Is it wise to become a high school teacher in this economy?

Where I live, the kindergarten teacher makes 127k. They’re public employees, so their salaries are public, too.

I would say it’s a good move. I would suggest your teacher get a double major, one being in Special Ed, which will open more doors for her.

In general, teachers get good benefits, good time off, good work hours. Yes, they’re subject to layoffs like everyone else, but at least they are versatile. It seems like school budgets here in NY rarely get voted down.

They also get pensions, which is gold.

And I would add to what @jca wisely says, I would hope that part of your sister’s decision has to do with how badly she wants to be a teacher. We need all the good ones we can get.

A good friend of mine is an English Teacher in an inner-city high school, and his salary is very good since he has his Master’s degree and a lot of other certifications. The kids do challenge him, as does the administrative nonsense, but he loves teaching.

Regardless of the economy, we will always need teachers, and sociologically we will always need people who love to teach. However, in an economy that is tight, the challenges on teachers become even tougher because they have may more students in their classrooms and fewer resources to spend in helping convey their lessons – all the more reason to do it because you love it.

Even over 30 years ago, I remember being keenly aware of which teachers wanted to teach, and which were burned out, and many students took advantage of the ones who really did not care or want to be there.

Yes, if one is dedicated and enjoys the work, go for it!

You ask your question from an unfulfilling perspective: “In this economy, is it really wise to become a teacher, with the economy the way it is?” As long as she can find a now, the rest of the economy doesn’t really matter. And, the economy is doing pretty well these days, especially where I live. But you seem to put it above the joy of the job.

Same with “What else can you do?” Good teachers enjoy there work, and the high school English teachers in particular like it a lot, because they get to see teens learn to critically think.

Good luck to your sis! I wish her a long and happy career!

My mom was a teacher and retired from the job. She taught biology in high school. She loved the job. If you like working with young people and teaching, it’s a great job and one that needs every dedicated person willing to do it.

What we need most now are skilled tradespeople, though. We need to spend at least $2 trillion in the US repairing our existing infrastructure. It’s currently graded at D minus. Yet skilled tradespeople of every kind are shrinking in numbers. Fewer and fewer people want to go to trade schools. There’s really nothing wrong with hard work. Studies show that plumbers, pipefitters, steelworkers, welders, carpenters and the like are actually happier than most of those who inhabit a cubicle in some pushing papers and playing office politics. I’m thinking it might be time for some young people contemplating a career to look at where the herd is heading, and go the opposite way.

Yes, there is generally job availability in the field of education at the high school level. As @jca mentioned, she should look to test in multiple areas when obtaining her credentials, and it couldn’t hurt to have a specialization such as special education or TESL. She will have to finish her BA as well as obtain her credentials (which might be a two-year process, I think.) This will entail taking more exams and doing student-teaching. She should familiarize herself with local schools that she might be able to shadow teachers at.

However, she needs to think very hard about whether this is the career for her. Many, many new teachers quit within the first couple of years. Sometimes it’s because the job is more stressful than they anticipated, sometimes the bureaucracy gets to them, and sometimes it’s just because they can’t hack it at the front of the classroom. Many starry-eyed good Samaritans get discouraged extremely quickly.

Depending on her area, teaching could be a very high-stress job. It may have good working hours (and working summer is optional!) but the job doesn’t end when you go home. You are constantly planning lessons, grading, thinking and working about your students, thinking and worrying about your standing with your colleagues, etc.

@ETpro “I’m thinking it might be time for some young people contemplating a career to look at where the herd is heading, and go the opposite way.”

For a while now, I’ve had this vague, unprovable feeling that the white-collar jobs from my parent’s generation aren’t going to be the default anymore. People in my generation (I’m 25) were raised to believe that we’d go to college and then work in an office. Obviously, lots of people my age had trouble finding jobs in their fields, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about. It just seems like the professional landscape is going to change drastically, but I’m not sure what it’s going to look like.

I think the problem with skilled tradespeople, that @ETpro uses as an example, is that when it comes to labor, labor unions are less powerful then they used to be and therefore, a skilled tradesperson may find himself or herself having to pay for their own health benefits or working for lousy benefits, and as far as manufacturing goes, many consumers don’t want to pay for a skill. They want things cheap (“China prices”). Not saying there’s no market for a skill, as I have people in my family that manufacture and employ skilled tradespeople, so the market is there, but this market is shrinking almost to a point of non-existence. I don’t think that type of job compares to a teacher, cop, firefighter who can retire after 20 years with a pension and then go on to do something else (or in the case of firefighters, can do something else simultaneously with firefighting, if they work 3 12 hour shifts per week and get to study in their off hours in the firehouse).

