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Tangent: Why are there not more part time teachers? From personal experience most teachers simply ended up in the job as a fallback plan or a day job to get by

Tangent: Why are there not more part time teachers? From personal experience most teachers simply ended up in the job as a fallback plan or a day job to get by. There was the occasional passionate teacher that put in a lot of effort and I really appreciated that, but having talked to many other people about the matter it does seem that those are few and far between. I also got the impression that teachers tend to live in their own little world and tend to have very little experience outside of the educational system. Hence they often lack the need to explain to students why they are learning these things or how they may apply them in the "real world" (as we called it back then). On the other hand I have met quite some folk in the pre-retirement age ~50-65 that are in technical jobs and had 30 years of experience in explaining and understanding things and are passionate about teaching what they've learnt. Most of these folk are also privileged enough to be able to start lessening their workload. I always wonder why they do not take up to passing on their wisdom to the next generation, by maybe just teaching a single course at a school? Why is it not the norm to go into a job for, say 20 years, and after years of experience start teaching? Why would it be a good idea to have a teacher straight of college teaching kids just a couple of years younger? I know only of one person that taught at a small school in their pre-retirement years (mostly helping out with maths) and as far as I know all of his kids performed excellently.

BrianOnHN 6y ago
> ended up in the job as a fallback plan or a day job to get by. There was the occasional passionate teacher Maybe you only remember middle and high school. This is categorically untrue for early childhood education, which is by far the most critical. > Why is it not the norm to go into a job for, say 20 years, and after years of experience start teaching? Because the pay is dismal, which is the last thing you want right before retirement.
- musingsole 6y ago
  If you have a lifetime's savings, the pay isn't what keeps you from teaching at the end of your career. More likely its all the babysitting responsibilities that keep them away.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    > babysitting responsibilities So you want an industry expert to go teach second grade? I imagine that any successful person would want to be able to demonstrate there success, thus placing them in teaching positions well past "babysitting" age.
    - iguy 6y ago
      I presume GP meant that keeping an unruly high-school class on track is... a skill you won't develop in most workplaces. Not literal "babysitting", but a large part of what teachers do, orthogonal to actually conveying content.
      - BrianOnHN 6y ago
        Then why send these people to high-schools either? Bring them in at the college level, and get more people into college. If you had your shit together in highschool, then great, that's why you went to Harvard/stanford etc. But most people don't. So save the extra beneficial instruction for when they are mature enough to benefit from it. And if you want that extra help sooner, then you sound capable enough to find it on your own.
        iguy 6y ago
        Because it's a mixture. Some rowdy kids are just bored sick, and can't see any point in memorising crap for another stupid exam. These same people might really benefit (let's say, HN) finding out there is more to coding than their teacher knows about, and that you can get paid to do it. Finding out that school-teachers aren't the only adult role models. But the guy who might show them that might, this semi-retired engineer, may not have the skills or the desire to do crowd control, well enough and long enough to get through.
        BrianOnHN 6y ago
        > desire to do crowd control I wonder what % of people don't go back to teach because of that. I bet it's a small number. In reality, the reasons are probably even more selfish. If "crowd control" is such a problem, I'd like to know what the people that cite that reason are doing to produce video-courses that could provide much of the same value.
- JCharante 6y ago
  > Because the pay is dismal, which is the last thing you want right before retirement. Doesn't the money you invest right before retirement make the least amount of difference? You want to front load your high earning activities. The pay is dismal, but that's exactly why people who no longer need the money (retired from industry) can afford to try teaching for a few years before moving onto a startup or opening up a pub. That's what some of my high school teachers did and that's what I plan to do.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    > front load your high earning activities That's a nice thought, but I'm sure this idea would be lost on 90% of the US population. But if you think the remaining 10% "going back to be teachers" is going to save education, well, God help us.
