My perspective as an American with school teachers in my family: Being a teacher is a coveted job in America, it offers a lot of flexibility and fulfillment.

My perspective as an American with school teachers in my family: Being a teacher is a coveted job in America, it offers a lot of flexibility and fulfillment. Salaries are low because there's a surplus of young people who want to teach. Getting a teaching position at a nice school is very competitive, but bad schools always need new teachers because the unruly kids chase new teachers away (the root cause of schools being bad is usually bad parenting.) It is common for newly minted teachers to take jobs at bad schools in the hopes of getting enough experience to later get a job at a good school, but most wash out before they get that far. Others try to get in "the back way" by working as substitute teachers for many years to accumulate experience and get a good teaching job; the poor and irregular pay for substitute teachers makes this possibly an even worse strategy, but a lot of people still try it because these jobs are desired.