Ep 133 Mistakes Everyone Makes When Deciding to Become a Teacher

Are you considering a career in teaching? SHOULD you become a teacher, and do you have what it takes to not only survive but THRIVE? It's a noble pursuit, but let's face it – deciding to become a teacher can be a minefield of potential mistakes. You may be driven by a burning desire to inspire and educate, or even SAVE education but if you're not careful, you could find yourself drowning in a sea of uncertainty and disillusionment.

In this episode, I cover crucial considerations to help ensure that your decision to become a teacher is one that leads to success, both for you and your students.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Teachers Need Teachers Podcasts, the podcast for teachers who don't want
to just survive teaching but actually thrive. Are you considering a career in teaching.
It's a noble pursuit, but let'sface it, deciding to become a
teacher can be a minefield of potentialmistakes, because making mistakes in this decision
process can definitely lead to a lackof fulfillment, definitely burn out and feeling

(00:23):
like you wasted so much time andmoney to just be stuck in this career
that you hate. So let's diveinto these six mistakes that pretty much everyone
makes when deciding to become a teacher. That way, we can ensure that
your decision to become when leads tosuccess both for you and your students.
So, the first mistake that peopleoften make when deciding to become a teacher

(00:45):
is being unclear about their motivations forteaching. So this is basically the same
thing as your why. And Iknow it's so cliche to say that,
like, what is your why forteaching? But you really need to ask
yourself why do you want to getinto this? It's honestly one of the
biggest mistakes that people make when decidingto become a teacher because they don't really

(01:06):
understand what it entails. They knowabout teaching based on how they were taught,
but they don't necessarily know just howhard it can be. Maybe you
want to become a teacher because youheard that there is a teacher shortage and
they're pretty much trying to fast trackeveryone to become a teacher to fill those
gaps. Maybe you're really attracted tothe holidays and breaks that we have,

(01:27):
especially summer break. Maybe you havea child who's also in school and you
want to have the same time offthat they do, which is understandable.
I think of it as the sameway that you would ask yourself why do
you want to become a police officeror why do you want to become a
doctor? If you really need tounderstand why you want to go through all

(01:48):
that you have to do to actuallyget into that career and everything it entails
once you're there. So, forexample, if you're a police officer,
there's definitely a lot of risk involvedin terms of putting your life on the
line, a lot of reward,and if you want to become a doctor,
well, you're going to be inmed school forever and have a huge
amount of loans, and is thatworth it for you to help save people?

(02:10):
So same thing with teaching. Whydo you want to become a teacher?
And when it gets really tough,is that why? Strong enough to
stay in? This is especially importantwhen you have people who want to discourage
you from becoming a teacher. Sosometimes you'll tell people that you want to
become a teacher and they'll be likewhy, Hey, I get it.

(02:30):
Teaching is really tough. And soif you don't have a solid why,
something that's really motivating you to doit other than breaks or hey, I
like being poor something pike that,then you're going to have a hard time
defending that and really feeling confident aboutyour decision. Because I'm going to be
honest with you, if you weregoing to go into teaching, I really

(02:50):
encourage you to want to see itthrough, no matter how hard it gets.
I think a lot of teachers gointo this profession with this dream or
they see people who are smiling onInstagram or TikTok and they're like, Hey,
I could totally do that, andthen once they're in here, they're
like you know what, it's nothow I imagine, and now I'm going
to leave. I would prefer youjust to not go in to teaching if

(03:12):
you don't think that you can handleit. So again, what's your wife?
So the next mistake that people makeis overlooking whether or not they actually
like working with children. I knowthis seems obvious that you should want to
work with children, whether they're anelementary, middle or high school, but
you'd be surprised by how many peoplego into the profession and it don't necessarily

(03:34):
like working with kids. It's odd. It's odd. It's odd because here's
the thing. In order for youto be effective as a teacher, you
have to be willing and able tobuild relationships with these kids. So if
you go over to someone's house andtheir kid is around and it's awkward,
like you just have a hard timeinteracting with kids in general, maybe really

(03:55):
think whether or not you want tobe a teacher. If you don't know
how to talk to a high schoolerin a way that doesn't make them like
necessarily roll their eyes at you orwalk out of the room, maybe that's
not the age group that you shouldbe working with. But if you really
get along with younger students, sayingyou can talk to them in a way
that gets them to listen to youand get them to be excited about what

