I wanted to be a teacher because there were too many idiots - people who don't know when to do the right thing.

I think teaching is a bit easier profession.
It really help in building confident.

I think you are out of your mind if you think teaching is easy. With the government making every class a split grade (Meaning: teach two different lessons at once, every period of the day, which might not even be the same topic: EXAMPLE: Grade 4 Medieval Times and Grade 5 Canadian Government at the same time for Social Studies / or Grade 5 Energy and Grade 6 Biodiversity at the same time, for Science), you will go nuts and always feel like a failure at your job. Keeping one grade quiet and on task while you teach the other grade, marking >30students X 8 to 10 periods a day every night while at home (with detailed feedback, not just check marks...)... and that's just the marking -- forget time to actually plan your lessons, shop for materials on your own time, set stuff up, do report cards and IEPs and administrative legal papers. You can't do any of this at school because you have yard duty 2 - 3 breaks per day, a shorter than legally allowed lunch hour (during which time you have to run extra-curriculars rather than eat).. After school there are meetings and detentions and more extracurriculars, or upgrading courses that you have to pay for ($800 a shot).

Don't forget you can't even leave the room to pee or have diarrhea during the day or you can be sued.

You can be sued for up to 7 years after any field trip, and you won't be covered by board insurance since you were off school property. (Example: you could be accused of ignoring poor Johnny 6 years ago on a trip, and be charged with neglect or abandonment.... and they can go after your home as payment).

Don't forget you can be accused of sexual assault, etc., and lose everything. This happened to my mom's colleague who had a nervous breakdown after being maliciously accused of touching a kid. It was thrown out of court but she never recovered and had to quit her job.

Back to the day job.... While teaching those split grade classes, you are also offering lessons within your class AT THE SAME TIME, which are 2 - 3 years below for students on IEP (example: teach a Grade 5/6 Math class, two different math lessons at the same time, and at the same time teach a bunch of "one-on-one" lessons in Grade 2, Grade 3 and Grade 4 math for the kids with IEPs, without any type of assistant.... (They aren't allowed to fail a grade, so they just take the lower level course the following year, in your classroom). Sometimes there are kids with Gifted IEPs, and their parents will sue you if you don't enrich them to 1 - 2 years above the curriculum level, or teach them in the newest method they have just researched on the web.

On top of the split grades and the IEPs, differentiate the ALL of the above lessons for kids who are visual learners, kinesthetic learners, auditory learners so that some kids will do a verbal report, some will act it out, some will play the flute to express what they learned, some will work in a group, some can't go near other kids, some are autistic and some are violent....etc., (This is the new mandate -- you have to find, document and meet each kid's unique learning style and learning needs ON TOP of their required academic grade level...)

Yes, there will be some kids you really like and care about. Of course there will be. Some of them will want to talk privately about family issues, etc. or want a hug. You can't hug them or touch them or you will be sued. You can't talk to a student privately in your room because the board covers its butt and doesn't want you to get sued for doing anything inappropriate. If the child does disclose something about their family you have to call CAS and then the family will hate you and start crusades against you.

There are over 400 expectations for each kid to master each year. Times 30 kids = 12000 expectations to teach, all at different speeds, different lessons, with different materials (some kids need visual, some need hands on, some need hand-outs and memory work, others can't learn that way).

Then there's the behavioural issues and social work issues of kids throwing stuff, swearing at you, mocking and imitating you, calling you fat or stupid, laughing in your face when you discipline them, not doing homework, beating the heck out of each other, administrations that allow all of this because they have low suspension quotas and can't address every behaviour issue in the school.... Having no say in what grade you teach or what subjects it will involve on rotary...not having adequate text books but not being allowed to photocopy anything because of "environmental issues", not being able to voluntarily transfer schools or switch boards.... All after waiting ten years to get a full time job ( instead of supply work) even if you have an M.Ed. While you are a supply teacher you can't even qualify for a mortgage because it is not considered reliable income.

You trudge through the year and scrape together enough material / lessons to get by. You save it all painstakingly on your computer to use the next year. Surprise. You are forced to switch schools because of low enrollment, and / or you are told to teach a totally different grade level / subject area the next year. Forget "teachables". You teach what you are told to teach, where you are told to teach. Some teachers will be forced to teach according to their qualifications, "Sorry, Bill, you have to leave our school next year because you aren't qualified for Intermediate and that's the only job we have". Others have no qualifications for their jobs but have to do them anyway "Sorry, Sally, I know you are a Primary Specialist but you are going to teach Grade 7/8 Science, like it or not".

The emotional drain will nearly kill you. Being surrounded by the energy (often negativity) of 30+ rambunctious personalities all day is exhausting. You have to be nice to one kid, funny with another, serious with another... back and forth like Jekyll and Hyde. You spend your day managing the thoughts, behaviours and actions of 30 other people all day (but you can't be uniform about it because it HAS TO BE differentiated). You spend your day deciding when other people can urinate, and remembering when they last went so that they don't pee their pants. (But, if you let them go too often you are also in trouble, from Admin.) It is constant bombarding of stimuli, noise, decision making and organization with no time to regroup.

