Two Jobs and Retire Early?

70_hours_week wonders: "A Survey of teachers in a Nevada school district indicate that 40% have a second job. Do you have a second job? Assume you are 30 and since you like to save your money you could semi-retire by age 50. Now, what if you could nearly double your salary working a second job and that meant you could semi-retire at age 40. Would you do it?"

Re:Teachers get retirement in 20 years already.

[FSWKU]

Really, they do in most states. Also they get Summers OFF and every other holiday known to man. So while they're working less hours than us in their normal job (and getting more pay on top of that these days), a second job for them is no big deal. To be honest I'm thinking of going into teaching. It's easy work, and I like kids.

You poor, sad, horribly-mistaken individual. I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic. I know many, MANY teachers, and not a single one of them does it for the money or because it's an "easy" job. They do it because they love to teach, but they aren't getting rich doing it.

The teacher's day doesn't begin at 8:00am and end at 3:00pm. There are long hours every day of grading in-class assignments, checking homework, and preparing for the next day. Teachers also most certainly do NOT get the summer off. A lot of time is spent during the summer preparing new lesson plans for the comming school-year, and a lot of districts are adopting a "year-round" schedule, which means an even greater percentage of down-time is spent getting things together for the upcoming term. In addition to their own classroom tasks, there are also faculty meetings, PTA meetings, and various conferences with parents that come up.

On top of all of that, you have the students. No classroom anywhere is 100% full of well-behaved, polite children. In any group you work with, you will have the ones who cop an attitude, throw a tantrum, or just flat out refuse to do what they're told. Then you have the ones with actual behavioral or developmental problems that inevitably get put in the class because their parents refuse to send them to a school better suited to their needs. Oh yeah, that's another thing. You may be able to handle the kids, but the REAL headache comes from dealing with the PARENTS. These are the ones who cannot possibly conceive of little Johnny EVERY doing anything wrong, and it must be YOUR fault that he is acting that way. And it just gets worse because schools aren't allowed to use any sort of discipline other than some form of "time-out", be it detention, a trip to the office, or whatever.

It gets even worse at the high school level. I went to a small, private school and even there, we had students who simply refused to put any effort into a given class, and who seemed to have nothing better to do than make everyone else's life as difficult as possible. The problem students get worse as they get older, because they lose their fear of authority. A student who is physically bigger and/or stronger than the teacher has no incentive to follow instruction if they don't want to. Even if they aren't there is no way to FORCE a student to do their work without getting the afformentioned parents threatening to sue your underpaid ass. And chances are, if they don't want to work, the threat of failing will mean precisely nothing to them.

That's not to say that ALL students are bad. The majority are easy enough to handle, but it's always the problem ones that give you the most grief at any grade level. And then there are also students who try hard enough, but always need a little bit of extra assistance in order to keep them from falling behind. Dealing with students who fall outside of the "norm" is very taxing for a teacher. The bottom line is teaching is NOT an easy profession, and even the most well meaning class will eat you alive if you don't know how to handle them.

Re:Low Salary??

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't live in Nevada or know what you are talking about. Please take the comments you posted in your profile to heart and not talk about things you don't know about. Then maybe people won't constantly moderate you as being a Troll even though you are.

The housing costs in both Clark county and Washoe county are quite high compared to the median household and family incomes. Both of which are quite a bit higher than the $33k quoted in the article, washoe county teachers start out at just under $29k this year and will be recieving a raise to about $31k next year. Teachers typically have their pay spread out over 12 months as many teachers at traditional schools tend to continue thier education during summer months (if possible) or work retail or similar jobs. Teachers at year round schools have less options as they have breaks of roughly 3.5 weeks spread throughout the year. No one wants to hire you if you are only going to be working for a few weeks.

Now, let's also consider the fact they are required to continue thier education to get thier licenses renewed and to be classified as "Highly Qualified" to meet requirements of no child left behind and other legislation. This also comes out of their own pay as the state and federal government don't pay for it. A great many teachers work significantly more than 40 hours per week for their pay due to required after school programs, grading papers, creating lesson plans, attending school events (required or otherwise) etc. Then lets factor in the fact that no one wants to fund schools so many teachers also dip into their salaries to provide supplies for their classrooms they have even further reduced incomes.

Then you get the ignorant comments from people like you. It is no wonder that our education system stinks and is getting worse.