I can't offer anything other than anecdotal evidence because I am lazy and don't want to do any digging. What I can tell you is most of my social circle is teachers, they're all in Alberta (which means they make good $), and off the top of my head they all hate it. And I don't mean sit-around-shoot-the-sh*t-man-getting-me-down dissatisfaction... I mean going-back-to-school-at-45 hate it. I can say there's maybe 1 who half-enjoys it, but she's fierce with her free time, has no kids, and maintains a work-life balance with military precision.
Now a few things could be going on here. Maybe I attract dissatisfied people? Maybe there's a mob mentality and what they say to me isn't full truth and they play things up for sympathy? I'm wrong about enough stuff to know nothing is black and white.
And Sliver isn't wrong. Tons of vacation. The union keeps you very secure. Raises happen with time. The pension is great (although my wife's maximizes at 63, so it's not necessarily an early one).
The thing is, there's something about the job. Life satisfaction cannot be boiled down to a formula of good money + chunks of vacation + security = happiness.
I used to think it was the workload, as the workload is deceptively high. But wanna know who's just as miserable as everyone else? Gym teachers. They don't lesson plan or mark, which seems to be 40% of the job right there. Miserable. All of them.
Again, there's something else. Maybe it's feeling like you have no control? Or being outnumbered 30-1 by people with half a frontal lobe?
I'm not sure just looking at people who leave the profession is going to give you the whole picture, as many just suffer through it. The pay is reasonable (used to be amazing, I'd argue it's now reasonable), the pension is tight, and the security is high. That's enough to keep most people angrily showing up every day. You can't move to another province or you drop $40,000/year and start back at the bottom. It's an interesting conundrum in that the benefits are juuuust enough to keep you on the teet.
|