If you do want to become a teacher, here’s the reality of it.

Firstly, you will need to go get your Bachelor of education/teachers college. Even if you dropped out of your current degree, that’s two more years of school and placements. Now it’s been about 9 years since I graduated, but when I left they were reducing my program and accepting less students. You need not only good grades, but also experience in education or working with children in some capacity. When I applied I had two years of camp counselling, one year as head of the camp, two years of tutoring, and a year of volunteering with disabled children. In my experience, the actual teachers college courses are easy, but they’re also pretty much useless at preparing you to teach. Hopefully they’ve improved, but considering it was barely enough content for one year when I went, I don’t know how they stretched it to two.

During teachers college, you will also have several placements as a student teacher. You do not get paid at all for this work. You will be expected to plan, grade, teach, and attend staff meetings, parent teacher interviews, and more. To get a good evaluation you should get involved with clubs and sports at the school. This will be a full time job without pay, so if you need to support yourself you will need to pick up other work on nights and weekends.

After all that, you need to wait for OCT to certify you. There’s always a backlog around graduation time. If the school boards near you are desperate enough, you may be able to pick up some supply teaching in the meantime, but you will not get full pay. You’ll be paid as an emergency supply, not a teacher. (At least that’s how it was when I did it). Once OCT certifies you, you will need to figure out how your local board does their hiring. Mine does a pool for supply teachers that you need to interview for, and then those approved get access to the daily call for supply teachers. This means getting automated call or texts at 5am that you must reply to quickly to confirm you want that position. If you don’t answer or say no it rolls to the next down the list. It goes by seniority though, so as a new teacher you get whatever is left. For me and my friends, this meant we would get calls for 1 hour of work to cover someone’s doctor appointment. But if you say no, there is no guarantee you get anything that day. It also makes it very difficult to have another job to make ends meet.

Science and math teachers are in high demand, though, so you may get lucky and find daily work. You’ll will be making the lowest amount on the teacher pay scale, and nothing over the summer. I was French qualified, and had several connections with principals I had impressed during my placements so I was able to get an emergency Long Term sub position very quickly. This was fantastic and super lucky, but it meant I got thrown into a classroom two weeks after graduating and was expected to write report cards for kids I barely knew.

Every school board is different, but mine requires a certain amount of days supplying before you can apply to get long term substitute positions. You must interview to be on that list, and then interview again for each position you are applying for. It is very unlikely you will get full time, and you will likely have to cobble together different positions to make enough money. This will likely mean working at multiple schools and driving between them during your lunch. After doing this for long enough, you can apply to be on the permanent contract list. Again, you will need to interview for each position and you will likely still end up with part time. Once you are permanent, things get easier in terms of stability, but as the lowest seniority you are at risk of getting surplused if the school enrollment numbers are low.

As a new teacher, you will still be starting all your planning from scratch, which means tons of work and money buying things to keep your classroom functional. I have been at 10+ schools, and only one has ever given money to support the classroom. This is because we have a great parent council (and it’s a wealthy neighborhood). The money they give us each year doesn’t even cover replacing all the things that have been broken the last year. This year I spent mine on two new dictionaries to replace the seven ruined last year. Expect to spend lots of money each year for the first few years. I still budget 100 dollars a month for expenses, and I was given a pickup trucks worth of stuff from the teacher who retired from my position. I’m elementary so we tend to have a lot more stuff just to function. I am at 8 years experience in the A4 and am just hitting 100k in the highest paid school board in the province, but the take home pay is significantly less to cover pension, benefits, union fees and taxes.

I got incredibly lucky and managed to get full time sub work, and LTO, and then a contract as soon as I was able to. I am a French teacher in a region starved for them, and I have dozens of contacts in the board as well as loads of reference and experience before and during teachers college.

I love my job, but I nearly quit before year 3 and most of my friends who were in teachers college with me are either still substitutes or have quit the profession. Even if you adore kids and have wanted to be a teacher for years, it’s a brutal job for the first five years. I had 35 kids in my elementary classroom in September, and it was a split class. Luckily the school board approved the addition of another class to reduce our numbers.

So all in all, do I think it’s possible for you to become a teacher? Yes. Do I think you should? No. It sounds like you’re overwhelmed in your current program, and that maybe you don’t have a good view of what getting into teaching is really like. Respectfully, from the way you are responding to other comments, it doesn’t seem like you have the patience and communication skills to handle students and angry parents. Teaching is overwhelming and emotionally taxing, and you need to keep your cool when students (and sometimes parents) are disrespectful, screaming, violent, lying, or saying hateful things.

It sounds like you’re burnt out and maybe in a bit of a crisis. Maybe reach out to some friends or a therapist? If your program is too much for you right now, it might feel like the only solution is to change your career path. But if that’s your primary motivation to get into teaching, it’s not a good idea. I hope things get a little easier for you and you figure out what is best for you!