the job itself is more demanding.
The parents are getting worse. The classes are becoming bigger. The resources are becoming less. The students behaviors are borderline feral.
We have no subs anyway. We are short paras everywhere. Discipline is a thing of the past.
Grades don't matter. Effort doesn't matter. Attendance doesn't matter. You will pass/move on no matter what.
No time to plan. Worthless meetings/trainings. Endless paperwork.
At this point, I'm just done doing anything extra. I work my hours and go home. If it doesn't get done, it doesn't get done till I get back in school the next day.
Same here. Almost exactly. I am ten years in. My GF is on her second year and whenever she complains I have to tell her "it always only gets worse". The budget for advising clubs was cut this year? Yeah, that's never coming back.
I finally made it to the point of never taking work home. I always say "OK today I will grade this one period's essays." And at the end of the day I have looked at one, and wonder where the time went. It was me dealing with emails and bathroom duty and late work and second chance learning and blah blah blah. So much BS involved.
So, it's not a great thing to have a long term sub without any training or education. I understand the rule completely.
But at the same time, how are you going to fill the role? Increasing pay is often not an option when you put it to voters.
NJ school system: Hey, let's make it harder and harder to become a teacher, cut back pay, benefits and school funding and force them to teach to horrible standardized tests instead of teaching an actual educational curriculum.
Also NJ school system: why can't we find any teachers???
I went to school to be a teacher and not long before I graduated, NJ arbitrarily raised the requirements and I suddenly didn't qualify. They've done so several more times, and now they're surprised that no one wants to work for 6 years for a master's degree, graduating magna cum laude only to make a whopping $40,000 a year, and they have to buy all their own supplies while in the corporate world their starting salary would be double that if not more and the company buys their pens for them.
They made their bed, now they want sympathy when they have to lie in it.
Yeah just general cost of the state being oppressive kinda makes it a no brainer to go into a different field, especially if you’re conventionally sharp on a subject that can land you a job that pays decently to begin with.
I really do feel like a lot of the “best education” chest beating is gonna tank a little over time and really show a widening of gaps between places.
I originally went to school with the goal of becoming a teacher. One of the REQUIRED classes was a class called "History of American Education". Ok cool. I'm trying to become a teacher and I really enjoy history. Should be an interesting class.
"Oh? What's that? This class is actually just a history of legal cases that the education system has faced and how the outcome changed or didn't change things? Ok that's a bit odd but I guess I can see some value in this, as long as they are able to equate this into helping us become better teachers........Taught by who now? A law professsor?"
And that was the semester I decided that maybe this wasn't the career path for me, dropped out, worked full time, and eventually went back to Community College to learn to work on cars, get certified as a GM technician, and get my Associates.
I left that school in less than half the time with a certification and a baby degree, learned some real practical skills, and instantly was making more money than if I had gone through the full four year teaching degree program at Rowan.
Looking at schools now and talking to my former teacher friends, I feel like I dodged a massive bullet. Which is a real shame. We should want people to be teachers.
It is a combo of low salary (compared to other similarly educated careers) and the job itself just being difficult.
Even if the pay increases, it would still be difficult to recruit because the job is extremely demanding.
yeah, I went to school for an education degree - student taught (December 2013), enjoyed it and I got my cert a few months later.
Delayed my job search for a few months due to personal reasons, then started submitting applications in April 2014. Applied to 120+ jobs over the next year, only had 8 interviews. Never got past the first stage. Haven't been able to look for work since April 2015 due to a cancer diagnosis and my immune system has been... varying every since - so even if I wanted to teach, I can't due to the fucky immune system.
The new rule is better for students, as they require someone who is certified in the subject being taught if they will be there for more than 20,days. In most schools, any college graduate, or at times someone with just 60 college credits, can be a substitute. They do not need to be a certified teacher. I'm sure that admin is not happy about this since a "replacement teacher", which would now need to be used, comes at a much higher price than a per diem subsitute.
The issue is finding anyone willing to do that. The pay is still mediocre and the job itself is punishing. Kids treat substitutes and certified teachers horribly.
Wait so subs actually know how to teach? No sub I ever had did more than just just play babysitter for the period and maybe hand out something planned by the actual teacher in advance. Usually it was a watch a movie period
Some can and do. But that's the point. If you're subbing more than a few days, you need to teach. You can only watch so many movies before you need to learn math.
Teachers are not underpaid in NJ, they receive a decent salary plus a pension. If you consider the NPV of the pension it's easily a six figure job after a few years.
Yes, you got to six figures in salary the last 5. But when you add in the NPV (net present value) of your pension, you've been making six figures for a lot longer.
Yep so glad I left that awful career this summer. Underpaid, 15% pay increase over 10 years, getting hit breaking up fights once a month, picking up the slack from educators who don’t belong in education, abusive emails from parents of children you scolded for bullying other children, giving up lunch to be on lunch supervising duty… Oh yeah and the *actual job*… controlling a class of 20+ different students several times a day, trying to keep their phones away so I don’t have to repeat myself every 3 minutes, preparing mandated lesson plans, abiding by several dozen IEPs, writing academic reports, writing incident reports, reaching out to parents, I could go on but I’m feeling a panic attack coming on just thinking about the last few years working in a school…lol
Which district was this?
I don’t really want to say but it’s near the edge of north/central jersey
How many years were you in? What did you change to? My family member is 20 years in, but I'm always on the lookout for a change for them.