(04:17):
you're talking about. Maybe that's theage group that you should go with.
I've actually mentored teachers that are newto the profession who are second career teachers,
meaning they've worked somewhere else, andthey're really intelligent people. They have
a lot of information and because ofthat, they assume that they could teach
the information. However, they lackthe ability to really relate and interact with

(04:41):
students, and also they have areally hard time breaking down concepts for other
people to understand. So if you'resomeone who's just really really smart in a
subject area, that does not meanthat you should become a teacher or that
you're even going to be good atit In terms of public school, I
mean, maybe at a community collegeor at a university, but not everyone

(05:01):
is cut out to teach in publiceducation. Just being honest, the third
mistake that so many people make whenthey're deciding to become a teacher is neglecting
interpersonal and communication skills. I don'tthink I have to tell you that being
able to communicate effectively is really importantas a teacher. That only because you
need to break down concepts for students, but you also have to be able

(05:25):
to hould conversations with them, puldconversations with other adults who maybe make you
uncomfortable, and to also work asa team with other teachers. I mean,
communication is how you convey knowledge toyour students, also provide guidance to
them one on one, and justfoster an effective learning environment. In general,
you're going to have a very difficulttime building trust with both your students

(05:47):
and their parents and building faith inyour administrator that you know what you're doing
if you can't communicate effectively. Sowhat does this mean. It means that
teaching can be really difficult if youare on the more introverted side, if
you're someone who's easily intimidated by others, especially other adults, or if you
can't really assert yourself in situations,you're just going to have a really difficult

(06:09):
time getting across what you're trying tosay what you mean because of your lack
of communication and interpersonal skills. Iactually know of teachers that are brilliant in
the classroom, but when it comestime to working with other adults, who,
by the way, are just asmuch a part of teaching as the
kids. If you can't work withother adults and talk to them and get

(06:30):
along with them because of how youare, you're really going to struggle as
a teacher. I just hate tosay it. To really assess your communication
skills. Are you able to explainconcepts clearly? Are you able to actively
listen to other people without just tryingto come up with the next thing that
you're going to say, Because thisis really important in terms of being able

(06:51):
to listen to students and figure outhow to help them. If this is
something that you struggle with, likemaybe you don't get along with a lot
of people, and you may wantto work on your interpersonal and communication skills
before becoming a teacher, because otherwiseyou're going to find yourself really dissatisfied in
this environment. And just again beinghonest, The next mistake, and this

(07:12):
is a big one, is underestimatingthe stress and pressure of teaching. You've
probably heard some horror stories about howdifficult and stressful teaching can be, and
you know what, most of themare true. I don't really think a
lot of people understand the emotional demandsof teaching. Again, they might see
something on TikTok or Instagram in termsof a teacher who's like smiling at their

(07:35):
students. The kids are raising theirhand and the kids are interacting and everyone's
having fun. And yes, thatabsolutely happens a lot. In fact,
it happens a lot in my classroom, if I'm being honest, and it
does happen a lot in classrooms acrossthe world. However, there are also
a lot of classrooms where there's constantdisruptions, where there are disrespectful students,

(07:59):
there are me and belligerent parents,and they're administrators that are toxic, frankly,
So you have to be someone whocan deal with stress and pressure.
You have to be someone who canwork under a deadline or work under the
pressure of an administrator who wants youto reach certain goals for these students,
or who wants you to be acertain way, and who's going to criticize

(08:20):
the things that you do in yourclassroom. Can you handle that? Do
you have thick enough skin? Areyou someone who can handle stress and maintain
your composure at the same time,Do you have enough grit to handle this
job because it's not for the faintof heart. And maybe you're someone who
likes to challenge and you're like,yeah, I can totally handle anything that
you throw at me, but canyou love it? Can you love the

(08:41):
stress? And can you get toa point where you've worked out your systems
enough like I have? And teachingis a lot less stressful. So this
is definitely something that you need tobe honest with yourself about. If you're
someone who is very anxious, ifyou're someone who is prone to depression and
anxiety, I just can't see howteaching would benefit you in any way because

