Why Teaching is Hard

You know, on the face of it teaching is not a bad job. It pays a fair middle-class wage for decent hours and a lot of vacation time, comes with great job security (at least in the unionized public schools), and is only high pressure if you actually care, which is not exactly a requirement. Plus, plenty of time after school and on weekends to make extra cash tutoring.

In fact, counter-intuitively, the teachers that have it the worst are the good teachers. The passionate, hard-working, caring teachers who come in every day with the goal of doing the best they can for their school, their students, and themselves.

Good teachers (and I'm including myself in this category for the moment) don't have short work days. I'm at school from 8:00-5:00 almost every day, and do grading and planning at night. We don't always have weekends, even - I plan for about 10 hours a day most Saturdays. Each work day is exhausting because we have to project energy, happiness, devotion, and strength to our students, even when we're not feeling any of it. And even after all our hard work and dedication, we can, and often do, still give a test that more than half of our students fail. And no matter how many times we tell ourselves it's not our fault, we did our best, we did good, there is always the idea hovering over our heads that we're not good enough, and, because we're not good enough, our students are suffering.

And that's the hardest part of teaching. Our mistakes barely impact us at all - our salary and lifestyles remain unchanged - but can affect our students for life. I think that's why most good teachers burn out. The responsibility is too great to handle.