So is the teacher subreddit (r/Teachers) just overblown and only attracting a small subset of angry, disgruntled and/or very tired teachers, or is it, in any way, representing how teachers in the US feel? Man, it is just horror story after horror story over there.
I only use Reddit to find streams of games, but I would assume that thread would feature a solid proportion of teachers that would complain regardless of the situation.
FWIW, my older sister who teaches in a large, well-funded Fairfield County public high school has had a pretty normal year. No complaints/stresses that are worse than normal.
I teach in a private school in the same area and there's a lot of catch up.
What can we do to make this year the best? That type of mentality. Unfortunately, not everyone is a capable and independent doer, so my wife and I are succumbing to the Competency Curse.
Lots of talk of retention and more time of my day spent on stuff that isn't teaching. We have a new head of middle school, who I really like, but we have a soft head of school who caters to the board's wants. He's well into retirement age, so I'm rooting for him to step down at the end of the year so we can get some real leadership.
Most of the what I do more this year is all good stuff: still coaching and now took on the lead for our competition math team, so that gives me a solid stipend. However, adding it all up (my department head stipend is pathetic), my best guess is that I'd get paid still less than 10k (up to 30k for some of the high paying districts) of the the median salary of systems in my area, so I'll go through the process again this year of selectively looking for public middle school math jobs. Being at my school for 13 years (and the only school I've worked for post student teaching) there's definitely a hard precipice feeling of avoiding change.
Better pay in the short-term, better financially stability long-term and the idea of
just teaching sounds lovely. Working at a school that fights to thrive financially amongst a competitive private school market is draining and while I am currently the department head at my school, I kinda got that role by default (other people left) and would have no problem no longer having a leadership role in a department.