14 Jun 8 Ex-Teachers Reveal the Real Reasons They Decided to Quit the Profession

Being a teacher is one of the hardest jobs ever, and it’s made even harder due to the fact that many people (mistakenly) believe that it’s an easy gig. After graduation, many people see the role of public educator as a convenient scam –  a way of picking up a decent salary and accruing a lot of vacation time, all for what amounts to nothing more than glorified babysitting. Those poor saps couldn’t be more wrong. I have many friends who’ve trained to be teachers, but know very few people who have actually managed it.

Yes, the layabouts who are looking for an easy ride will quickly discover that keeping 20 plus bored and rowdy kids under control is a lot harder than it sounds, particularly when those kids happen to have the same attention span as a hyperactive beagle puppy. This week an AskReddit thread queried a panel of teaching drop-outs, and questioned why they’d decided to pack it in. Needless to say, the answers were pretty interesting.

1. Kawkasp

“I had a 6-year old pull a knife on me while screaming “I will kill you”. This was the culmination of a lot of various incidents with the same kid. What was most infuriating was the parents claiming they had the sweetest little boy and that we (the school) must be liars for saying otherwise. Eventually he was transferred to a special school after we filed a report on the various incidents.”

2. Pluto_nash

“The school I was at had more than 20 bomb threats, each one requiring the school to be evacuated to the football stadium which is in a depression with a higher ring of trees around it (as many tress as you get in the middle of a big city) which seemed like a stupid place to put 4000 kids to get them out of harms way. Two of the bomb scares resulted in fights breaking out that required the 12 permanent on site police officers to deal with.”

3. Sirscratchewan

“I was in one of the worst schools in the nation. 48% graduation rate for the high school, although I taught at the elementary level. I could tell so, so many stories. A kindergartener coming across the desk to strangle a co-worker, kids screaming and throwing chairs, a student with hundreds of cigarette burns all over his body. The abuse cases were horrendous. A parent threatened to murder me after I gave her son a pair of socks. He had not taken off his current pair all year.”

4. Adalab

“I worked in a high needs behavior class. I got hit, punched, scratched and spat on daily, but every day I went back and did my best for those kids.  One day was called to the office to talk. It was Christmas time and things weren’t great at home, and as anyone with kids knows the holidays makes children especially high strung. My boss said ‘you seem awfully stressed’ and I thought how nice of her to notice so I agreed that yes I was struggling. She said ‘you have 6 weeks to sort it out or I’ll have to let you go.’ More and more I showed up to work just for the paycheque. One day I just decided screw it, I wasn’t a teacher anymore I was a robot fearful of showing any negativity. I quit that week. Never went back to teaching.”

The post 8 Ex-Teachers Reveal the Real Reasons They Decided to Quit the Profession appeared first on Viral Thread.