Teacher in need of new career, help please.

mary1

Hi all,
I was a teacher and require some help finding a new career. I used to be a primary school teacher but I am so disillusioned with the amount of bureaucracy, paper work and lack of family time. Totally stressful. I am looking for a new career with my degree 2:1 and teaching qualification. If you can come up with anything useful I would be very grateful with a decent salary.

Hammyman

Unless you are going to become a freelance teacher or go to an agency, there is little use for your teaching degree outside the education system. Companies have trainers but as you don't need a degree to do that, the pay isn't that great and TBH if you're someone who gets stressed out teaching at primary school level with the little amount of paperwork there is and the 13 weeks holidays you get a year you are basically of sod all use in the private sector because when you're not worrying whether or not you lose your job you'll be doing the work of at least two people.

cardiffgrad1

Mary1: Don't worry, I understand what you're saying about the paperwork. My mum was a primary school teacher and I grew up with her doing paperwork almost every evening.

I'm just going to ignore Hammyman's comments as I'm not interested in getting into some stupid argument. Anyway, this is about you.

Unfortunately, if you want to leave teaching, being realistic you might well have to accept a drop in salary. It's something you have to weigh up: what means more to you, a stress-free life, or slightly more financial freedom?

As to what career you could go into...I suppose the question is: what career do you WANT to go into? What interests you?

ppolly

I don't think that there is a problem with wanting to change careers, lots of people do that. The question is what do you want to do instead - you know what you don't want - which is a good start (less stress, less paperwork) -but what else? would you be prepared to retrain? be freelance? do you want to work for someone else or for yourself or a mix?
What would your ideal working day look like?

bristol_pilot

People changing careers usually take an initial drop in salary but, if you can accept this, it is possible to find something else and then your salary may catch up later on. School teachers on the basic grades are not exactly paid a fortune, so this should be possible.

Have you thought of being a sales rep? Ex-teachers sometimes make good reps.

@Hammyman - you are clearly unaware that teachers are expected to work through many of those so-called holidays, as well as most evenings and weekends and for no extra pay. I'm not aware of many other jobs, except for senior positions, where this is the case - I certainly wouldn't do that myself!

CFC

bristol_pilot wrote: »

@Hammyman - you are clearly unaware that teachers are expected to work through many of those so-called holidays, as well as most evenings and weekends and for no extra pay. I'm not aware of many other jobs, except for senior positions, where this is the case - I certainly wouldn't do that myself!

Well they certainly don't work in the school in those times. It always used to be said that the first two years for a newly qualified teacher were tough, putting the lesson plans together - but after that it was easy because you just use the same ones.

I think you'll find the private sector a very different place, OP, and you need to give some thought as to what you'd like to do. What was your degree in, it sounds like you did a PGCE?

dandelionclock30

What about connexions? where advisers help young people with job options?.Also theres supported housing projects for young people etc.
Groupworker in structured day care. Clerical jobs etc.

ali-t

mary1 wrote: »

Hi all,
I was a teacher and require some help finding a new career. I used to be a primary school teacher but I am so disillusioned with the amount of bureaucracy, paper work and lack of family time. Totally stressful. I am looking for a new career with my degree 2:1 and teaching qualification. If you can come up with anything useful I would be very grateful with a decent salary.

I agree with the other poster who said your teaching qualification is useless outwith the classroom. I suppose you could go into lecturing at university but that would require as much if not more paperwork.

TBH, due to requirements for self evaluation and monitoring procedures most jobs now have more paperwork than they did 5 years ago. Unless you go down a totally different route (where your qualification will be totally useless) paperwork will be ever present.

Owain_Moneysaver

Have you considered teaching in the private sector (independent schools)?

If you wanted to start your own business you could look at something like Kumon (which is a franchise system)

bluecastle

Have you considered educational publishing or, as someone else suggested, being a youth worker or careers adviser?

I have friends who publish school textbooks who started out as teachers (and left for similar reasons to yours) and whose teaching experience and qualifications are much valued.

Another former teacher friend is now a youth worker for Connexions.

Have you also looked into working for a local authority's education department? Again, experience of teaching and how people learn could be valuable there.

Hammyman

bristol_pilot wrote: »

@Hammyman - you are clearly unaware that teachers are expected to work through many of those so-called holidays, as well as most evenings and weekends and for no extra pay. I'm not aware of many other jobs, except for senior positions, where this is the case - I certainly wouldn't do that myself!

You're trying to spin the yarn to the wrong person.

My brother is a secondary school teacher and due to one of the subjects he teaches, he has 500 students with 500 sets of coursework to mark, 500 reports to write etc. My sister in law is a primary school teacher. My aunt started teaching at infants school 30 years ago and retired as head of year at a secondary school this year. My uncle is a music teacher.

So don't string me the line that you lot trot out all the time because it isn't true apart from your first year or so as my brother found out but then he worked out how to play the game like every other teacher does and every weekend you'll find him at the footie or the pub or running half marathons and on a weeknight, training.