Like the thread says, my wife wants to get out of teaching. She's been at it just shy of 10 years. During this time she has had violent students, students that treat no one with respect nor give a crap about their education. The final straw that broke the camels back...a 3rd grader in another class room brought in a crack pipe to school. The teacher took it away from him and sent him down to the principals office and absolutely nothing happened, zero, nothing. This is at a city school, county schools wouldn't take this crap.

I have tried for years to get my wife out of teaching and she finally saw the light. She got so upset the other day she nearly walked out and believe me, it take a lot to push my wife that far. There are six teachers all under the age of 45 that plan on resigning at the end of this year.

For those of you who have gotten out of the education field, what type of work did you transfer into and what other education did you seek if any? Finding a job as a teacher in another district is nearly impossible. School districts around here only hire newbie teachers because they are cheap. If you have experience, you have priced yourself out of a position.

My wife is wanting to get out of traditional teaching too.

She's being looked at by several large corporations for jobs involving internal training, as well as recruiting jobs where she would travel to high schools and colleges for stuff like job fairs, career days, etc.

Other types of job she has explored include working for the state Department of Education doing stuff like designing curriculum, or working at a college doing high school outreach and recruitment.

Any of those type of jobs seems like an easy transition for a schoolteacher.

I'd suggest taking the Strong Interest Test to see what she may fit into, career-wise, before any other move. Several friends have taken this over the years with good results, even surprising at times.

Most likely, she'll have to return to school herself to get an appropriate education, but long-term it's the best way.

The ex-teachers I've worked with have not made smooth transitions into the real world, overall, if they relied only on their teaching background for experience.

quote:

Originally posted by jcsabolt2:
This is at a city school, county schools wouldn't take this crap.

That, my friend, depends entirely on the county.

Are there any private or parochial schools that might be looking for qualified and experienced teachers? I'm sure the pay and benefits wouldn't be on par with whatever she was getting through her public sector union, but if teaching is/was her passion, does she have to leave it entirely?

What about tutoring centers? Maybe even opening a franchise (Mathnasium, etc.)?

-Rob

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
She's being looked at by several large corporations for jobs involving internal training...

My wife is a curriculum manager at a corporation. There is a demand for professional educators, though I believe adult education can be quite different than elementary education. If she wants to stay in the field and could stand work in a corporate environment, there should be opportunities.

I transitioned from education to corporate with no problems.

The best move I have ever made.

My daughter is in the same situation. She also teaches 3rd grade. That seems to be the year that any negative personality traits magnify.

She has one student that is totally uncontrollable. This girl was removed from a private international school because of conduct issues. My daughter refuses to meet with the father unless the principal is with her because the father is verbally aggressive and frightens her.

Her class this year is about 2/3 ESL Kids. Communicating with parents is difficult, sometimes requiring an interpreter. Normally at least one parent speaks good English. The most difficult are the middle eastern students/parents. She has a mixture of middle eastern, Hispanic and some former com-block European students.

This is an upper middle class Ohio public school. The student’s parents are mostly all in professional positions.

Her best friend teaches in a Catholic School and faces a different challenge. That school will not back up the teachers discipline requests because administration does not want the child to transfer to public school. Butts in the seats mean $ in the bank.

She is exploring other employment options.

My son taught at a bricks & mortar charter school in Philadelphia for a couple years. It was turning him off to teaching and he wasn't in PA's pension plan. He switched to being a cyber-teacher (high school senior level English) and is much happier. He says that he no longer has to spend half his time playing referee. Plus he, and the student, are more involved with the parents. While he has an office, from which he teaches, he is also allowed to teach from home a certain number of days per week - a big help with my 2nd granddaughter arriving in January and the first being 2.5 YO. This is cyber charter school and is part of the PA pension system. Maybe something similar in your area?

Good luck.

Adios,

Pizza Bob

Is it teaching that's the problem, or teaching a problem population that is? Maybe a change of venue would solve the problem, and not require a complete career change.

After many decades (not years, decades) my wife has finally decided to retire. She still enjoys the "pure teaching" part but has had it with incompetent administration and never-ending additional workload beyond that needed for the classroom itself. 70-hour weeks during the school year and for several weeks prior to the start of each school year are routine (at least for those teachers that really care and want to do their very best). She's also tired of spending between $1000-2000 every year out-of-her-pocket for classroom supplies that the district can't or won't provide. But they can always seem to afford an additional 2-3 "assistant Superintendents." I'm also retiring soon (will do some limited consulting already lined up) and our primary focus in life will be to spoil our new granddaughter!

Sad that it has come to this.
Same could be said about other service areas such as Police, Fire, FBI where there are MANY good, dedicated, talented, hardworking folks that are affected by the politicization of management.

