I’m not even there yet, though I believe I am heading in that direction, but always I see online teachers I know and respect (from Yammer/Twitter land) and get both their excitement for the profession but also their frustration and concern.
I see how hard and how long most of them work, how they’re marking work at 11pm at night, or talking teacher craft 24/7 online. And even worse, I hear the “I didn’t eat at school today” stories because they were so busy, and get the sense that some of them really just live for their work and don’t do much else otherwise. Then I see when some of them admit they’re close to breaking because they put too much into it…
And that’s just the normal stuff! Then there’s the political concerns surrounding funding, and the position teachers seem to have in society, and the crap the media dishes at the profession. And…
Well, it’s not the “easy” profession some think it is, that’s all I can say.