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Teaching

Hi all, I'm an English finalist considering teaching, but I think I'm a bit too sensitive for it lol is teaching a career anybody would recommend or warn against? My dad is dead against it but I don't think he understands how awful the job market is at the moment

Reply 1

ledene

The PGCE is certainly not for the faint-hearted. I'd describe my own experience with it as 'surviving', and that barely. My first placement was brutal, both in terms of being given difficult classes that made even experienced teachers cry, as well as in terms of the absolute snakepit that was my department. My second placement was lovely and everything that I ever wanted from teaching. However, after a few brief weeks in heaven I then had to go back to the snakepit. The school you end up in can make or break you, and you'd have to get really lucky on the PGCE (and be very picky after) to get into a school that wants to 'make' you, because it seems most of them exist just to break you. I'd say about 90% of people on my course (including me) fantasised of rage-quitting the PGCE by Christmas. Some did. I finished the course but ended up not teaching due to some health issues. I do want to eventually get back into it, even after the hell I went through. My second school managed to give me a lot of faith in the profession. Most teachers in my department there had been there for 15+ years and no one was leaving, I'd definitely be teaching at that school now had they only had an opening...

I hear you with the tough job market, but there is a reason why there is a huge shortage in teachers. You will be working off every ounce of that job security, and every penny over the usual graduate pay, with gallons of your sweat, blood, and tears. I guarantee you that. You can also look forward to endless bureaucracy and imbecilic inefficiency in many schools, which you will likely be punished for challenging. A fellow trainee ended up working in a school where they for whatever reason had TWO systems to keep track of pupil progress... and you had to type in all the data twice, once into each. The systems did not allow copy paste between themselves due to data protection, so teachers were expected to just waste their time double-entering everything - as if teachers have any time to waste. Challenging this inefficiency did not win my friend any favours and did not change anything except her now being forevermore seen as argumentative and difficult.

So yeah... It's an incredibly mixed bag capable of extremely rewarding highs but also full of extreme lows. I tend to be on your father's side in this, if you are still young, I would suggest to try other things if money/job security is your main motivator. Not for any bs moral reason like 'you have to really care as a teacher, think of the children' - most teachers I have met were in it for the job security - but because in my opinion, the security teaching gives you is simply not worth what it takes, unless you can actually find it in you to enjoy the job. I have stayed in touch with five of my fellow trainees. Of the five, four have now quit teaching, one teaches abroad. All within four years of finishing. As for me, I am thinking of a return to teaching at some point in the future.

I hope this helps in some way.