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Why Do Teachers Complain? They Knew What They Were Getting Into
Early in my teaching career, a friend asked me two questions:
- Is teaching really a hard job?
- Why do teachers complain about low pay, when they knew it was going to be low before they ever even started college?
Is Teaching Hard?
The first question was asked with a laugh in her voice. She knew I had come from a business background, that I had completed graduate school. She was clearly expecting me to say that teaching was easy, far easier than those other things I had done.
And in some ways, teaching was easier than those things. It was the only job I ever had where I know for sure I laughed every day at work. It was the only job I ever had where I knew for sure that what I did all day long mattered.
But in every other sense, teaching was much harder than banking or finance or human resources.
Teaching is the only job I’ve had in which being even thirty seconds late for work was a violation of state laws and could possibly be seen as child endangerment.
Teaching is the only job I’ve had in which I had four separate interests pulling at me, each pulling me in different directions: parents, administrators, students, and politicians or public opinions. Usually…
