why I am glad I quit teaching

There are more qualified teachers outside the classroom than in and I include myself in that sorry statistic. Throughout my PGCE I was looking out for other things to do. I knew that the chances of getting into a good school in the London area were slim, and the likelihood was that I would end up in a rough school with lousy kids - correction - kids with lousy parents. Even my PGCE tutor told me I should take something else if something else came up. There is a dearth of decent managers across all sectors, and teacher training is actually quite good preparation for a career in management in the service sector. Time and time again I run into teachers who are exhausted, undervalued, trapped into taking holidays at peak times, demoralised and underpaid considering how stressful the job really is. And so here I am working in London in transport management. Of course I dream of being a freelance translator, and am working on that quite seriously. I would love to translate books for a living. But teaching - urgh. I chuckle at the Armstrong & Miller jokes about teaching being a last resort of College graduates who screwed around till their late 20s and then decided they had better actually do something vaguely meaningful. When a thing is funny search for the hidden truth.