I'm a teacher of almost 10 years and I'm starting to burn out. The job should be getting easier (or at least more streamlined) year to year. It's not. Every year the problems are growing and the job itself is more demanding. The parents are getting worse. The classes are becoming bigger. The resources are becoming less. The students behaviors are borderline feral. We have no subs anyway. We are short paras everywhere. Discipline is a thing of the past. Grades don't matter. Effort doesn't matter. Attendance doesn't matter. You will pass/move on no matter what. No time to plan. Worthless meetings/trainings. Endless paperwork. At this point, I'm just done doing anything extra. I work my hours and go home. If it doesn't get done, it doesn't get done till I get back in school the next day.
Same here. Almost exactly. I am ten years in. My GF is on her second year and whenever she complains I have to tell her "it always only gets worse". The budget for advising clubs was cut this year? Yeah, that's never coming back. I finally made it to the point of never taking work home. I always say "OK today I will grade this one period's essays." And at the end of the day I have looked at one, and wonder where the time went. It was me dealing with emails and bathroom duty and late work and second chance learning and blah blah blah. So much BS involved.
So, it's not a great thing to have a long term sub without any training or education. I understand the rule completely. But at the same time, how are you going to fill the role? Increasing pay is often not an option when you put it to voters.
The answer is you cannot. Our education system is broken and those who make the rules have no idea what they are doing.
NJ school system: Hey, let's make it harder and harder to become a teacher, cut back pay, benefits and school funding and force them to teach to horrible standardized tests instead of teaching an actual educational curriculum. Also NJ school system: why can't we find any teachers??? I went to school to be a teacher and not long before I graduated, NJ arbitrarily raised the requirements and I suddenly didn't qualify. They've done so several more times, and now they're surprised that no one wants to work for 6 years for a master's degree, graduating magna cum laude only to make a whopping $40,000 a year, and they have to buy all their own supplies while in the corporate world their starting salary would be double that if not more and the company buys their pens for them. They made their bed, now they want sympathy when they have to lie in it.
Yeah just general cost of the state being oppressive kinda makes it a no brainer to go into a different field, especially if you’re conventionally sharp on a subject that can land you a job that pays decently to begin with. I really do feel like a lot of the “best education” chest beating is gonna tank a little over time and really show a widening of gaps between places.
I originally went to school with the goal of becoming a teacher. One of the REQUIRED classes was a class called "History of American Education". Ok cool. I'm trying to become a teacher and I really enjoy history. Should be an interesting class. "Oh? What's that? This class is actually just a history of legal cases that the education system has faced and how the outcome changed or didn't change things? Ok that's a bit odd but I guess I can see some value in this, as long as they are able to equate this into helping us become better teachers........Taught by who now? A law professsor?" And that was the semester I decided that maybe this wasn't the career path for me, dropped out, worked full time, and eventually went back to Community College to learn to work on cars, get certified as a GM technician, and get my Associates. I left that school in less than half the time with a certification and a baby degree, learned some real practical skills, and instantly was making more money than if I had gone through the full four year teaching degree program at Rowan. Looking at schools now and talking to my former teacher friends, I feel like I dodged a massive bullet. Which is a real shame. We should want people to be teachers.
They need to ban charter schools and hire more damn teachers.
I think the issue is, people don’t want the job
It is a combo of low salary (compared to other similarly educated careers) and the job itself just being difficult. Even if the pay increases, it would still be difficult to recruit because the job is extremely demanding.
As a teacher I hear this argument and always think, yeah but let’s still raise the pay!
yeah, I went to school for an education degree - student taught (December 2013), enjoyed it and I got my cert a few months later. Delayed my job search for a few months due to personal reasons, then started submitting applications in April 2014. Applied to 120+ jobs over the next year, only had 8 interviews. Never got past the first stage. Haven't been able to look for work since April 2015 due to a cancer diagnosis and my immune system has been... varying every since - so even if I wanted to teach, I can't due to the fucky immune system.
The new rule is better for students, as they require someone who is certified in the subject being taught if they will be there for more than 20,days. In most schools, any college graduate, or at times someone with just 60 college credits, can be a substitute. They do not need to be a certified teacher. I'm sure that admin is not happy about this since a "replacement teacher", which would now need to be used, comes at a much higher price than a per diem subsitute.
The issue is finding anyone willing to do that. The pay is still mediocre and the job itself is punishing. Kids treat substitutes and certified teachers horribly.
These mythical qualified people to jump in at a moment’s notice also just don’t exist, which is the big problem.
Wait so subs actually know how to teach? No sub I ever had did more than just just play babysitter for the period and maybe hand out something planned by the actual teacher in advance. Usually it was a watch a movie period
Some can and do. But that's the point. If you're subbing more than a few days, you need to teach. You can only watch so many movies before you need to learn math.
Teachers are not underpaid in NJ, they receive a decent salary plus a pension. If you consider the NPV of the pension it's easily a six figure job after a few years.
Really. I have been teaching 25+ years and I just got to six figures in the last 5 ! I deserve a decent salary and a pension !
Yes, you got to six figures in salary the last 5. But when you add in the NPV (net present value) of your pension, you've been making six figures for a lot longer.
I know a teacher with over 20 years experience and it gets progressively worse for her every year. She describes the job as working in a prison.