Most hated jobs

[Cole Parker]

I found this on the web this morning. The following was number three in a list of the five jobs most disliked by those doing them:

Secondary School Teacher

With an average yearly salary of $43,800, the highest in the the top 5, secondary school teachers rank third in regret with 43%. They problem is that would-be teachers often don’t fully understand what the job involves until after they have started, McLeod says. “I had a friend who was a secondary school teacher and realized on day two she had made an enormous mistake. She was awash in the paperwork required of an educator, as well as the unending parent interventions and the reluctance of students to do the work. She didn’t realize the politics of working in a secondary school system.”

Training and development consultant Farah Parker says the challenges that face teachers are daunting. “Although teachers are responsible for preparing the next generation to lead our nation, the education profession is often marred by a lack of resources, dwindling support, and modest salaries,” she says. “Instead of simply teaching children, teachers must simultaneously parent and counsel all while navigating the stressful terrain often found in the bureaucracy of school districts. It takes a remarkable human being to become a teacher but it takes a golden human being to stay one.”

I think we here know and appreciate such a golden human being.

C

[DesDownunder]

We do indeed.

[Camy]

Aye, but our golden being is certifiably quirky which probably helps with the parents and paperwork.

[The Pecman]

Amen. Teachers who can put up with all the BS and still find a way to change their students' lives for the better are golden.

[Nigel Gordon]

A friend of mine has recently left teaching after over 20 years. She got a First Class BMaths and that resulted in a number of offers of jobs in the City of London carrying high salaries. However, she wanted to teach so did her PG Dip in Education and qualified as a teacher in the late 80s. She subsequently worked in state secondary school in one of the poorer areas of the West Midlands. One of her students in now a Professor of Mathematics and five, that she knows of, hold positions in University Maths departments. The school where she taught has for the last 15 years been constantly above average in exam scores for mathematics and has had a higher percentage of students going on to do A level maths. In recent years she has found herself in a constant battle to teach mathematics to her students rather than fill them with enough to get through the examinations. To do this she ended up having to run an out of hours school maths club two evenings a week and maths workshops during the holidays.

At the start of the Autumn term she phoned me in desperation at the latest set of changes to the system. She was totally fed up with the amount of paperwork and administration she was being faced with, the last straw for her was when she was required to do a risk assessment on her students to assess if they were at risk of stress because of the level of study required for the course they had opted for. She worked out that for every hour she was teaching she was doing five hours administration, so she has resigned.

She is now working for a City bank at four times her salary as a teacher and working far less hours.

If we want people to teach we should employ teachers, if we want people to do paperwork we should employ clerks.

[Cole Parker]

You can say much the same thing for Social Workers who take the degree and job because they want to help needy people, adults and children. When they face the mountains of paperwork that must be done, paperwork that doesn't help people, many of the good ones simply walk away. This, of course, leaves the bad ones in place.

C

[EleCivil]

Aye, but our golden being is certifiably quirky which probably helps with the parents and paperwork.

When you begin as an Education major, the first thing you learn is public speaking.

They give you ten marbles, which you put in your mouth. You hold those marbles in your mouth while you deliver a lesson. If you can avoid choking, swallowing a marble, or mumbling incoherantly, you take out one marble and repeat the process. If you can manage with nine marbles, you go down to eight, then seven, and so on.

Once you've lost all your marbles, you're ready to be a teacher.

[DesDownunder]

When you begin as an Education major, the first thing you learn is public speaking.

They give you ten marbles, which you put in your mouth. You hold those marbles in your mouth while you deliver a lesson. If you can avoid choking, swallowing a marble, or mumbling incoherantly, you take out one marble and repeat the process. If you can manage with nine marbles, you go down to eight, then seven, and so on.

Once you've lost all your marbles, you're ready to be a teacher.

I love it. The golden one has not disappointed.