If I had to put numbers on it, I’d say teaching is about 70% classroom management. That’s creating a culture where students are motivated to learn, sometimes against their will, instead of everything else competing for their attention. Maybe 10% is actually teaching and the other 20% is managing things you can’t even imagine should matter.
If you realized that teaching is only a small fraction of actually teaching, would you still want to teach?
What if you realized you might not have the resources you need, and you have to be resourceful? Sometimes you won’t even have enough desks in your room for the number of students you have.
Would you still want to teach?
What if you realized you don’t just have to teach the subject, you have to be the counselor, the security guard, the parent, the good cop, the bad cop? Sometimes you give up your lunch to manage the hallway and corral kids who aren’t even in your class, kids you never trained in how to treat you.
Would you still want to teach?
What if your joy on a given day comes down to just finishing the lesson you planned, or getting through one example without first having to convince a student that they can actually do it?
Would you still want to teach?
What if you found out you helped potty train a first grader? Or helped a seventh grader finally learn to read, something they were supposed to learn in second grade, and now need in order to understand what you’re trying to teach them?
Would you still want to teach?
What if you learned that students come back years later, just to say hi, because they thought of you?
Would you still want to teach?
Teaching can be rewarding. It can be meaningful. And yes, summers off sound nice, until you remember you’re putting in long hours during those ten months you are working.
I get it. Corporate can wear you down. Meetings that could’ve been an email. Expectations that keep moving. Politics you didn’t sign up for. Maybe AI is sucking the joy out of the job you used to love.
But teaching isn’t an escape from any of that. It’s a different job, with a different kind of hard.
So before you ask, “How do I become a teacher?” ask yourself something else first:
If you really understood what the job is, would you still want it?