My mom pointed out to me 40 years ago that “what this area needs is repairmen that can fix things like the washer and dryer”. Indeed, I know of a few people who have made a good living being repairmen/handymen. If you have the skill you can keep as busy as you want.

Many teachers go on to be administrators or do corporate training – both of which pay more than a teacher’s salary.

I think a better question is to ask your sister whether she really feels passionate about teaching. As a parent, I see a lot of tenured teachers who are burnt out, unhappy and NOT doing a good job for my kids.

To figure out how much she really wants to teach I’d encourage her to try working in the schools NOW. Even without a degree there are a number of in-school positions she could be working in to get a “taste” for how teaching will be & to enable her to work with kids.

I had a good friend who worked as a para-professional (like a teacher’s aide) in the schools while she was completing her bachelors degree in education and not only did it help her discern that she’d prefer to teach secondary rather than elementary students, in the end she decided that the bureaucracy at the schools & the political nonsense (not to mention dealing with crappy parents, helicopter parents and genuinely troubled kids) wasn’t worth it – no matter what pay she was offered. She went on to tutor adult (GED & ESL) students (she liked that best – she found them motivated & pleasant) and finally she changed course and went back to working in lab science.

I was told than only special education teachers are being hired in Alberta…because of a surplus of people with teaching degrees.

@jca The fact that you are unaware that all the trades I listed work primarily in construction and not in factories probably says a good deal about how divorced Americans have gotten from doing real labor. Maybe the day will come when a Chinese Factory can build the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge and ship it complete to the USA. I doubt it. But stranger things have come to pass. Still, you need people who know how to weld, and patch potholes, and repair rusting our, crumbling bridges and dams. That simply cannot be done in a factory. And long before it can, worldwide wages will have normalized and shipping cost will again push manufacturing to move close to its customer base.

@ETpro: I understand what you are saying, but given the choice between being a teacher with all the benefits of a civil service job (as I stated, pension alone is gold, plus the salary, hours, etc.) vs. a trades job doing construction (risk of physical injury is one major downside), I would say teaching is a better option. Not saying we don’t need skilled tradespeople to patch potholes and repair bridges, build dams, etc. but which is a better option of the two? I would say teaching.

@jca I don’t dispute it’s a great job for those who love it. But some don’t. And with the budget slashing mania in place now so that we can increase welfare to the wealthy and corporations, we can’t afford many teachers. That means if you do get a job you’ll be faced with minimal supplies and too many students per class, and that you may not get a job.

@ETpro: Definitely the number one deciding factor on any job is actually wanting that job. So if someone doesn’t want to be a teacher and wants to patch potholes, that’s the way to go for that person. The OP asked about his sister, who apparently wants to become a teacher.

Having minimal supplies and a larger class size are relatively minor problems, compared to the multiple problems of construction, skilled or not. (working in the cold and heat, working seasonally only, inconsistent employment, increased chance of physical injury, etc.). Compare an old construction worker who probably has a bad back, bad knees, a history of sick/injury leave, and compare that to an old teacher, who has been working 30 years with summers off, and likely no comp claims in her career.

Like I said, in my area, the kindergarten teacher makes 127k (2011 budget year so she surely makes more now). In addition, she’ll have a huge pension (how many construction workers have pensions, unless they work for a municipality, in which case they’re most likely not making 127k).

If someone had a desire to be a teacher, and the means to obtain the education to do so, which was the OP’s question, then yes, it’s a better job than a trades job.

I agree that to be a truly great teacher, you should love teaching, and also the subject you teach. She does like to teach, but I’m not sure she has a passion for it.

@ETpro I know that a lot of skilled trades are in demand. Forbes says the skilled trades are the hardest jobs to fill because people don’t really have the goal of becoming a plumber or mechanic. (A gross generalization, I know) My friend is training to be an electrician, but he doesn’t particularly like it. It’s out of necessity that he is training for that trade.

@Aesthetic_Mess & @jca It saddens me to see we now think actually working with our hands and making something is beneath us. Till we have robots doing everything, we need to remember how things are done.

But teaching is a fine trade, as it turns out a product—an educated populace, hopefully taught how to actually do things.