Is becoming a teacher now considered a less than noble profession; are kids in college shooting for other jobs, and they see teaching as a sign of failure if they choose that career? Not long ago, I was having just such a dialogue on this topic with someone, and he believed that a teaching careers was more or less a last resort choice, and I must tell you that; I don’t agree with that statement.

You see, I know many people who are going to school who want to be teachers because they find that to be a noble profession, and they care very much about their future career, and care very much about doing that kind of work. Further, if we get right down to it teachers generally make 52% more money if you include all their benefits, then they would in the private sector for doing that same kind of work.

So it is not as if the teaching profession doesn’t pay well, it very much does. Where I think teachers get upset is all the top heavy handedness pushed into the classroom dictating what they must teach, how they must teach it, and the exact results that are expected. Indeed, I think that the local school boards, school administration, and the government doesn’t back them up, and they have become disenfranchised, and disenchanted with the whole system, thus, they get burned out.

Likewise, the students sense this, and if they get a teacher of this type, they can feel that they don’t care, and therefore they are least likely to learn. Now then, I would say that we have a slight morale problem in our school system, but I don’t believe it starts with the teachers, I believe they are just as much a victim of a micromanaged system that prevents them from doing their job, the job that they love, and the one they’ve worked very hard to get.

If kids in college are avoiding becoming teachers, it’s probably more about the stories they’ve heard from other teachers and the way they’ve been treated in the classroom. Further, I am wondering if it makes sense to lump all teachers in with each other. Of course there are some teachers that are less than stellar at performance, but as a whole I would contend that most teachers that going into the profession care very much about their career and what they’re doing and they are doing it very well.