A few of my teachers were wealthy enough from past jobs not to need to work for the rest of their lives, but then switched to teaching as a second career becaus

A few of my teachers were wealthy enough from past jobs not to need to work for the rest of their lives, but then switched to teaching as a second career because they loved engaging with the next generation. Most others were career teachers who had known they wanted to teach since they themselves were young and took it up as a profession from the start despite having the talent and work ethic for some much higher paying alternative career. A few had the ambition of working as teachers for a decade and then moving up into school administration. A few of my teachers weren’t especially effective, but that’s true of workers in every other field and every other institution. I don’t think I had any teachers (in an above average public school system in a diverse, generally comfortable, but not outrageously wealthy suburb) who had washed out of other careers and turned to teaching as a fallback. Or if there were some like that, it wasn’t apparent to students. Maybe some of the high school sports coaches / PE teachers were like that.