Career Change: The Drawback!

[Updated on 9/17] Going into this career change, I knew the one huge drawback was going to be monetary! I mean who willingly takes a nearly 40% pay cut?  An insane person that's who! Or someone with a calling!  For me, my happiness and contentment about my career was worth the drastic cut in salary ... or so I thought. Then the reality hit me this week when I received my first teacher paycheck!  OH MY STARS!  I haven't seen such a low pay in decades!

So let me vituperate here for a bit.  It's INSANE that one of the most important careers in our society (educating our children) is also one of the worse paying jobs - particularly if you factor in the amount time really good teachers spend preparing for their classes.  Despite what people think, teaching is NOT an 8-3 job.  Let's look at my day:  

I am up at 5am in order to workout (I refuse to give up on my working out).  My workday starts between 7:15 and 7:30 when I arrive at school.  Before classes start at 8:30, I need to have: all my copies made, learning objectives and homework assignments written on the board, classroom neat and tidy, students' classwork returned to their folders, have reviewed of all my lesson plans for the day, and attending to those students who are looking for help and/or advice. Then depending on the day's schedule, I teach either 3 or 4 70-minute classes of wonderful, but highly rambunctious students (with a whopping 30 minute lunch). I get either 1 or 2 planning periods (one personal and one departmental) per day, but usually those periods are never used for planning.  During my personal planning time, I generally end up grading papers, reading journals, reading essays, checking homework, inputting attendance and making more copies - plus the teachers are mandated to patrol the hallways to make sure students are getting to their classes and wearing the correct uniform.  (Yes, we are now the fashion police.) The school day ends at 3:17 pm, but I am rarely out of school much before 4:00 or 4:30.  I get home between 4:30 and 5:00, feed the cat, sit for 30 minutes catching my breath while dinner cooks, eat dinner and then it's more paperwork, grading, planning, inputting grades/homework scores, reading texts that I assign my students, and other school-related administrative duties in the evening for another 3-4 hours.  I'm generally in bed by 10:00 or 10:30 and my day starts all over again at 5am the next morning.  Weekends are spent doing more lesson planning, reading more books/short stories, and grading papers. In case you're curious, I have around 75 students.  Whew!  I figure I am working approximately 75 or more hours a week as a teacher.  I don't even want to do the math on what that breaks down as an hourly rate!  It is more than minimum wage, but not by much!

The only thing I've been able to focus on for the past few days is how the heck am I going to survive on my itty bitty salary.  The solution is a simple one:  I need a part time job.  Which means that out of the paltry hours that I have left over in the week, I need to work a second job.  (BTW, I'm not even including the fact that I have to travel to Boston once a week for graduate school and the homework that is involved with that!!)  OH MY STARS!!!!!!!!!  Can we say that I'm a little stressed right now? (That's probably an understatement!!)  But of course, finding a part time job that fits in with my crazy schedule and is worth the time away from home is another issue.  Sure, I could possibly get a job at Starbucks, but is that really worth my time?  I'm going to try to get some tutoring jobs which would be the best idea because I can do that in the early evening and on the weekends and make a decent amount of money.  Of course, I am sure I'll be in competition with a few other broke teachers so it's not going to be easy.  I've also applied for an after-school program but there's kind of a big time commitment with that position.  <sigh>  It's a good thing that I had already sworn off having a social life because there's no time for one anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I still love my job, but it's just insane that teachers are supposed to work for a ridiculously meager salary.  I find it a bit infuriating, especially when I see the obscene amount of money that brokers, CEOs, celebrities, pro athletes, and other rich and shameless people make. (I was going to add "attorneys" but I'd hate to insult some of my friends!)  Here's an interesting article I came across about the Most Overpaid Jobs in the US.

Running through my head all day has been the Abba song, Money, Money, Money (see the video below).  Perhaps it's time for me to find a Sugar Daddy!  :-)  Also, a couple of new photos have been added to my 1st Year of Teaching photo album.  Check them out!