Excerpt from: So You Want to be a Teacher? Dennis Tyler II. The Cons of Teaching: A. Low Salaries: Everyone knows—teachers do not make a great deal of money. Not only is teacher pay relatively low compared to other professions, it also does not get much better over time. A teacher who has been working twenty-five years doesn’t make substantially more than a teacher who’s only been in the profession for three years. B. The Many Frustrations of Teaching: 1. Frustrations with Parents: While parents can be a benefit and support in the classroom, they are also often a pain for a teacher—particularly if a parent makes many demands on a teacher’s time with conferences, phone-calls, and e-mails pleading for special excuses for a child’s lack of motivation. Some parents (again, to many new teachers’ shock) can be belligerent or verbally abusive to teachers. 2. Frustrations with Students: New teachers often begin their careers with visions of fantastic class projects and fruitful engaged discussions, only to discover that most of their students are either asleep or completely bored or disinterested by any area of knowledge. A new teacher often finds that reconciling his or her ideals with the reality of the trenches can be very painful indeed. C. Where did your life go? Someone once said, “Teaching is a job for nuns and priests,” and what this person meant is that teaching is a job that consumes all of your life. Presumably, the job is perfect for nuns and priests who do not have familial obligations to distract them from giving of all their time. Because teaching doesn’t end when the bell rings at 3 pm; often that’s when clubs need sponsoring, sports need coaching, meetings need leading, and dances need chaperoning. It can seem endless. Teachers may find themselves looking a little more wrinkly and gray in the mirror much earlier than they expected. Teaching can age a person quite quickly. Which statement BEST summarizes the section, The Cons of Teaching? A) Being a teacher means that you are going to have a low salary. B) If you become a teacher, you’d better be a nun or a priest. C) Being a teacher can be very frustrating, but ultimately it’s a really good job to have. D) Being a teacher has many drawbacks: a low salary, frustration with parents and students, and long hours of work after school has ended.