Lesson plans. It can be tough to be engaging to your students every day while still covering the state's assigned curriculum. "You have to prepare presentations that are interesting every day," says Casey. "You tell your five best stories for five days, and then you have to come up with 182 more of those." A teacher is also no stranger to bringing work home like lesson plans, and tests, papers, and quizzes for grading. "The avalanche of paper is more than I expected," says Casey.
Flexibility. As a teacher, you do get summers and a slew of other holidays off that many other professionals don't. But on a day-to-day basis, you can't come in an hour later than usual after your dentist appointment without having to find a substitute teacher to cover your missed classes. Szarek gets up at 5:15 a.m. every day for school. Her first class begins at 7:25 a.m., and her last class is at 2:18 p.m., but she usually works until 4:30 p.m. "If I need to take time off, I have to get a substitute, and then I lose that instruction time with my students," Szarek says.
Taking control. On Casey's first day in the classroom, a girl started putting on makeup at her desk in the middle of his lecture. When he told the student she couldn't do that in class, she swore at him. "You have to be able to not take things like that personally," Casey says. But his leadership experience from a previous job came in handy in the classroom when trying to whip students into shape. "As a manager, you persuade people that what's good for the company is what's good for them. The only difference between teaching 30 17-year-old boys and 30 30-year-old salesmen is the 17-year-old boys have a slightly longer attention span," he quips.
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