Teaching. Is it just a Job?

Some thoughts for you. Teaching can be very hard. So hard that 50% of teachers are gone after 5 years.

From Teaching in the 408
http://roomd2.blogspot.com/

I completed three hundred percent of my TFA commitment. I beat the 0-5 year departure curse. But I resigned and I’m leaving. Around the blogs, around the policy world, around the union halls, folks cast about for the reasons why people like me do things like this.

This is why I didn’t.

I wasn’t prepared.
I wasn’t, but that’s not why I’m leaving. I got through the don’t-know-what-I’m-teaching-and-don’t-know-how-to-teach-it-anyway phase, figuring stuff out, thinking about why things did and did not work, selecting areas to get better continuously, and working really really hard. It’s this last part that bears at least some mentioning. My lack of specialized, focused preparation – a lack that is close to near-universal for those of us manning classrooms in the world of high need urban English Language Learners

from dy/Dan
http://blog.mrmeyer.com
He is writing about the movie Freedom Writers

I wish I could relate, I do, but I'm with Scott Glenn: this is just a job.

It's an unromantic sentiment that'll never find traction in a group that obsessively cultivates its image as self-sacrificing, difference-making caregivers. But if I could print any slogan on a mug to get me through an eighteen-hour day, it'd be those five words.

This is just a job.

This is just a job, which means my objective has been well-defined, though we may disagree on how best to measure it. This is just a job, which means I was hired to teach students a particular skillset.

There isn't any romance in my objective and MTV will never make a movie about really effective phonics instruction, but there is extraordinary, enduring value in effective phonics instruction, in learning, in breaking life's possibilities wide open for students by teaching. There it is: I have been hired to teach. Any inspiring, difference-making, role-modeling, surrogate-fathering, or dance-partying is strictly incidental.

I strongly urge you to seek out those who teach and read them and listen to them so you know what you are getting into.