Recently I qualified as a history teacher and have been offered a job at a local school. Pays reasonable, staff and students seem okay but I’m still scared sh!tle$$ of having responsibility for the education of several groups of 25-30 teenagers. Upshot, I’m starting to get a little stressed.
Trouble is, in the course of my teacher-training year I’ve also had to shelve my commitment to my triathlon training. And now I’m having real problems getting back into a routine. Upshot, I’m starting to get a little more stressed.
I really want to do Ironman again, but I’m worried that the reality of teaching is going to continue to disrupt my training in a way that journalism did not.
I love to teach, but it stresses me out and I really want to continue with tri.
Are there any teachers out there who can offer wisdom and advice?
Teaching has high and low points. I’ve been teaching college freshmen and sophomores for the last 5 years, everything from introductory and second year calculus, to business math, to finite math (that’s math for people trying to fufill a math requirement).
When you have a class of motivated students, who care about what they are learning, teaching can be unimaginably fun. When you have a room full of people who don’t care, don’t understand, and don’t want to be there, it can be a drag.
So I think a lot of it depends on the students. What are they like at your school. I’m really looking forward to the time (not too long from now!), when people call me professor (I’m a grad student now), and I hopoefully teach at a liberal arts college with great students.
That said, what the hell are you talking about with the training! Teaching is the perfect job for a triathlete!! You can do things such as grade papers and write leson plans at night, after sunset, and after your 60 mile ride. And you get summers off to race! It’s perfect!!
Dude, you’re going to be a teacher…work 6 hours a day, every other Monday is a day off because of groundhog day or some other silly holiday, 1 week for Thanksgiving, 2 weeks for Christmas (oops, I mean winter break), 1 week for Easter (oops, there I go again, I mean spring break), Presidents day, Martin Luther King Day, Columbus Day…and about 10 other days I can’t seem to remember. Oh yea…JUNE, JULY and AUGUST!!!
What do you mean you’re not going to have time to train???
Seriously, it’s the greatest job in the world if you take it seriously, you will truly feel like you’re doing something important. Just ignore certain people like some on this board who seem to think that every lazy American who isn’t making $400,000 a year as a money manager or is simply a loser is because of public education.
You’ll never get rich teaching but you’re doing something very worthwhile and you will have more time to train than you can imagine. You can e-mail me also if you want any advice or just wan to vent, I’ve been teaching high school for 5 years and love it.
All of the above responses are excellent, and I have little to add that hasn’t been said. Yes, at the beginning it will be intense as you learn the ropes on what might seem like a minute-to-minute basis. But after a couple of years, as long as you keep teaching roughly the same stuff, the work will appear much easier - you will have learned various shortcuts, and preparation time will be cut dramatically. Until that point, your training does not really need to suffer, and you can even fit it in by viewing it as stress-relief and therapy!
Nothing can replace the benefits of having July and August free for training; depending on your school, a good chunk of June might also be available. Keep your base as solid as you can, use the long Christmas and March breaks to work in some intensity, and then juggle end-of-the-year-is-approaching school stuff with builds in May and June. Each year I try to do Columbia as an early season test of fitness, and then follow that a few weeks later with Eagleman or (this year) Mooseman to see where my endurance is at. At that point, it’s just 2 or 3 weeks until school is out. Nothing to it!!
Best of luck with all of this. I’m 56 now and have been doing this for a long time, and nothing was better than those first few years. I was teaching biology at a small private day school in New Hampshire, and in my early 30s at the time I revelled in working with teenagers. I’ve been with 5th graders for the last decade-plus, but high school is where my heart remains. I’m envious of you for your position! Draw on the strengths of your staff, and also on the energy of the kids - you’ll be surprised by this wellspring.
I’ve been a high school mathematics teacher for the past 12 years. Prior to that I worked as a computer programmer/analyst for a few years. I love teaching and the job can be very rewarding. Your time is flexible enough to get in lots of training but in spite of the great holidays, it can be tough to get time off if you want to do a race (or vacation when it is not the most expensive time:) ) during the school year (I did Kona last year and had to write a letter to the superintendent for a special leave of absence). Your first year is always the most difficult and in spite of what some people will write about 5 or 6 hours days, if you are doing the job well you will be marking and lesson planning enough to significantly add to this. What is great is the flexibility that lesson prep/marking time has. I can go out for a ride or run after school and wait until 8 or 9 at night when my kids are in bed to mark a set of tests. A lot of jobs require you to be there until 5, then you’ll end up training until 7 which hurts the family time a lot more than spending time after they are asleep Gook luck with your decision.
