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Why does it have to be a competition? We signed up for a job knowing it would be incredibly stressful and we would be compensated well for it. Teachers did not sign up for any of what they’re going through right now. There are people teaching 5 year olds online... I can’t even imagine. Try to empathize with what your SO is going through.
My SO is a teacher, and I’ve watched his struggles over the past few weeks. It’s a lot more than “singing sounds and writing numbers on zoom”. I could never view his career with such disrespect.
Same reason people can’t understand how litigation work stresses me out to the point of feigning the severity of medical problems to get out of it while conversely I get an absolute thrill doing mundane shut-in-the-basement-for-6-months tier document review no problemo.
I absolutely hate children so if I had to work with them I don’t know what I’d do. I’d rather litigate cases in court than work with kids.
Pro
If you’ve worked a trial then you should have some experience teaching and can know how stressful it is. The two are actually similar because you have to capture everyone’s attention, teach the jurors the facts of the case, persuade the judge/jurors to your side of the argument, all while organizing and preparing for the trial. Similarly teachers have to capture their students attention, get them to learn, and organize and prepare for each day.
Saying it’s all singing and writing numbers is like saying being an attorney is reading and yelling.
My ex was a history major and once had the audacity to say that history is the hardest major and that people go into law school because they’re not good at anything else 😂 He can lean into that fantasy all he wants but that doesn’t change the fact that I made 3 times his salary a year after I left law school (and him) 💁🏽♀️
I’m sure the job is stressful just a different type of stressful. I have to say my sister in law who teaches elementary school did try to say she works as many hours as me...that I did not see eye to eye with. No one truly understands unless they’ve been in both positions and can compare!
Pro
I’ve been in both (was a middle school English teacher for a few years before law school). Have to say, teaching wasn’t harder than biglaw, but my hours were actually very similar. The school did 4 10-hour days instead of 5 8-hours. Generally, I was at 4:45am to get ready for my hour+ commute so that I could be there in time to prep for the day’s lesson before I had to take charge of kids at 7:00 am. Was in charge of children in some way until 4:30pm. Often had meetings after school or other things to handle, so I rarely left before 6:30. Would then usually do an hour or two of grading or prep when I got home in the evening. I had three day weekends, but at least another full day’s work happened over the weekend, with prepping lesson plans, materials, catching up on grading, doing the teacher equivalent of CLE or something the school admin required...
As much as I hate big law, I like it more than that. (For other reasons, not to do with the kids, but largely to do with how schools in the US function and also the hours-to-pay ratio.)
Why compare anyway?
Even if your SO was a lawyer, you would probably compare litigation v transactional or biglaw v medium size at this rate.
Personally, definitely would not want to be a teacher and be responsible for young impressionable minds.
I don’t know why this is a competition, but having been a sixth grade math teacher before going to law school and becoming a litigator, I can absolutely say it can be equally, if not more, stressful to be a teacher.
As a teacher, you’re responsible for all of the students in your care. It’s not just singing sounds and writing numbers on a zoom. Your responsible for understand what a student knows, how a student learns, what a students emotional range is, what their personality is, what motivates them, and how to best communicate to the student. All of that is needed to understand how best to teach your student what they need to learn. Then multiply that by 20-30 kids per class. You also have to understand how all their personalities interact
And if they aren’t understanding it with your method, that’s on you, not them. Doing it over zoom is significantly more difficult because you’re missing the in person interaction that is needed to understand how a student is doing, what they’re understanding, and how to best help them.
So yes, both jobs are stressful and it’s different levels of stress. But teachers are responsible for raising and teaching the next generation (and the next generation of lawyers). They should be given the respect and support they need to do so and not have their roles diminished because someone doesn’t understand the complexities and stress of teaching.
I love being a lawyer and, yes, it’s stressful. But I can say with 100% certainty that teaching was more stressful for me than being a lawyer. Without a doubt.
Pro
Seriously. As I mentioned in my other reply, I was a teacher before I became a lawyer, and even with all the stress of law, I would pick lawyering over teaching. So much work, so much responsibility, so many administrators up in your business, so many hours... so little pay.
That said, I think big law has given me skills that would make me a more effective teacher than I was then.
Idk, my SO is also a teacher. And while I definitely work longer and harder hours than he does (“harder” in the sense that I have to be actually productive for those hours to bill them; he has more leeway to hang out, chat, etc, especially when in prep or anything that’s not directly active class time, and since we’ve both been home this has been an obvious and sometimes problematic trend), I don’t know that it’s fair to say my job is more stressful. You have to have a LOT of patience to deal with kids and their refusal to pay attention and dumb questions. Likewise with obnoxious and entitled parents who think same kids’ 💩 don’t stink. And the transition to Zoom/remote and hybrid learning is a lot harder for them than for us. And all this with 1/3 the pay. I definitely couldn’t do his job, and he couldn’t do mine.
I think the transition to WFH/virtual is probably 100x more difficult for teachers than it is for attorneys. That being said, my best friend (and former roommate) is a second grade teacher and tells me all the time that she thinks her job is more stressful than mine. It’s not that I don’t think teachers have a difficult job—and I DO believe they are underpaid—but it’s annoying when she makes the comparison. First of all, it doesn’t have to be a competition. Second, she complains about having to work 7am-3pm and then grade papers later (which she doesn’t do every day, and does so in front of the tv). She never works weekends and doesn’t have a second job during the summer. If I got 3 months off every year, I would not complain about a 10 hour day M-F.
Word I was just thinking about becoming a pre-school teacher the other day...and for four years prior to that day, and today. And yesterday
As a family law attorney, I know 100% that my job contributes to the stress of teachers. Teachers aren't so far removed from laywers as you may believe. Sometimes I read the back and forth between the angry clients and the teacher and I'm thankful not to be the teacher. At least I am able to tell my client they are out of line.
Yup my SO is in special ed which bumps up against the law ALL THE TIME. And while I support disability civil rights law and reasonable accommodation as a practical matter, in reality, the way it seems to work out is that a small proportion of parents who are entitled/have the time and resources to insist on things for their child (keeping them on an IEP when they don’t need to be just so they can get special attention and extra resources, demanding accommodations that are not necessary or excessive) take up an inordinate amount of the school district’s time and resources and the truly disadvantaged kids often get overlooked or at least less attention as a result, so it just exacerbates existing differences.