Is personal satisfaction included?

I guess it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say that everybody wants to get satisfaction from what he or she does for a living. Yet so few of us actually manage to gain it.

Low salaries, classroom management problems or bad attitude are among the main issues that we all have to face most of the time. These nasty feelings of discontent and disappointment pretty often lead to burnout which we have discussed before.

Being a teacher is not easy and a wise man who compared teaching to acting had a point. Performing in front of an audience a couple of hours a day is incredibly strenuous. It requires preparation a quite a lot of thinking involved so what to do if your students simply do not care? This issue is probably very familiar to those of you who have experienced teaching teenagers – they are by far the hardest to please and deal with.

Imagine your salary is more than reasonable but the satisfaction you get is minimal. You are fed up with teaching at XYZ. What would you do?

1. Look for a job with a lower salary but giving more satisfaction (hopefully).
2. Continue working for the same institution. It’s all about the money these days, right?
3. Change your profession and do something not connected with teaching. Gardening? McDonalds?

Are there any other options?

7 signs it is time for a new job

Last month I wrote a guest post for Ken Wilson about my burnout experience. The overall message emerging from the post was largely positive – I did manage to fight my burnout and opted for a huge change, starting everything from scratch in a new country.

It’s been my third year in Istanbul and I’m afraid the big B might start knocking on my door pretty soon. To be on the safe side and just because I believe in teacher cooperation, here are my

7 signs it is time for a new job:

1. Your life is boring and you truly hate it
2. You have nothing in common with your colleagues and / or secretly despise them
3. You start thinking that even working at McDonald’s is a lot more fun than teaching
4. You secretly devise ways of doing something very bad to your DOS/ Head of Department
5. Your laryngologist advises you to change the profession – teaching is surely not worth losing your voice, is it?
6. You see no point in preparing for your classes – sitting and chatting with your students still means they practise listening and speaking, right?
7. You stop putting on makeup in the morning – who cares about the way you look anyway?

Just wondering - has anyone experienced that or am I the only one coming out?