As someone with the rare experience of having been both in an executive role in a high pressure, high visibility field, as well as in public education, I am in a somewhat unique spot in terms of meaningful, real experience-based evaluating of the teaching profession in comparison to the private sector.
There is certainly a lot that we can ask of the teaching profession, in terms of improvement. But overall the job is one with nearly impossible expectations, often undertaken for rather less money than one would see in a job of equivalent importance in the private sector (what is of equivalent importance being debatable, but unless you are a fool you see some real merit in education as a profession) and one that is of a level of exhaustion-causing that is impossible to truly understand unless you’ve spent all day, every day, for decades or even years or even months or even a few days as the sole adult trying to lead 25 some odd children to do something meaningful and difficult and required of them, not to mention being a mentor, role model, parent, protector, judge, and friend, for life.
Not all teachers are great. But a great teacher means a great lot.
