I spent 30 years in Corporate America. I owned my own
business for a few years after that. At the age of 50, I went back to
school and completed the last thing on my “Do Before I Die” list. I
became a high school teacher.
Going in, I knew I brought some life experiences that most
other first-year teachers didn’t have. I had experience in dealing with
bureaucracies, budgets, bosses, deadlines, and organization. I had hired,
fired, managed, trained, written procedures and much more that I saw as being
transferrable to the teaching world. Mostly, I had raised my children, so
I definitely had more experience with teenagers than the average
twenty-something new teacher!
But there are some things they just don’t tell you in
college as they prepare you for your new teaching career. Here are some
things that I had to adjust to:
1.
You don’t get to go to the
bathroom anytime you want.
In my corporate life, as I did my work at my desk, hidden in
my little cubicle or behind a closed office door, I could get up and go to the
restroom anytime the urge hit me. I had to adjust that habit as a teacher
because I can’t just leave a room of 30 teenagers and go down the hall to the
ladies’ room, especially when I won’t give them restroom passes.
2.
You can’t get a soda or a snack
anytime you want.
If you are a snack person who goes to the vending machine
around 10 o’clock for that bag of chips and a soda, then hits it again in the
afternoon, you need to adjust that habit. When you spend all day in front of
the room talking, you just don’t have time for snacking (not to mention it
looks a little tacky to try to talk with a mouthful of chips). Drinking two or
three sodas or bottles of water at your desk can be a problem in a classroom
….. see item #1.
3.
You don’t get to take a
recharge break anytime you want.
In my corporate job, if I had a rough phone call with a
client, I could hang up, sit back, heave a big sigh, and just crash for a few
minutes. I could go out back for a smoke break (if you’re a smoker), hit
the vending machine, walk over to a co-worker and interrupt them for a short
chit-chat, take a walk, even if it’s just to the restroom and back. I can
take my time to gather myself before I make the next phone call. As a
teacher, if I have a bad class period, I have seven minutes between classes to
get it together before I have to do it all over again. And be cheerful
doing it.
4.
Doctor appointments are now on
Saturday.
Boy, this one was tough the first time it happened. In
my corporate jobs, if I needed to visit the doctor, I called him from my desk
made the appointment and told my supervisor I would be gone the next afternoon
at one for an appointment. Same with cable repairmen, events with my
child, or other things I just needed to get done. As a teacher, I can’t
just leave at one in the afternoon for an hour or so. I have a room full
of students who expect a teacher to teach them. I now became one of those
people who needed the last appointment of the day with the doctor, told cable
they had to come on Saturday morning, because Saturday afternoon I had to take
my child somewhere. Whew! Scheduling just became a little more tight
than it used to be!
5.
My lunch hour isn’t an hour.
This may not be a big deal to some, but after 30 years of
having a full hour for a lunch hour, getting cut down to 30 minutes is
something to get used to! No more cruising through the local drive-thru, and
forget having a nice leisurely lunch with a girlfriend in a sit-down
restaurant. No more running errands at lunch which means I now had to be part
of the busy after-work crowd at the grocery or drugstore.
As a teacher, I began brown-bagging again and it had to be
something quick because I found my lunch “hour” was also the best time to
prepare for the afternoon classes. In my first year of teaching, I think I
spent less than ten days doing nothing but “lunch” on my lunch time.
6.
Company expenses aren’t covered
by the company.
Anytime I did company business for my corporate employer, I
was reimbursed for my mileage and any purchases or expenses incurred. As
the cooking teacher, I shop for the supplies for my classes on cooking days,
using my car, my gas and my time. The food purchases are directly billed
to my school but the wear on my car, my gas and my time is not reimbursable.
My department head can get me general supplies that I need,
but if I need something special for a class the next day or week, I buy it
myself. No, I don’t get to issue an expense report for
reimbursement. I saw a poster once that said “Teaching: The only
profession where you steal things from home to take to work.” That pretty
much says it all!
7.
Being sick is more work than
just going ahead and working.
In my corporate jobs, if I was sick that day, I picked up
the phone, called my boss, explained everything on my desk that could wait
until I got back and went back to bed. As a teacher, there is no way that
is happening! A teacher can’t just “not show up”. A teacher has a class that
happens every single day and that class can’t just sit in an in-box until the
teacher decides to come back to work.
I quickly learned to make sure everything is prepared and
laid out on my desk for the next day, just in case I got hit by a bus and had
to call for a substitute teacher at the last minute. If I didn’t do that,
it is not improbable that I’d have to get up out of my sick bed, come in to
work, get stuff ready for a sub, then go home and be sick. Teachers really do
have to plan ahead if they want to be sick. (Putting “The Ritual” into
practice really helps avoid this kind of stress!)
8.
Keep your desk secure and
clean.
This was not a big transition as I consider myself a pretty
organized person, but I quickly learned as a teacher that I couldn’t just leave
things on my desk. Adults in a corporate job tend to respect what is on a person’s desk (most
of them, anyway!). But teenagers are a different story, especially if
they think they can get a quick look at the next quiz or at their friend’s
grade. Confidentiality, if it wasn’t Job One before, certainly is now.
The rewards
Before I make is sound like the entire adjustment is
negative, let me close with the best difference of all. My corporate job
co-workers never gave me thank you notes and hugs for helping them with the
simplest things. They never fought over who got to sit next to my desk so
they could just talk with me. They rarely told me I was the nicest person
(teacher) they had. On the rare occasions I met a co-worker’s mom, the mom
never said to me, “I hear a lot about you!” (and she means it in a good way!).
I just can’t put a value on these types of rewards.
Some of the other rewards of being a teacher include the
many days off we get. I get to spend the entire summer at the pool with
my grandchildren. I get five weeks paid vacation from Day One ….. spring
break, fall break, Christmas break, Thanksgiving break, plus all of the little
one-day holidays. No Corporate America job that I know of gives you five
paid vacation weeks from your day of hire!
And let’s not forget that on really cold, snowy and
blizzardy days, we get to sleep in and not have to battle the weather or the
traffic like those who work in offices, warehouses, and factories! (I
think this is one of my favorite rewards.)
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