Teaching

I've just been drinking green tea with friends. We were talking about academia and school teaching again. Whenever I tell British friends that I'm thinking about school teaching they do everything they can to put me off. The reasons are usually:

1. Teenage behaviour.
2. They've heard there's a lot of paper work.
3. They've heard it's very stressful.
4. If you're a bad teacher it could be a disaster.
5. No guarantee that you can get a job in a reasonable school.

Only one of these people has actually taught in a secondary school. The rest of it comes from the same media coverage that I've been reading. One of the friends I drank tea with taught in her native country and she's well aware of all the stress factors. However she emphasises that there are ways round it and that it can be very rewarding.

The nice thing is that you can train to be a teacher at almost any age so I think I'm going to put the idea on the back burner for a couple of years. I need to recover from the PhD first. I do have a really good feeling about it. I'm going to have to spend more time with teenagers and perhaps observing schools to make sure I know what I'm getting into. When I look back at my own school days what I remember of the school makes me think that it's a very stimulating environment. All jobs have their bad points so I'm definitely not going to pay attention to people who complain about paperwork. Almost everyone has too much paperwork. It's not a reason not to do a job.

I'm still not against academia. I like research. As I'm thinking about teaching history at secondary school I obviously like teaching history. My only fear is the employment conditions. Can I get through the competition? Could I get a job where I want to live? Will my career path be steady enough to give me a reasonable level of financial security? I want to have children eventually but I keep hearing about women who can't get lectureships until they're 32 or 33.