Is teaching really as bad as it seems?

[Roberts13]

Hi allI just got qualified as a history/geography teacher and am currently doing some teaching in Asia. I love my international job but I know the students and admin are very different. Teachers are respected here and classroom management is minimal.All the posts on here about the western teaching system seem so negative and awful..... Mental breakdowns, anxiety, depression, and lots of posts about quitting or regretting teaching. Reading all this has me filled with self-doubt and has left me questioning if I made the right career choice. It's a bit of a scary prospect because there are not many other jobs I know of that history majors can go into other than teaching.Does anyone have any supportive words or advice for a new teacher?TLDR: Reading this sub too much, filled with dread about teaching in North America

[Lenda]

Hi Roberts13, I don't blame you for having this view of teaching in the west. I am from the US but have moved to Europe for many reasons, but surely including your worries about the teaching system. I don't have experience in any other teaching systems outside of the US and the Netherlands, but I think the impression you have is mostly coming from American experiences. Once your in graduate school and beyond in the US, you are expected to juggle learning, research, teaching, and administrative tasks all at once, and most can only manage with excessive work hours. I have found Europe to have a much less stressful academic environment, mostly because it isn't putting everyone in extreme debt/underpaying so many teachers, and there's much more respect for work/life balance. For other reasons and this, I have decided to pursue my master's in Europe because a traditional graduate program in the US probably would have burned me out like I got burned out at the end of my bachelors. That said, there are definitely positive teaching environments in the US, it's really just about luck and being the right fit for an institution/region/students. I wouldn't write off teaching in the west completely, but maybe try out a country that isn't the US first and make sure to thoroughly vet the institution/region for first hand experiences. There's definitely a reporting bias on here, you're much more likely to see posts from people who need to vent about a negative experience rather than brag about a positive one. Just my take as a recent graduate of a American university fleeing to Europe