    - iso1210 6y ago
      HN is full of people that graduated from college into jobs on $200k a year plus, putting at least $averagesalary into index linked 401ks, having benefited from the mass transfer of growth from workers to owners over the last decade or so, and are in a position to retire in their mid-to-late 30s. That's not normal.
- iguy 6y ago
  Presumably GP's plan would be most useful for high-school students. Exposure to teachers who'd had varied & interesting careers outside the school system could be great for those within sight of leaving it. Maybe part-time reduces the pay problem too. Think senior engineers with consulting gigs, who'd like to dial it down to 3 days a week, and do something productive with the rest.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    Teachers make <25/hour with poor benefits (Florida, USA). A part-time senior engineer could pay for two full-time teachers... Edit: and schools don't even have money for paper/supplies.
    - iguy 6y ago
      I don't think the claim is that this is an untapped source of cheap labor. More that it's a (potential) source of inspiration, direction, contacts, knowledge. High school students have spent their entire lives inside the education system, taught by people who have also spent their entire lives inside the education system. They might benefit from perspectives on what's possible outside the wall, besides those they get from their parents.
      - BrianOnHN 6y ago
        > besides those they get from their parents Most students don't have well-educated parents, so I agree the exposure is important. My point is that, if this is ever going to happen, there needs to be more money directed at education. On a related note, I went to high school in a town where there were essentially zero white-collar professional jobs. Parents were working either on the manufacturing line, in a call center, at the Walmart, steak-n-shake or gas station. The nearest cities, Jacksonville and Orlando were both at least 90 minutes away. Where do we find the retiring-professionals for these students?
        iguy 6y ago
        It's clearly no a silver bullet. There may be opportunities for more blue-collar variants. I'm trying to think where but there was some program to hire former soldiers as teachers, which is a bit like that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bennyp101 6y ago
> " also got the impression that teachers tend to live in their own little world and tend to have very little experience outside of the educational system" How on earth did you come to that conclusion?! Maybe your experiences have shifted it that way, but my teachers, my friends that are teachers, and my kids teachers certainly do not give that impression at all. > "Why is it not the norm to go into a job for, say 20 years, and after years of experience start teaching? Why would it be a good idea to have a teacher straight of college teaching kids just a couple of years younger?" Because they know the subject matter? I'm not really sure what you are getting at, so jobs should only be for those that know how to do something already - or only if you need to teach it? Not sure there are jobs that would help a primary school teacher - they cover all the subjects - so multiple jobs over 20 years to satisfy that? How about a history teacher - should they be an archaeologist first? Or a Biology teacher, probably get that stem cell research in before teaching about the plant reproductive lifecycle. It's seems to be hard enough to attract people that actually want to be paid peanuts to teach the next generation how to do things.
bnj 6y ago
I can think of a few explanations for this, but one of the big ones is that the licensing requirements for teachers are often designed (deliberately or not...) as a barrier to late entry to the profession as you describe. There’s been some movement here in the last few years in some places, for example up until very recently if you were a college professor interested in moving to the high school level somewhere like New York - sorry, no, you’re not qualified because you don’t have a degree in education. There are positive spins for the types of credentialling that have evolved around the professions but I’d argue none of them are in the interest of students. Source: teacher and administrator in various countries
bsder 6y ago
> On the other hand I have met quite some folk in the pre-retirement age ~50-65 that are in technical jobs and had 30 years of experience in explaining and understanding things and are passionate about teaching what they've learnt. Because teaching to everyone and not just the motivated is really freakin' hard. And it takes an amount of energy that most 55+ year olds do not possess. My father taught high school for 35+ years. The biggest problem was not knowing the material--it was motivating students to want to know the material. And that is a very rare skill. And he retired because eventually that skill took too much energy for him to muster up at his age.

