NUSWhispers – Confession #104026

Inspired by #104015's post, I felt I should share my experience and reasons for leaving MOE as well (sorry for the long post ahead). Many have asked me why but being one who is not good at impromptu interviews my answers can be quite short sometimes. For background, I left MOE some years ago and am now in the IT field. Being the simpleton at a tender age of ~20, I signed my life away on the MOE scholarship, thinking that my career would more or less be on a good path as a "scholar". Furthermore, my university fees would be fully paid off and I'd even get an allowance and all sorts of subsidies during my studies (eg. exchange, hall). Life as an undergrad was pretty good as I did not have to worry about finding internships and jobs like my other friends had to. For the first year or so in teaching, I was fully committed to MOE's cause. My school had a pretty decent culture, workload was manageable and most importantly I had a fun group of colleagues who joined around the same time as I did. But somewhere along, I started to see cracks that hinted to me that this is not where I want to be: 1. Progression was slow, unless you are a higher-tiered scholar. In today's era employees would be considering changing jobs every 2 - 3 years, earning a decent raise each time. In my current team, someone who stayed 2 years would be considered pretty senior and experienced. In MOE, you are a beginning teacher (BT) for 3 years. Only after 3 years do you attend a "BT Graduation" programme and become a normal teacher. What's worse is that while your progression is limited as a BT, your workload is not. I "fondly" remember an instance where about 1 year+ into my career, there was an intern who requested to observe my lesson, only to be rejected by the coordinator because I'm "only a BT". When I went into my current organisation, my boss told me that my CEP (an indicator of how high the organisation thinks you can climb) was shockingly low, even lower than that of a fresh grad in the current organisation. 2. Talking about money and promotion is a taboo. When teachers talk, the implicit assumption is that one is going to be there for a long time, like decades. And mentioning otherwise will yield shocked, SHOCKED faces, as if you don't place students above everything else you are the scum of the earth. While we all like to think that teachers are very noble (and I do think it is a noble profession), I certainly believe that they should be able to talk about such matters without feeling guilty or fear repercussions, and supervisors must be willing and prepared to have such conversations. This is what makes a workplace progressive. There is absolutely nothing wrong in having ambitions to develop oneself professionally and seek growth, even in monetary terms, and the saying that "just do your best for the students; we must always put them first; the recognition will follow" is just complete bovine waste and a weak excuse to avoid hard conversations. 3. Performance is hard to measure. When students did well, the credit goes to the probably very nurturing teacher who went the extra mile and implemented 101 pedagogies to help students learn. When students don't do well? "Oh, they were lazy." "Oh, they did not hand in homework on time." "Oh, they don't listen in class." I personally didn't like this culture, but I am completely guilty of partaking in it. I want a job where I am in control of my KPI. 4. The lack of academic rigour. Everyone is so obssessed over "Cambridge's marking" that nobody wants to question why. In major exams, for fairness, one teacher would be assigned to mark one level/stream of papers. Once when I was going through the exam paper, a student asked me why his/her answer was not accepted. I looked at it and thought it was reasonable, so I went to ask the marker. The reply I got was "because this is how Cambridge marked" and no matter how hard I pressed for any possible reason why would Cambridge mark like that, the marker refused to participate in any intellectual discussion apart from the initial reply. I was frustrated because I did not know how to account to my student, but even more so that there was no interest to even discuss from an academic standpoint on possible reasons for such a marking. How can we, as teachers, inspire students about the very subject we are teaching if we do not even want to discuss it? 5. The blind leading the blind. Many teachers have been in the profession since graduation and have no experience in the corporate world. Yet, we are required to teach students about what they'd need in future. And no, one Education and Career Guidance counsellor in the school cannot be used as a defence here. As someone who had absolutely zero coding experience up and until a friend who introduced to me "How to automate the boring stuff with Python", you can imagine the road to switching career was not smooth; I had set a goal for myself to find a job by the time my bond ends but with each passing day the anxiety ballooned. My after-office hours were filled with either watching Udemy videos or applying for jobs/following up on applied jobs. I applied to over 70 jobs and only had less than 10 interviews. But lady luck shone on me and finally offered me a position the day after my bond ended, with only a small pay cut. I have since learnt and seen so much in my current job and the prospects are really good. And I'm not just saying this because I'm in the tech field - even generalist employees have industry experience which would make them marketable and more importantly, the network of connections they've built with people of diverse backgrounds will open up so many doors to them. Jobs these days are really easier via connections. Recently, a colleague of mine shared an analogy that some jobs are travellators, while others are stepping stones. Travellators are those which are chill, but have slower progression. Stepping stones are those which are rough, but gives you great progression. Teaching, on the otherhand, is a well. It is neither chill nor offer good progression, and is incredibly difficult to get out. If you are a teacher who is thinking of getting out, unless you have a great network of connections already, I'm not going to sugarcoat it but I will say that it is challenging and you may need to backtrack somewhat. Can try applying to other govt bodies - they are typically friendlier grounds to venture into. But if you manage to find a place which suits you, the rewards are going to be bountiful and you will never look back. All the best to you! P.S. is there some kind of career support group for teachers looking for career switch?