Anyone ever go from a sysadmin guy to a IT teacher?
How is the transition? Is it any less stressful? With no research done on my own on my behalf, I'd assume a paycut but less stress?
Posted Jan 7, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC
817
Disclaimer: This is my experience, and is highly individualized to the institution I taught at, so mileage will definitely vary….
I did some moonlighting as an adjunct professor once upon a time, teaching systems administration at a 4-year university for a couple of years. It was two 3-unit courses a semester.
I disliked more aspects of it than I liked, and because of that, and the fact that you have to possess or be in pursuit of a terminal degree (i.e. PhD) to become a full-time, tenure-track professor in most universities that I have dealt with, I never pursued a more formal teaching career.
The stress was about the same, but I had a very different set of stressors. I still had SLAs to abide by, in terms of ensuring course content was up to date, grading, providing office hours and responding to student questions. I had to deal with angry parents asking why their adult child was failing a course, even though they never did the lab write ups, projects, homework or tests. I had to deal with academic integrity committees when I caught students cheating, justifying why I enforced the zero tolerance policy for academic dishonesty. A few times, I had to re-grade all assignments a student turned in because they complained to a dean that their final grade was unfair and were granted a re-examination. Additionally, the university I worked for wanted its professors to be able to respond and address any student question within 24 hours of receiving it. There were constant questions about homework assignments, questions about why labs don’t work when you don’t pay attention to the instructions, etc. It felt like a 24/7 on-call shift that lasted 16 weeks.
The pay wasn’t great either. I was paid a flat rate per unit per semester. With all the time I had to spend involved in building and updating the course, and making sure I was invested in the students’ learning process to ensure I wasn’t just phoning it in, the hourly rate equivalent for teaching was about 1/10th of my hourly rate for my day job.
7
[deleted]
1
but less stress?
not less, but you get the other kind of stress
specifically, grading and class planning is as hard imo among other things that teaches have to deal with
3
Perhaps someday I'll post my brief, horrific foray as an instructor at ITT technical institute... Hard liquor is required
2
What sort of teacher? Like grade/high school level or professional training?
Professional training (I'd really call this more of an instructor) would probably be less pay, less critical stress, more stress about job stability, less after hours/on call. This is really just leading attendees through the curriculum and helping them when they get bogged down.
Teacher of young people would be more stress, less pay, better hours (Summers off), more attitude, grading, attendance, politics. I'd rather go flip burgers or make coffees.
1
K-12 or higher education? Higher education offers a lot more niches for specific class subjects.
1
I've been "teaching" for years, aren't we the SME's for many things and for every topic where the company doesn't have an SME?
We should promote good practices and teaching others should make our jobs easier anyway.
Just this week I shared how to vimdiff a local file to a remote file using scp. They think it's magic :-)
1
My mentor in college held a Masters and had a CISSP (this was 2007-09) and he came back to his CC as a professor because he realized teaching is what he wanted to do. My Cisco prof held a CCIE around 2010, and still taught full-time.
Absolutely a paycut, but prob not less stress (or a different kind of stress). If you love it you do it for that reason.
1
The fact you haven't even looked into this tells me you shouldn't do it.
1
I thought the idea of working with machines was that we hated people? haha.
I'd never see myself in a teaching role, but I hope you'll find it enjoyable.
1
going to fulltime teaching can be a serious upgrade to life but there is a big "it depends"
not my story, but someone I know, went from electricity to project management at quite the scale (think: building a stadium), the way he put it was "told my wife to put the dinner in the fridge, it's gonna be later. how much later? 2 weeks probably" was the final nail in the coffin
now that person isn't doing "how to turn on a computer" in middle school, but instead doing basic all things practical information technology basics (think: from power to chips, controllers, to basic networking and OS, soldering, programming, ...) for people who chose to do something along these lines professionally.
I'm not sure where to put it in american school terms, the students are 18+, so something to work with. additionally you get the benefit of regular work time, less financial pressure at work. pay is lower but your sanity may thank you
hopefully this relates somehow and gives some perspective
1
Teaching is one of the hardest and stressful things to do. Or at least if you care about the students. If you don't care about the students it isn't that stressful.
Is stress the only reason you want to share your knowledge?
0
Teaching is a job that requires some desire to do some research, which might not be a good fit for you.
I'm amazed how much of an online asshole some people can be.
he is not wrong though.
Asking questions is a form of research. This is the main reason why I joined Reddit. So I can learn from other people experience and opinions. Look up the meaning of quantitative research.
Sure, but you typically do something before asking questions; at least enough to have specific questions.
Was I a bit dickish? Sure.
Was this post intellectually lazy? Absolutely.
Do kids deserve intellectually lazy teachers? No.
I stand by it.
This is probably a first step before they begin researching.