Is Teaching Flexible?

Those who are willing to step into the world of teaching, very often wonder how flexible this profession is. In most cases, they receive mixed answers when they ask teachers.

It is understandable, because like every other profession, the experience is not the same for every professional. While some teachers do enjoy a lot of flexibility, others are not as lucky.

Moreover, there are times of the year when teaching seems like the most comfortable profession in the world, also there are times when the workload is so much that one thinks of quitting. In this article, I would like to discuss the factors that affect the flexibility of the teaching profession.

Who You Teach

As I have said earlier, teaching experience is different for different teachers, and it heavily depends on who the students are. The first factor here is the grade the students are at. For example, kindergarten teachers enjoy more flexibility than high school teachers.

Sure, it can be tough at times to deal with toddlers, but little children don’t have a lot of study material to go through, also they don’t spend a lot of time in their kindergartens. The work hours for kindergarten teachers are much less compared to high school teachers. High school teachers have to commit more time and effort to ensure a good learning experience for their students.

Secondly, how the students behave in a class is also very important. It’s no surprise that a teacher, who receives a talented bunch of students who are disciplined, can do their job easily compared to someone who gives lessons to a group of rebel teens.

If you are a teacher who is tired of the lack of flexibility due to this reason, here are some helpful tips for you.

Thirdly, unconventional teaching professions come with different sets of challenges. For example, if you are teaching a specific skill-based course that only requires a few hours per week, then you will be able to enjoy your teaching profession very much.

Suppose you are a swimming instructor who works at a gym, 4 hours a day, 3 days a week. It does seem really flexible. On the other hand, if you are developing a full-stack web development course for a batch of young professionals, you will have to commit a lot more.

Where You Teach

This is just as important as the type of students you teach. There are schools that give more flexibility to their teachers. In such schools, teachers can come to take their classes, do some basic office work, and then simply leave. Such work hours don’t extend 5-6 hours a day.

On the other hand, some schools require their teachers to stay for an extended period of time, even though the teacher has already taken all the classes for the day. Teachers who fall into the latter category don’t enjoy as much flexibility as the former. If you are lucky to get employment in a flexible school, you will surely like your job, and teaching will seem like a much easier task than corporate 9-5 jobs.

Experience Level

Teachers with years of experience under their belt can make their experience a bit more flexible than the newcomers into the profession. When you are a teacher who’s just starting out with teaching, you will have to learn a lot of new things in the beginning. In this phase, you will have to work on self-development after your work hours.

You will have to revise the lessons yourself before you pass the knowledge on to your students. And most importantly, you will also find it a bit overwhelming when you just start to deal with students coming from different backgrounds and age groups.

This is not the case for experienced teachers. Unlike the greenhorns, the experienced teachers have done this many times before. They don’t need to learn so many things like a rookie.

For example, it does not take an experienced teacher a lot of time to design an exam module, but a newbie might find it really challenging to balance the difficulty of the exam questions. In fact, this is probably true for almost every single profession. Newbies tend to enjoy less freedom and flexibility from the job. Experienced ones are simply better at the job and can find easier ways to carry out their responsibilities.

Conclusion

These are the three most important factors that determine whether you will be able to enjoy enough flexibility in your teaching career. It is true that you will find things a bit tough to cope with in the beginning, but with time, it tends to get easier.

However, you should determine how much flexibility you would like to enjoy, and choose your teaching method and disciple accordingly. Point to be noted, in most of the cases, jobs that come with more flexibility don’t pay as much as the ones that require fixed working hours.

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