Definitively, but it's hard to bring teachers up to speed. For one thing they often lack the particular curiosity, which may be associated to choosing the teaching path (unfortunately).
And I suspect it's also dangerous to teach coding to teachers: It's a skill that can land them much more lucrative and less stressful jobs.
Personally I think I would enjoy teaching kids math (I've done tutoring for grade school students for years), but between the pointless certifications, workplace politics, low pay, standards that force teaching to tests, harmful teacher ranking policies, and a inherit career danger for male teachers there is no way I could make such a career change. So I'll stick to tutoring two to three students a year.
Yeah I have a friend who had a math degree, taught CS and math. She got exposure to actual software dev work, realized how much better a job it is and eventually left teaching.
The tricky part about teaching is that it's unbounded.
I've never taught, but I remember transitioning from school to a job and it was a huge thing for me that I could keep work at work and I could start focusing on things outside without distraction. For friends that teach there's a lot of work that's expected that's not scheduled work hours (grading, lesson planning, etc). Dealing with parents is one of the largest stressors and that's almost exclusively outside of classroom time.
Depending on the particular school system, teachers can often shut out or minimize out-of-class work, but it takes a tougher attitude than many teachers have.
Also, many teachers don't think "no parent engagement" is more desirable than high parent engagement. Differences in the parents ability to engage the school (available time, money, language skills etc) contributes to social and ethnic disadvantages in many nations' school systems.
I was mostly pointing to the out-of-class work as something people who work other jobs wouldn't expect. I don't think there's a scenario where it doesn't exist and I'm a bit surprised I don't see better guidelines from either school districts or teacher's unions. It's something teacher's need to figure out for themselves. Trying to minimize that time was obvious to me as a student when I had poor teachers. Planning periods and planning days are nowhere near adequate to cover their responsibilities.
> Also, many teachers don't think "no parent engagement" is more desirable than high parent engagement.
I've never heard a teacher argue for no engagement. My point was that parent engagement is inevitable and always outside of scheduled class time. It's also one of the top complaints (along with administration and mandatory testing), so it's doubly unfortunate its unbounded.
My teachers would have shut down any parent without an extremely urgent issue trying to contact them after hours.
And I highly doubt that they got above a 40 hour work week including their lesson preparation.
But I guess expectations and regulations vary and it takes a personal strength that shouldn't be required of teachers. It's doubly sad that school systems are increasingly relying on teachers giving in and carrying more than their contractual burden.
Depends on your employer as always. But with a modicum of respect for work-hours and office climate, most programming jobs should be less stressful than teaching high school.
I'm not totally familiar with US coding/teaching jobs, and it also depends on how you deal with "stress" and the managing styles etc.
But teachers are on the front lines dealing with teenagers who are (at times) unruly, mean, sometimes outright violent, and parents will blame you for all those problems. Maybe 99% of your students are nice or well behaving, but it doesn't take a lot. I've heard quite a few stories of classes driving teachers mad. A lot of fresh teachers even drop out...
And I suspect it's also dangerous to teach coding to teachers: It's a skill that can land them much more lucrative and less stressful jobs.