My wife taught first grade for 3 years right out of college (before we met). Part way through the second year she realized she needed to get out...mostly due to the parents. She got her MBA in Accounting. She does corporate accounting...that's where we met.

Does she have her masters? She could go teach at a college and do way less work and make more money. My dad does that and absolutely loves it. Makes really good money for what he does and only works 4 days a week

I taught in the U.S. Army. I say this, not out of a sense of inflated self-worth, but as a fact: I was good at it. (Based on Instructional Methods Division and student end-of-course ratings. [The latter of which I'd been completely unaware until I was near ETS.]) I was probably good at it because I thoroughly enjoyed it.

You could not pay me enough to take a job teaching in a public school system. Or any civilian school system, from what I've seen.

I used to be a teacher in Philly, actually at a really nice charter high school with discipline and academics as the focus...which made teaching a pleasure. If a kid was caught with their phone turned on at school, first time was a warning, second time was expulsion.

I got my Masters in Guidance Counseling...maybe that's something she'd like better. It's great because you deal with the kid then send them away. I eventually left teaching to pursue more money...and because kids annoyed me.

I'm now in pharma sales. I know teachers that went on to teach online classes as well.

My wife has a small business consulting/administration company. She hired a young lady (Sandy) who had taught at a small private Christian school, where they were paid very little. The young lady has proven to be very well suited to her new position. Likely, she will end up owning the company in a couple of years when my wife retires.

Before Sandy started, we had her read a beginning accounting text, which was free on Amazon. Frankly, the rest of required knowledge can only be learned by doing, they don't teach this stuff in school!

So your wife may want to consider accounting, bookkeeping, or computer consulting.

A friend was a teacher and decided to try a new career as a chef.
She quit teaching and went to culinary school.
She was offered a job as a chef right after she graduated school.
I have not talked to her in a while but last time I heard she was still happy with her decision.

I did a lot of teaching in my lifetime. Army where I taught CBR, radio operators, NCO academy, IBM for 3 years, night classes at local colleges.

We witnessed what our school system here had become YEARS ago when my oldest grandson was reported to his parents by the school for skipping math class. His mom climbed his frame about it and was told that it made no sense to attend that class as the teacher could not speak English. Daughter went and monitored the class.

The kid was correct. Asian teacher who, literally had virtually no English skill. Could not be understood. Daughter went to the principal and found out that there was NOTHING to be done about it. IOW, live with it. Daughter started home schooling.

As another post said, you could not pay me enough to put up with the BS teachers have to deal with on a daily/hourly basis.

Probably 15 (or more) years ago here in Virginia the state started a program to get retired professionals to teach. It was easier and would get better results! By the time the teacher's union got through fucking that up I think they finally just dropped the idea.

I had seriously considered getting into the program but gave up when they told me I had to get more education. Note, at that time I had an AA in accounting, BS in people management, BS in production management, minor in economics and a MBA in finance and accounting!

With all my years of teaching in the army and at IBM, not to mention teaching night classes here at the local college, I was supposed to go to class to learn how to teach. Freaking years of teaching experience but not good enough to satisfy the teacher's union which was the cause of the problems at the schools in the first place.

My wife taught elementary school for about 6 years and loved TEACHING but hated dealeing with the problem children, the parents that did not parent, and the liberal indoctrination.

She went back to school to get her nursing degree. Since she already had her education degree she qualified for the accelerated bachelors RN program that was 18 months. It was no joke serious hard work getting it done that fast many many folks did not make it.

She is a fantastic nurse and makes excellent money with great benefits which allows her to work part time and make plenty more than she did as a teacher.

If it were up to me she would go to med school and be a doctor.

I can relate to your wife's dilemma AND her decision. About 10-12 years ago I "subbed" for a semester for a math teacher at a local high school ( very, very small-town setting with mostly county students). Now one would think that everyone at some point would realize the value & absolute necessity of math in life - but not so. And discipline was the death of my classroom. The AP was in charge of discipline in this particular high school - and she spent most of her discretionary time working with cheer leading squads. And I soon found out that the one cardinal sin that teachers could commit in that setting was sending kids to the office to be disciplined. Now I'm a retired engineer and I believe completely in the value of math in the scientific world. But precious few students or students' parents agreed with me... and I really felt it was not part of my job description to be trying to sell students on the value of math in everyone's life. But I never would have believed that there could be any people who could value math as little as these... or that there could be any school administration that would refuse to try to enforce discipline like that one did. ... I finally left, telling myself that since these students wanted so badly to be ignorant that I would not stand in their way. I applaud your wife for making the decision to leave the one profession that she had trained so long and so hard to be a part of. That takes guts. And I wish her the best in identifying an alternate profession.