Teacher
Average salary: $43,663
Bliss Score: 3.595/5
Why: CareerBliss' chief executive Heidi Golledge told Smith: "CareerBliss has found through our research that teachers appear to be quite happy with their work and their co-workers. However, the rewards for their work, lack of support and lack of opportunities to be promoted counteract many of the good parts of the job."
Description: Prepare students for future schooling and working by teaching them a variety of subjects. The BLS projected the growth of grade school teaching jobs to be 17 percent through 2020.(http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-10-unhappiest-jobs-in-america.html)
I have read this statistic a few times before online.
I could not help but comment:
However, the rewards for their work,
Indeed, there are rewards to being a teacher. The praise and support that a teacher gets from kind and grateful parents, the opportunity to shape young minds to appreciate a broad and expanding world. Imparting a desire to learn and grow is a skill and a gift that never ceases giving and blessing a dedicated teacher.
lack of support
This problem is the ultimate in working difficulties. The administration on campuses have become timid and irate — timid toward students and parents, and irate toward teachers and staff, because both interests are hardly to control, yet have a controlling interest in ho well or how poorly a school runs. The pressure to boost standardized test scores
lack of opportunities to be promoted
Promotion in public education depends on earning advanced degrees. A Masters degree is the irreducible minimum in order to move up the payscale in any school district, or the annualizations max out after ten years of service. Teachers who want to get into administration or counseling have to take additional schooling, at least two to three years more. Teachers go to school and teacher for six to eight hours a day, then they have to rush to a university or block out a significant amount of time per week to attend to online classwork. The strain is immense and overwhelming for many teachers.
Even when a teacher gets the administrative credential, the promotion and the payraise do not make the effort worth it. True, an administrator gets more pay, but they also work more days and deal with more political problems — demanding school boards, uptight district staff, irate parents — and pressures which can drain an administrator very quickly.
Some school districts permit teachers to advance into administrative roles without the extra credentialing, but the work is just as demanding.
counteract many of the good parts of the job."
The paperwork, the grading, the attendance upkeep, the standardized tests scores, the declining revenue, the increasing number of regulations and curricular demands, the growing sensitivity to discipline and fear of lawsuits all short-change the teacher and diminish his or her authority in the classroom. A teacher who cannot command respect in the classroom will find herself pushed to the limit when trying to engage students while balancing the limits on power and purpose with the students.
The tension is very trying on a teacher, and without a doubt "counteracts" much of the good that teachers do.