I have been teacing ten years in a high school- and work as a head of Dept for Phys Ed, so my experiences are a bit different. First off let me say that anyone who still has the antiquated view that teaching is a 5 or 6 hour a day job with lots of holidays is full of shit and should get their hed out of theuir ass and meet some real teachers. I start at 7:40 eac morning and rarely get home by 5pm, on top of which I have 4 examination classes to mark and prep for. Holidays are good but basically involve the admin you don’t get done during the day because you are hands-on teaching.
In terms of triathlon, points like the inability to race during term time are very true and can be a pain… but in terms of training it can be done, you can be more flexible with you time and chances are you will have a gym and showers for lunchtime workouts. I train at 5am and again after 7pm, kids bedtime. The holidays do give youeven more flexibility to ut in the longer sessions and you can do races like Vineman, IMLP, or a Euro IM after 5 or 6 weeks vacation and quality volume and taper- but it is swings and roundabouts.
It is a great career, canbe very stressfull- but the regular exercise and training are a briliant stress reliever.
Me:
6 years HS Teacher - Bronx, NY
4 years MS Teacher - Suburban NJ
3 years MS Vice Principal - Suburband NJ
Now - ES principal
As someone who has balanced the demands of teaching and training I think that you can do both. The key really boils down to time management and efficient use of your time. My suggestion is for you to take a look at ‘time wasters’ and how they bite into your training time.
For example, don’t give a huge test on a friday to all of your students, rather space out your assessments so that the grading is over time. Also, be sure to balance the needs of your personal life with the needs of your students. Unlike some of my colleagues I look at education as a a sacred profession (after all we are entrusted with the care of the young) and want to honor the children by giving them my best. People who have never taught a full teaching load have no idea how difficult the job is.
Bottom line: if you want it bad enough you’ll find the time, just manage it well.
I should probably have mentioned that I’m in the UK, so the timetable and calendar splits up a bit differently but I guess the broad situation is the same.
(For those interested the school year runs: 7 weeks, 1 week break, 7 weeks in school, 2 week Xmas break, 6 weeks in school, 1 week break, 6 weeks in school, 2 weeks Spring break, 6 weeks in school, 1 week break, 7 weeks 2 days in school), and the school day is 8.30 til 3.00 with 40 minutes for lunch, and a contract requirement of at least one extracurricular activity per week)
I guess I’ll just have to set up my boundaries and schedules and go from there. Interested to see that people think of marking/planning AFTER training in the evening (during my training that resulted in dreams of standing in front of the class).
Whereabouts and what school in England… I tought for a while there before coming overseas and escaping the political shit that kept us from doing any work.
First of all you’re ragging on me for making fun of the amount of time we have off and now you’re leaving the country??? You’re a gym teacher!!! How hard can that be?
Left 10 years ago, and ain’t ever heading back to teach there. Phys Ed was a laugh a few years ago, but now it is mainly Anat and Physiology, Psychology and Comparative studies for examination level… so more classroom work and marking to go on top of the sports and school sports teams’ work after hours.
Enjoy the new challenge of it though- wish it was shorter hours, like it used to be- but accountability is the new big word I guess. Beats a desk job any day though despite the salary. As for my spelling- you can never take the gym teacher outta the man, but you can take the man outta the gym
My first teaching job will be at Wallington County Grammar School, which is in Carshalton, Surrey (just south-west of London). It’s a small school (c700 all boys) and gets very good results. Plus I’m joining a really young department (newly promoted HoD and two new staff out of four for this September).
The politics has improved a bit in the last few years, but I still see myself eventually in a private school, where I can choose to ignore it altogether. IMO politicians should stay out of the details of education because they plainly have no idea how everything actually works (especially the case with history, which most of them seem to think is the same as 'the past').
Go private (Public school as we know it) it rocks and the opportunities, network and extras are great. Little harder work and more time consuming, but great fun-
I agree. I got slammed by most people on my training course when I said I wanted to go private eventually. But I spent the most enjoyable part of my training teaching in a very, very good private school called King’s College School. The students were incredibly motivated and talented, and endless fun to work with despite the huge amounts of work they produced for me to mark.
Plus that school had fields, a fitness centre, a 30m pool and was right next to Wimbledon Common, which was a great place to run during the 90-minute lunch break! Oh and lunches were excellent and free for staff. Unfortunately there were (surprise) no jobs going there this year!
Yes because we history teachers are generally so very vital and energetic! Honestly at my first placement the history staff’s idea of exercise was walking across the playground to the smokers staffroom!
Gook luck with your decision.