In the US teaching's in an interesting position, being one of the only salaried jobs with reasonable amounts of time off (once you take out the parts of Summer teachers are actually working—planning, late Summer meetings and such, plus the extra hours during the school year, it's still quite a bit better than most US jobs) that you don't have to fight or compromise to attain, and one of the only ones where taking lots of parental leave—even repeatedly—isn't likely to do serious harm to your career. The schedule also matches up pretty well with when one's kids are out of school, both during and outside the school year. It's probably the most family-friendly common job there is by a long shot, and there are teaching jobs anywhere there are people so it's relocation-friendly.
The reason that taking parental leave doesn't hurt your career is because if you stay a classroom teacher, you have no opportunity for advancement. And although salary ranges vary widely by district, there are many districts where your salary doesn't change by more than 20% over 30 years. So it isn't really treated as a career in the sense you've used it as much as it is employment.
Also: consulting, curriculum design, instructional coaching and a bunch of other options, if you care to aim for them. Granted a lot of them are more likely to be parasitical than actual teaching is (though each of them can be useful and good!), but status, pay, and autonomy failing to track actually effective and useful work is hardly limited to the teaching field. It's kinda the norm.
This is a really optimistic look on the system. Yes, teachers do get long breaks, but they often have to plan, grade, etc during those breaks. You also have extracurriculars (sports, band, clubs, etc) which require work during breaks and outside normal teaching hours. It really doesn't help that things like TA funding are quick to get axed when times are tough, increasing workloads for teachers.
Despite how neutered unions are in some states, without them, there would be routine labor law violations (the principal at my high school tried to force teachers to teach 4 classes a day despite state law requiring one class block be set aside for planning/grading). State legislatures also tend to pass bills for improvement programs without providing appropriate funding for training or materials, further straining resources and often inhibiting the ability for teachers to do anything but teach to the test.
>there are teaching jobs anywhere there are people so it's relocation-friendly.
This is true, but salaries vary widely. If you have a partner with a good-paying career, you can afford to relocate to wherever, but if you're single or otherwise not flush with cash, your relocation opportunities are limited. It really doesn't sink in how little they're paid until you come across your teachers stocking shelves. They put up with a lot - shitty legislatures, parents, administrations, students, poor facilities, underfunding, and pay that (in some states) is less than minimum wage when broken down hourly.
> This is a really optimistic look on the system. Yes, teachers do get long breaks, but they often have to plan, grade, etc during those breaks.
Yeah, I noted that. Even with the sometimes-long hours during the school year and their not actually having the whole Summer off, it's still better than the US norm of "after you've been here 6 months you can start accruing 10 paid vacation days per year—and once you've been here 5 years (LOL) you'll go up to 15! And no, you can't bank them."
> Despite how neutered unions are in some states,
Yeah, when I read about "out of control teachers' unions!" it always reinforces just how widely this varies. It be awesome if the ones around here would get a little more "out of control". Maybe all the pay freezes and abuses (of exactly the general sort you note) would stop. I'm pretty sure the folks here have totally forgotten that they even could strike.
I wouldn't get too excited... the list shows to me that the kids only know about professions they're directly exposed to or repeatedly hear a lot about.
Kinda dumb to ask kids what their ideal profession is when they really only understand about 10 jobs.
This is a pretty poor assumption IMO. This crappy article didn't even bother to list the ages of these "children" (were they 6, or 16?).
Personally, I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was in 2nd grade, but by 6th grade I wanted to be an electrical engineer (which is what I ended up doing in college). I was never really exposed to either of those by anyone I knew, only from reading.
