My husband and I just had a second daughter seven weeks ago and we have a five year old. I plan on staying home at least a year and then I think I might want to get a job outside the home. I was an elementary school teacher for a number of years before I had children. Honestly, I didn't like it very much. After that, I subbed a lot until I had my first daughter and stayed home for two and a half years.
Until the birth of my second daughter, I was a para (an aide) to autistic students 1:1. The job was so convenient to my home and I really enjoyed working with the teachers and other paras. I had to quit because the job pays nothing (enough to cover daycare for one child) and I didn't want to put my baby in daycare so young.
As I ponder the future (I am a planner) I think about what I'd want to do. If I get another full-time job I will need to cover daycare and possibly the cost of hiring someone to put my older daughter on the bus in the morning. I might even need to pay someone to take her off the bus if the new job is far from home. My husband usually works nights but change all the time. Sometimes he works days and nights. My family is close but not close enough to ask them to help out with my children on a steady basis.
I remember how I would spend much of the weekend doing lesson plans before I had kids. Now with the way teaching is and the Common Core requirements, I feel like if I went back to teaching I'd have to spend at least one weekend day at the library to do lesson plans and any other work (I can't concentrate at home with my five year old needing my attention.)
My husband is great at helping out when he can. He often grocery shops when I can't and he is always maintaining our property (lawn, snow, pool, etc.) but when would I have time to clean the house, cook (not a fan) and ever go to the gym? How does one balance it all with kids when it's not a consistent schedule with a spouse?
I may need to get such a full-time job in the future (it's what my degrees are in: elementary ed and a masters' in reading) because we live in Long Island and want to dormer our house. Any advice? Thank you!
P.S. After working in a middle school, sometimes I think about going back to school to teach middle school English. I really liked it but maybe it was just at the school I was working in. I also used to really want to work with the deaf but that seems more like I have the dream but not the drive to pursue. I like English though because I love to write.
Teachers are leaving the profession in droves due to Common Core, behavior issues of students, uncaring administration, and not passing ESL certification requirements that are put upon us to teach students who refuse to learn English... Think really hard about coming to this profession!
What do you really want, deep down? I know you are saying you will have to go back to work to make some home improvements, but can those wait for a while?
We have a somewhat similar situation; I was working in early childhood ed for years and honestly, I am at the point where I do not want to return to that sort of work. I enjoy my son more when I am not with 'the littles' all day. The other problem is that, like your para-educator work, this sort of job doesn't pay well and there isn't a lot of redundancy, which becomes problematic if you are sick or have another caregiving need. I found this challenging when I ran my preschool program (it was small, but I had to prorate tuition when I had sick days because I didn't have any subs-- parents knew this in advance).
Now that Kiddo is older and in school, our work schedules still would require me to put him in before and after care if I were to work full time again. (I sub at a preschool now, which I do enjoy.) I like having time to take care of housework while Kiddo's at school. Like you, we don't have family close by to help us out, plus my husband's job requires him to be on call 24/7 (he's the top IT guy at work). This level of work means that we can live pretty modestly, comfortably without my income, but it does mean that extras like longer vacations or more work on the house, etc. has to wait longer.
When we do decide that I should go back to work, I'll be looking for something with shorter hours and close to home, like a part time shift at the grocery store.
I can't tell you what to do, but being a single-income family, for us, makes sense for now and is in keeping with our goals as a family. I spend some of my time volunteering at my son's school, some time in the garden, some time on house projects and daily tasks. For now, being home in the afternoons for our son is important to us; he's still young and we can afford to do it, so we do. That's how we balance it all, for now.
Could you work at a private preschool or a Montessori preschool?
Younger kids don't have complicated lesson plans and if the school has before/after care your kids might be able to get on/off bus with you there.
Seems like the variable with husbands job, lack of family help, etc is going to make a FT job a high cost item ( with the child care you'll need to pay) and a family time killer (considering lesson plans, etc) so make sure it's what you want. Because as far as income? You'd probably clear as much if you worked days, nights and weekends around your husbands job at something mediocre.
(Self fulfillment is another story though)
Why not tutor? On your own schedule.
How well did you do on the SAT? The SAT prep places pay pretty good with somewhat flexible tutoring hours.
The balance is one that you just work at over time and change up as needed. Just when you think you've got it figured out (or that you're going to break under pressure), something changes (kids get older, different job opportunity, etc.) and you re-shift.
Unfortunately, education doesn't pay well unless you're in adminstration or teaching full-time (and even that's not "well paid" but it's enough to cover daycare, where with the para/part-time jobs it's not unheard of for your sitter to make more then you do after taxes at the end of the day). The challenge with tutoring jobs like someone mentioned below is that those are evenings and weekends and the work is seasonal. I work for a test prep company teaching and tutoring SAT prep. During the busy season, I can be out 3-4 nights a week, a half day or full day on Saturday and maybe even Sunday evenings. At the end of the day it's about $7-10K in extra income a year, which I use to pay for hockey and vacations. The kids hate that I'm not at home, and all of our routines go to hell during a busy season, but it's for their direct benefit so we all grind it out.
Anyway...my husband and I both work FT, I do the part-time seasonal work, and we have 4 school-age kids. It gets hectic, but we get it done.
If you want to put your degrees to work but don't want to get back into a classroom, a related field such as education consulting or working on the curriculum side of the equation (working for a textbook publisher or developing on-line content for home school companies) might be a good career choice. Especially with common core, there is a real opportunity for consultants and textbook/content providers to produce new content that will help districts adopt to the new standards.
Also, all large businesses have in-house learning and development programs where your experience as an educator and writer could be a good fit. Our learning and development staff at my day job often have to write their own content to save money on content licensing, etc. and of course it needs to be delivered in an effective manner, either via in-person classes, on-line instructor-led courses, or interactive self-paced learning modules.
My suggestion would be to keep an open mind about possible careers outside of the classroom that would pay enough to warrant childcare and worry about how to get things done when you need to. Millions of families have two working parents (or a single parent who works FT) and we manage to get things done. You'll figure it out if and when you need to.
Maybe you could do freelance writing or tutor kids, so it's a flexible schedule. I work from home and started out freelancing and it is the best fit for us. When the kids were little I could scale my business up or down depending on how busy life was at the time. Now I work full-time, but set my own hours and work around the kids' schedule. It's not easy doing both, but I prefer it. I work with a few freelance writers who seem to enjoy it for the freedom as well.
We both work full time. My one kid is 3 and enrolled in full time pre-nursey. My parents do the before and aftercare. If we didn't have them, we would have to hire out.
We use a roomba and scooba, are both tidy, and do an extra clean up job a day to stay on top of things. We make use of the crockpot, we cook in large batches. I go to the gym at lunch. We live in a co-op with no outdoor maintenance, and do laundry and grocery shopping but once a week.
People do all sorts of things to simplify their lives. Also, people sometimes work at a financial loss, i.e. child care etc costs them more than what they bring home. They do so because they hope to advance their career/ earning power. Kids aren't little forever, and the high cost daycare etc does eventually die down.
My suggestion, figure out what you might find fulfilling, spend some time/ money now to work towards that.
Best,
F. B.
If you have a masters degree you could consider adult education and teach at a community college either part time or full time. The hours are often more flexible than primary/secondary school and the pay is usually a little better too (not much, but def. better than elementary teaching). Many CC's are alsways looking for ESL and remedial English teachers in particular (at least it that way around here).
Good luck.
