By day, Scott Wild is a high school English teacher. After school, though, he rushes back to his Bethesda home, changes into a uniform, and hops on the Metro to get to a D.C. hotel to his job as a waiter and bartender. Other nights, he tutors students for a local private tutoring company, and at times during the school year, he coaches soccer. It was a shock.
Teachers wait tables, work at department stores, tutor scores of students.
Others even run their own businesses on the side. Many teachers say the extra work is taking a toll on their classroom performance, cutting into their time with students and distracting them when they need to pay the most attention to learning their job. And it's prompting some to consider a career change. Unfortunately, those feel-good moments and watching the kids grow don't pay the electric bill. Lisa Shafto acknowledges that working extra jobs has affected her classroom management, if only in small ways.