If you are intending to join or wanting to quit teaching, there follows some useful advice from a careers expert. Every month I get several enquiries from people whose working lives have been torn apart by management changes, mergers, restructures and dips in the marketplace. For those outside teaching, the simple truth is that the tendency for flashy ideas to dominate humane reality is not quite so marked in education but it is there and you will end up wrestling with both the politically correct view and the harsh response to that in terms of setting standards that take no account of the raw material you work with. Teachers are the only professional group who have to put up with the humiliation of being spied upon by an inspectorate whose activities have caused many retirements and breakdowns among good old fashioned classroom practitioners. The benefits of teaching are possibly more subtle than outsiders know.
Many teachers value the esprit de corps and the sense of making a contribution to society.
It is a pleasure to see young people learn and develop. There are many moments of personal satisfaction to be had. If you can cope with the challenging workstreams you do feel like a true professional, which you certainly are. For many teachers with children of their own the synchronisation of holidays and working hours is a big plus, though it should be pointed out clearly that lesson planning, marking books, writing reports and managing the department takes up a lot of evening, weekend and holiday time. When I was a teacher we had an invitation from the N.U.M. as was to visit a coal mine.