Don't forget the public will hate you for the holidays, for having a cushy job, and for not doing a good job.
The parents will hate you because either you give too much homework or not enough, or because you are too nice to the kids
or too tough on the kids. Their kid will never be the problem or the bully. Their kid would never bully a teacher (LOL). The media will hate you for the union and the EQAO scores.

The kids will hate you because you aren't interactive technology and they aren't used to learning anything with their ears.
They will not want to use pencil and paper. They are used to learning everything on google. Our system is entirely antiquated and out of touch with kids' needs. Even the computers are slow at most schools. There aren't enough to go around and kids fight over them. Then they get banned from the network for visiting Facebook, etc., when you aren't looking.

At my mom's school she gets in crap if she even turns the lights on. (They monitor your lightbulb usage and report it on announcements; you are supposed to work in the dark to save money).

At the end of the day every kid will pass the year, even if they do no homework, can't read and don't know how to add 1 + 1.
We can't fail them or they might feel bad. They know this, so they do very little work and have little respect for learning anything.

Now the teachers will be losing their pensions and their accumulated sick days... even though they are continually exposed to sick children with coughs, strep throat or flu bugs, who never wash their hands or stay home from school....

Teaching is considered the second most stressful career possible. It has the shortest life expectancy after retirement.

Sure, what a blast. Enjoy.

To all the would be teachers, all I can say is .... GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. Have fun.

PS.
If you really like children (the common thread of applicants to teachers' college), then by all means work with children. I'm not a child hater! I love kids, too! Enjoying children does not mean you have to teach. Be a social worker, a pediatrician, a children's lawyer. Work with children one at a time. Dealing with 30 at once, with all the BS, constraints and legalities I have mentioned, is ridiculous. You will burn out and stop loving "kids" very quickly.

How are your schools "not like that"? Where are you from?
The only difference you may be lucky enough to have is that maybe you don't have split grades in your board.

You still get 30 kids. You still need to differentiate for everyone and meet their learning style. You still can't go to the bathroom. There are still legalities wherever you teach. You still have to mark everything and plan lessons at night for free.

Have fun.

Thanks for agreeing Ariadne!
My mom has been sharing these horror stories with me my whole life. She teaches middle school for TDSB. She was lucky to get a job 20 years ago (even then it was nearly impossible). She has been at the same school 19 years because it's impossible to even move schools within the board. Forget switching boards; it's unheard of. Since she started at her school 19 years ago they have hired approximately 4 teachers. Most years they lay off or surplus 2 - 3 of them, even if they have up to 8 years of full time experience. Three of the 4 teachers who got hired aren't there any more because they got surplussed. They had to move to other schools like 40 miles from their homes to teach things they hated.

My mom's principal said that a study proved EVERY teachers college in Ontario could shut its doors for a decade, and we would still have enough teachers.

Now that the teachers will have their sick days cut, finding supply work will be virtually impossible too.

It is the most thankless job I can imagine. Everyone consistently bashes teachers: Media, Parents, Kids.

The biggest joke to me is EQAO. Apparently every single kid in that Grade (example Grade 6) has to write the test. To most people that sounds like a no- brainer. What they don't realize is that 40% of kids in Grade 6 are not legally allowed to be taught a Grade 6 curriculum because they have lower (or higher) grade IEPs. Meaning 40% of Grade 6 kids across TDSB legally have to be taught Grade 2, 3, 4 or 5 material all year. You can be fired if you teach them Grade 6 material. You also have to accommodate all their learning disabilities by writing the Grade 2, 3, 4, or 5 answers for them, reading the questions out loud, etc.,

Then when it's time for EQAO those kids have to do a Grade 6 test on material that you were not allowed to teach them. You can not accommodate them on the test.

Then if they bomb it, it is reported in the media that the teacher sucks.

The other big joke is that even if kids are absent or exempted from the test, they get marked as a ZERO (not as "absent"). This means it will pull down the class average and also reflect on the teacher. That will, in turn, pull down the school's averages. Nowhere in the data will it say the kid was absent.

This is all too much BS for me to believe.

Work with kids one on one. If you love "teaching", go work at Kumon.

I can't believe the teachers' colleges are taking kids' money knowing very well they will not get a job. What a scam.

Are you in Alberta? I've heard that their system is actually awesome. If so, you are really lucky!

Most of your comments seem based on High School rather than middle school / elementary, but if so good for you. In Ontario it is just ridiculous to get a job, and sadly even very good teachers are bullied all the time -- the system does nothing about it.

In my opinion teaching is best profession among all as we educate people and it also give good hype in society as well as in personality, I personally want to be teacher of mathematics.

Good luck to all of you. I like your enthusiasm for the job!

I'm sure that I would really enjoy it too (in a practical sense) but I just think that the ministry drains all the life out of it with legalities, etc. I think they really need to revamp because there is just toooo much for one person to conquer.

If you don't mind being a supply teacher for many years, go for it!!

At my mom's school there is a teacher going on Maternity Leave. They had 440 applications for the long term supply job. Most of the applicants had been doing supply for more than 10 years and had Masters of Ed degrees, with many qualifications like Spec Ed. They didn't even look at the fresh grads because there were so many experienced applicants.

But, honestly, follow your dreams.

That's why I'm going to McGill and no one could dissuade me from that!