(09:03):
it is really stressful at times.It really stressful. The next mistake that
people make when deciding to become ateacher is ignoring the need for adaptability and
patience. So teaching is going torequire you to be flexible and adaptable at
a moment's notice. So if youwere someone who needs things to happen in

(09:24):
a certain way at a certain time, teaching is that that. Because you
just never know, someone is goingto talk out lot in class and you're
going to lose your train at thought, or they're going to yell across the
room or throw something across the roomand it's going to disrupt the entire class,
or without any notice, there's goingto be an assembly and it's going
to interrupt your lesson plans, andit's going to throw your pacing off completely

(09:48):
and the students. You know,teachers say this every year, that you
know the kids are not all rightthis year, kids have changed. And
I don't know, it makes mefeel old to say that, but it's
true. Kids are changing. Kidsare definitely different, especially post pandemic.
They were also becoming more difficult rightbefore the pandemic, but definitely since then.

(10:09):
You might have heard of horror storiesat this point about what it's like
in classrooms, and they're not allwrong, They're really not. And so
do you have patience to work withdifficult students? Can you adapt to unreasonable
and unideal situations with grace? Ithink it's really important to be able to
handle things like misbehavior without losing yourcool. That's the best way to get

(10:33):
kids to not want to misbehave inyour class. But I've seen time and
time again teachers snap back at studentsor kind of have a little meltdown when
someone is misbehaving, which, bythe way, it eggs on that student
and makes them want to do itmore. And then there are extreme cases
like maybe a student is going totell you to f off, or they're

(10:54):
going to swear at you, orthey're just going to leave the room.
What are you going to do aboutthat? Are you going to turn red
in the face and lose your cool? How adaptable and patient are you when
you're working with students who have emotionaltrauma, students who have issues going on
at home, who maybe you weren'tparented in a way that's affected for them.
What are you going to be ableto do about it in your classroom?

(11:16):
So if you're someone who can bepatient and who can adapt easily,
then you're going to thrive in teaching, not gonna lie. You're going to
be put in really difficult situations andyou're going to thrive regardless. But if
you're someone who gets really thrown offand really frustrated and you just want to
give up, you probably should reconsiderwhether or not you want to teach.

(11:37):
And the next mistake that a lotof people make in terms of whether or
not they should teach is failing toconsider whether or not they have a strong
support system. So again, teachingis not for the faint of heart,
and they're going to be very manysituations when you were frustrated, you want
to throw your hands up, youwant to give up, or you just
completely delve into teaching and grading andeverything and you just block everything out.

(12:01):
If you don't have a strong supportsystem, then you're really going to have
poor work life balance and you're probablygoing to give up. I mean,
there are long work hours, alot of grading, a lot of paperwork,
a lot of meetings, and sothese are things that you need to
consider because if you don't have someonewho can pull you away from work,

(12:22):
who can get you to spend sometime on yourself and not have to worry
about work, which a lot ofteachers they end up doing, then you're
going to get burnt out and you'reinevitably going to quit. So ask yourself,
do you have friends and family whoare there for you when times get
really tough as a teacher, ormaybe that you have a therapists that you

(12:43):
can talk to or your church.Just basically ask yourself if you have the
supports there. Even if you feellike you're really stable and adaptable as I
mentioned before, and patient, youstill want to make sure that you have
some kind of system there to supportyou for when teaching gets it's really really
hard and you're ready to throw inthe towel. So does this mean that

(13:03):
you shouldn't teach? Absolutely not.I love teaching. I've been teaching for
twenty two years and I've got atleast another twenty years left in me,
and I'm sure that I'm going toenjoy it till the very end of my
career. But these are just somethings that you should ask yourself when you're
trying to decide to become a teacher, because the like I've said before,
I don't think that you should evenbecome one if you can't address all six

(13:26):
of these areas and feel confident thatyou've got them down, that you've got
them conquered. I would actually liketo hear about the things that you're struggling
with as a teacher, because Iknow that there's a lot of disillusionment and
people that want to quit, andI'm always trying to find ways to help
teachers so that they don't quit,but I do understand when you do,
so i'd love to hear about whatyou're struggling with and maybe I can make

(13:50):
an episode about it. Be sureto email me at Kim at teachers Need
teachers dot com. Thanks for hangingout with me today, you guys,
and I will see you next time.