BrianOnHN 6y ago

> ended up in the job as a fallback plan or a day job to get by. There was the occasional passionate teacher Maybe you only remember middle and high school. This is categorically untrue for early childhood education, which is by far the most critical. > Why is it not the norm to go into a job for, say 20 years, and after years of experience start teaching? Because the pay is dismal, which is the last thing you want right before retirement.

musingsole 6y ago
If you have a lifetime's savings, the pay isn't what keeps you from teaching at the end of your career. More likely its all the babysitting responsibilities that keep them away.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  > babysitting responsibilities So you want an industry expert to go teach second grade? I imagine that any successful person would want to be able to demonstrate there success, thus placing them in teaching positions well past "babysitting" age.
  - iguy 6y ago
    I presume GP meant that keeping an unruly high-school class on track is... a skill you won't develop in most workplaces. Not literal "babysitting", but a large part of what teachers do, orthogonal to actually conveying content.
    - BrianOnHN 6y ago
      Then why send these people to high-schools either? Bring them in at the college level, and get more people into college. If you had your shit together in highschool, then great, that's why you went to Harvard/stanford etc. But most people don't. So save the extra beneficial instruction for when they are mature enough to benefit from it. And if you want that extra help sooner, then you sound capable enough to find it on your own.
      - iguy 6y ago
        Because it's a mixture. Some rowdy kids are just bored sick, and can't see any point in memorising crap for another stupid exam. These same people might really benefit (let's say, HN) finding out there is more to coding than their teacher knows about, and that you can get paid to do it. Finding out that school-teachers aren't the only adult role models. But the guy who might show them that might, this semi-retired engineer, may not have the skills or the desire to do crowd control, well enough and long enough to get through.
        BrianOnHN 6y ago
        > desire to do crowd control I wonder what % of people don't go back to teach because of that. I bet it's a small number. In reality, the reasons are probably even more selfish. If "crowd control" is such a problem, I'd like to know what the people that cite that reason are doing to produce video-courses that could provide much of the same value.
JCharante 6y ago
> Because the pay is dismal, which is the last thing you want right before retirement. Doesn't the money you invest right before retirement make the least amount of difference? You want to front load your high earning activities. The pay is dismal, but that's exactly why people who no longer need the money (retired from industry) can afford to try teaching for a few years before moving onto a startup or opening up a pub. That's what some of my high school teachers did and that's what I plan to do.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  > front load your high earning activities That's a nice thought, but I'm sure this idea would be lost on 90% of the US population. But if you think the remaining 10% "going back to be teachers" is going to save education, well, God help us.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    HN is full of people that graduated from college into jobs on $200k a year plus, putting at least $averagesalary into index linked 401ks, having benefited from the mass transfer of growth from workers to owners over the last decade or so, and are in a position to retire in their mid-to-late 30s. That's not normal.
iguy 6y ago
Presumably GP's plan would be most useful for high-school students. Exposure to teachers who'd had varied & interesting careers outside the school system could be great for those within sight of leaving it. Maybe part-time reduces the pay problem too. Think senior engineers with consulting gigs, who'd like to dial it down to 3 days a week, and do something productive with the rest.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  Teachers make <25/hour with poor benefits (Florida, USA). A part-time senior engineer could pay for two full-time teachers... Edit: and schools don't even have money for paper/supplies.
  - iguy 6y ago
    I don't think the claim is that this is an untapped source of cheap labor. More that it's a (potential) source of inspiration, direction, contacts, knowledge. High school students have spent their entire lives inside the education system, taught by people who have also spent their entire lives inside the education system. They might benefit from perspectives on what's possible outside the wall, besides those they get from their parents.
    - BrianOnHN 6y ago
      > besides those they get from their parents Most students don't have well-educated parents, so I agree the exposure is important. My point is that, if this is ever going to happen, there needs to be more money directed at education. On a related note, I went to high school in a town where there were essentially zero white-collar professional jobs. Parents were working either on the manufacturing line, in a call center, at the Walmart, steak-n-shake or gas station. The nearest cities, Jacksonville and Orlando were both at least 90 minutes away. Where do we find the retiring-professionals for these students?
      - iguy 6y ago
        It's clearly no a silver bullet. There may be opportunities for more blue-collar variants. I'm trying to think where but there was some program to hire former soldiers as teachers, which is a bit like that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bennyp101 6y ago

> " also got the impression that teachers tend to live in their own little world and tend to have very little experience outside of the educational system" How on earth did you come to that conclusion?! Maybe your experiences have shifted it that way, but my teachers, my friends that are teachers, and my kids teachers certainly do not give that impression at all. > "Why is it not the norm to go into a job for, say 20 years, and after years of experience start teaching? Why would it be a good idea to have a teacher straight of college teaching kids just a couple of years younger?" Because they know the subject matter? I'm not really sure what you are getting at, so jobs should only be for those that know how to do something already - or only if you need to teach it? Not sure there are jobs that would help a primary school teacher - they cover all the subjects - so multiple jobs over 20 years to satisfy that? How about a history teacher - should they be an archaeologist first? Or a Biology teacher, probably get that stem cell research in before teaching about the plant reproductive lifecycle. It's seems to be hard enough to attract people that actually want to be paid peanuts to teach the next generation how to do things.

bnj 6y ago

I can think of a few explanations for this, but one of the big ones is that the licensing requirements for teachers are often designed (deliberately or not...) as a barrier to late entry to the profession as you describe. There’s been some movement here in the last few years in some places, for example up until very recently if you were a college professor interested in moving to the high school level somewhere like New York - sorry, no, you’re not qualified because you don’t have a degree in education. There are positive spins for the types of credentialling that have evolved around the professions but I’d argue none of them are in the interest of students. Source: teacher and administrator in various countries

bsder 6y ago

> On the other hand I have met quite some folk in the pre-retirement age ~50-65 that are in technical jobs and had 30 years of experience in explaining and understanding things and are passionate about teaching what they've learnt. Because teaching to everyone and not just the motivated is really freakin' hard. And it takes an amount of energy that most 55+ year olds do not possess. My father taught high school for 35+ years. The biggest problem was not knowing the material--it was motivating students to want to know the material. And that is a very rare skill. And he retired because eventually that skill took too much energy for him to muster up at his age.