Teaching and why I hate it!

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*WARNING RANT AHEAD*

Hello everyone, I've recently finished university and received a first class honours degree in education. Despite this however I am staying well away from the teaching world! Here's why:

For the past three years I was laughed at, considered stupid and looked down on purely because of Aspergers.

My course mates, for the most part, seemed to be obsessed with being the same as each other, having sex, and doing as little work as possible. These traits, that one might assign with adolescents, seemed to be very much alive in the future generation of teachers who I studied with.

After leaving university it has dawned on me that these individuals who laughed at me and didn't try to understand me will now be influencing the lives of children. As teachers they will have to prevent bullying behaviour, promote differences and encourage companionship between children. These same individuals who laughed through the seminars on autism I gave, made fun of the "weird people" and found learning about inclusion "pointless" will now be putting their knowledge into practice and shaping the next generation of children.

I am glad I'm staying out of the classroom as, from my experience, the teaching profession can be a horrible place!

Sorry for ranting and feel free to comment or reply. Just wanted to get that off my chest!

I have a degree in teaching and I taught for five years. I was very dis-illusioned by the profession; I naively assumed that the majority of my time would be teaching but instead about half the time was devoted to discipline (I taught HS) If I were to do it over again, I would not stop my education with only a 4-year degree as that degree limits you to teaching public school. I would get a masters or a Phd. That way I would be paid more and the students I would have would be paying to be in my class.

I thought precisely the same thing, I'm doing a combined masters/PhD course. Teaching really isn't what I hoped it would be!

I have a mixed response to teaching.

While I wasn't able to pursue teaching full-time due to my social awkwardness, inability to read a lot of social skills, poor executive functioning, and occasional meltdowns due to all of those things I just mentioned...

I nonetheless LOVE substituting as a teacher aide.

As a teacher aide, you can rely on a primary teacher, or other aides, to tell you what you need to do. You spend more one-on-one time with your students as opposed to juggling, multi-tasking, and commanding a room of dozens of them. And as a sub, you can come and go to many different schools without having to take on all the load of a regular aide.

So my favorite job is substitute teacher aide, even though I couldn't hack it as a full-time teacher.

Idk. I think you might be selling yourself short.

Maybe the other teachers are catty and mean. But will every teacher be that way?

Perhaps if you were a teacher, youd be able to positivly influence the kids you teach? Perhaps because you yourself have a disability, you can better understand others who have it?

I had a similar experience while training to teach in the UK and nothing much changed throughout an eleven year teaching 'career'. I've worked in many different schools, often respected at first then bullied out by the end. In my last school i appeared to have a very supportive headteacher much to the consternation of other staff who took every opportunity to rubbish me as much as possible. Unfortunately after a period of stress related illness-brought on by all the rubbishing- and after I made a complaint about bullying in the school my supportive headteacher turned extremely nasty and now I am looking for a new career.

It's a shame because there is a lot that's great about teaching as well.

I got a degree in teaching before I was diagnosed and before I knew that it was a job that primarily is about office politics, legal paperwork, and disciplining student rather than teaching them about the subject. If I had known, I never would have gone into the profession. As it is, I'm stuck with it, so here I am, making the best of the situation. If you are on the spectrum, stay far away from education.

Even getting your PhD to teach college is a terrible idea, because almost all college courses are now taught by adjunct who are paid $1500/course. Yes, that is per COURSE for the entire semester. You'd make better money working at McDonald's than being a college professor.

Thank you for all your experiences. It is most interesting to hear them. I feel as though teaching, for some, is seen as an easy option. Resulting in an attraction to the profession by the wrong sort of people. I don't mean any of you but I have noticed the behaviour of teachers who I have worked with being contradictory to the behaviour they hope to promote! I've been mocked for having the social difficulties present in ourselves with autism and I just feel as though teaching is not as tolerant as it should be!

I've worked as a teacher in the UK for the last 13 years and I understand exactly what you mean.

I find that the teachers can be just as immature as the pupils sometimes. I don't know if it's a result of being around teenagers and childish behaviour all day, or if there's just a particular immature mindset that is attracted back to school as an adult. The majority of upset/hassle/poor treatment I've experienced has been from colleagues rather than pupils. There can be a lot of talking behind you back, making faces when you are speaking, chat suddenly stopping when you walk into a room.

I really struggled for the first few years, mainly with stress and anxiety caused by the workload and my classroom behaviour management. But, trust me, it does get easier with time. Many aspects of the job can't be learned and just come with time.

An air of authority in class and respect from the pupils just comes eventually. Once you are established and the kids know you it is so much easier.

The lesson planning side of things gets easier as you internalise the process and start doing it automatically - you don't need to write lesson plans (except when you have a crit or are being observed).

The same goes for materials - over time you build up a bank of resources and lessons that you can reuse.

It's taken a while but I now love my job - I love my subject and I love working with kids. I just thoroughly dislike the person I work closely with, but hey ho.

Once that enjoyment comes you can start to focus on the elements of the job you like. For me, I've become known as being good with ASD kids. I teach Computing and many of them choose my subject now and we can geek out in class! I also run a Computing club at lunch, which gives them somewhere to go and people to talk to (if they wish!)