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Comment by mikekij | Hacker News Reader

I was a physics teacher immediately after undergrad. I think I was a good teacher,as my students seemed to enjoy class, and excelled in physics later, in college.

When I left after year 3 I was making $42k a year. While that is a good salary, I didn't see myself able to support a family on that salary. So I left, went to grad school, and now work in industry.

It may sound vain or materialistic, but had I made $80k, I likely never would have left teaching. I really enjoyed being in the classroom.

In order to get great teachers, you don't necessarily need to make teaching lucrative, but you do need to be able to provide a salary that enables the teacher to support a family.

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I strongly suggest reading Adam Smith on wages.

First: all work must support raising a family.

Second: he enumerates a set of five factors, remarkably enduring, which should account further for wages paid various sorts of work, based on the pleasurability, training, regularity, risk, and trust required.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...

> First: all work must support raising a family.

Really?

What about the work of a Twitch streamer? Or a rock musician?

Neither of those are standard work.

What work is standard?

I don't know what Adam Smith meant by all work, other than the plain language, but I think it's reasonable to say that all work for the government ought to support a family.

The government shouldn't engage in work that isn't worth supporting the employee's family.

I would define it as work that should be reasonably expected to provide value to another human. All work of that nature should pay a living wage on which someone can raise a family.

Read Smith for the argument.

Unless you'd prefer me to read it to you over the Internets.

> $42k a year

Any comparison of teacher pay needs to use total compensation (which includes the value of benefits). With teacher pay, the fact of summers off also needs to be accounted for.

A more elusive construct is that traditionally public school teachers were paid less, and received in return much more job security than in the private sector.

This is definitely fair. The teachers at the top of the pay scale made $97k, and got a pension equal to about 90% of their last year's salary.

But banks don't accept a great pension and summers off as downpayment on a house.

I think your decisions were reasonable.

Would you consider a part time teaching job now?

If so, how many days per week and at what salary?

My day job is pretty all consuming. My plan is to make enough money in the first half of my career that I could afford to teach (either high school or adjunct in college) while still living the lifestyle I'm happy with.

I've been participating in Hour of Code stuff, and still try to find ways to volunteer when possible.

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