Sure, they can't be completely uninterested in teaching, since they're high school teachers - they're not being hired primarily for their research ability. Part of offering better salaries is also being able to be more selective with who you keep.
I made the transition from a career in industry to education in the past couple of years. It's been an interesting path.
I'm definitely a subject matter expert. And I'm able to get pretty deep content into middle school and high school classrooms. And working with smaller subgroups of students is a lot like mentoring junior engineers.
But man, dealing with a lot of kids in the room is a challenge-- keeping the lower third of students motivated; modulating strictness up and down so that you can have exuberance but not disruption; picking up on the subtle signs that there is a problem from outside spilling over into the classroom while multitasking and doing 3 other things. And... just coping when there's an entire class period that felt like a waste and you don't know why.
It is -hard-, and I'm dealing with an unusually easy teaching environment (classes of ~18-20 of well-behaved and academically advanced private school kids). I'm also not a core teacher and so I have the benefit of leaning on other professionals to do the heavy lifting in these areas. I still have hope I'll get good at it (this past year was a difficult one for me to self-assess my performance).
I do think that being an expert/having passion for what you teach is a bonus: if you have students that are already inclined to be engaged, that spark will help a little in getting and keeping their attention. But it is not the most important thing day to day.
Actually, my best performance lately was when I was a long-term sub in science classes teaching subject matter that is not my core competence. I could geek out and learn deeper stuff than I knew about volcanoes and share my surprise with the students, and that felt really good for engagement.
Awesome, good on you for getting into teaching! And thanks for weighing in. I’m surprised that the expertise and passion was only slightly helpful for getting engagement, we found it very contagious in our classes with the teacher I described, especially in the more advanced classes.
"Part of offering better salaries is also being able to be more selective with who you keep."
If you are a private school, sure. This is not the case for unionized public schools. Did you hear of that famous case where a superintendent fired multiple teachers for abysmal performance and even abusive behavior and was forced by the courts/union to reinstate them with back pay? It's very eye opening.
Oddly enough, private schools can pay a fair bit less. At a private school, you get to avoid most of the disruption, have smaller class sizes, and teach brighter students on average. If you're passionate about what you're teaching, these are things you may value more than salary, so...
Private schools also have fewer hiring restrictions, which lets them lower salaries. I know a couple people who did not get the qualifications to work at a public school, and now teach at private schools. (Not for lack of ability, by the way).
Really? Our state generally just requires a state teaching certification and FBI background check. I thought that was also a requirement for K-12 private schools.
Yeah, salaries competitive enough to draw talent away from other high paying opportunities is just one of many things that need to be fixed to get the public education system doing what it should.
Where's the line of what is high paying? Median salary in the US is about $50k. Many teachers in the US make more than that. Some make less. A lot depends on local cost of living. We would also have to factor in other benefits not typically seen in industry, like pensions, tenure (this is really one of the main problems), and time off.
I'm sure there are states where teachers are underpaid. My state is in the top ten and that is not an issue here. I know a teacher making more than I do as a developer. The local district spends $14k per student per year (about average for the state). Money is not a problem here. There are still districts that have poor performance and test scores.
Instead if just trying to throw money at problems, we need to change the structure. Pay for performance would be a great way encourage good teachers and discourage people who perform poorly. It can be tricky to get the right metrics. The biggest issue is that the teachers unions oppose this.
Yes, trying to apply apply industrial engineering metrics to a squishy social problem has never caused problems before at all. After all, we wouldn't want Any Child to be Left Behind.
