Education · Helping & Teaching

Teacher: what the job actually is

Getting thirty people who did not choose to be there to learn something, five times a day, and marking it afterwards.

Published October 1, 2026Last reviewed October 1, 2026How we research and correct this

The work

What this job actually is

Managing a room first and teaching second. Nothing you know matters until thirty people are willing to listen, and that skill is learned rather than innate.
Planning. Every lesson is designed, resourced and timed, and then reality removes ten minutes of it.
Marking, which happens in the evening and at the weekend and is the single biggest difference between how teaching looks and how it feels.
Pastoral work nobody lists: the student who is clearly not okay, the parent who is angry, the colleague who needs covering for.
Starting is the hardest part by a distance. In Ontario most new teachers begin on the occasional list, supply teaching in schools they do not know, before a contract comes — and plenty leave in those first years.

A Tuesday

What a normal day looks like

Not a good day or a bad one. The ordinary version, which is what you would actually be living.

7:30 — In early. Photocopying, setting up the room, reading the email about the assembly nobody told you was today.
8:30 — Period one. The best class of the day because everybody is still half asleep, including you.
9:50 — Period two. Somebody has not done the homework, somebody else has done it beautifully, and a third is having a bad week you can see but not ask about yet.
11:10 — Prep period, in theory. In practice: cover a colleague, chase a form, answer three parent emails.
12:00 — Lunch, twenty-five minutes, eaten while a student who needs to talk comes to find you. You let them.
12:45 — Period three, straight after lunch, which is the hardest slot in the timetable in every school in the country.
14:05 — Period four. By now you are running on structure rather than energy, which is why the planning matters.
15:00 — Bell. Twenty minutes of the day people picture when they say teachers finish at three.
15:20 — Department meeting, or coaching, or a club, or the student who failed the test and wants to know why.
19:30 — Marking at the kitchen table. Two hours. This is the part to be honest with yourself about before you choose this.

Honestly

Who loves this, and who should not do it

The second list is the useful one. Nearly every careers page leaves it out, which is why nearly every careers page reads like an advert.

How you actually get there in Ontario

An undergraduate degree first
The Ontario College of Teachers requires at least a three-year postsecondary degree from an acceptable institution. What you study matters for secondary: your teachables come from your degree, so choosing your subjects at 18 partly chooses what you will teach.
A teacher education programme
A four-semester teacher education programme — in practice a two-year Bachelor of Education, with practicum placements in real schools. The placements are where you find out whether this is for you, and they come late, which is why the experiment below matters.
Certification with the Ontario College of Teachers
You apply to the College, pay the registration and annual membership fees, and meet any other applicable requirements. You cannot teach in a publicly funded Ontario school without being a member in good standing.
Then the occasional list
Most new teachers start by supply teaching while waiting for a long-term occasional assignment and then a contract. How long that takes varies enormously by board, subject and region — maths, sciences, French and technological education move fastest.

Where this comes from: Ontario College of Teachers — requirements · Ontario Universities' INFO — program search · Job Bank — Secondary school teachers (NOC 41220)

The money

What it pays in Ontario

Job Bank's own figures, quoted rather than summarised, with the period they describe — so you can tell how old they are and go and check them.

$29.33: Low (hourly)
$48.08: Median (hourly)
$61.54: High (hourly)

Ontario, NOC 41220. Reference period 2023-2024, last updated by Job Bank on 19 November 2025. Wages vary a lot by region inside Ontario and by how long you have been doing it — the low figure is roughly where you start, not what the job is worth.

Source: Job Bank — Teacher wages in Ontario

Before you leave school

Things you can do now

Teach something to someone, repeatedly. Tutor a younger student, coach a junior team, run a club. This is the experiment and the qualification at the same time.
Notice which of your own teachers actually get the room to learn, and work out what they do differently. It is almost never the subject knowledge.
Your volunteer hours can go somewhere with children or teenagers rather than somewhere convenient.
If you are aiming at secondary, take the subjects you would want to teach seriously enough to study them at university — your teachables start in Grade 11.

Test it

Do this before you decide anything

Reading about a job tells you almost nothing. This is designed to be done alone, this week, for free.

Teach one thing to a group that did not ask to learn it

About 90 minutes

Pick something you genuinely know and could explain in fifteen minutes. Not something you would have to research.
Plan it properly: what they should be able to do at the end, how you will start, the one activity, how you will know it worked.
Teach it to three or more people who are not your friends — a younger class, a team, a group of cousins. A group, not one person: the difference is the entire job.
At the end, test whether they can actually do the thing. Then write down what you would change.

What it tells you. Two feelings tell you everything. If managing the group was the exhausting part and the explaining was the good part, you may want a job that teaches without a classroom — training, coaching, instructing. If the moment somebody got it was worth the whole hour, including the difficult bits, that is the feeling teachers stay for.

Better than any article

Questions for somebody who does this job

Most people say yes to a teenager who asks good questions. These are the ones that get real answers rather than encouragement.

“What does your evening look like on a normal Tuesday?”
“How long did it take you to get a permanent contract?”
“What do new teachers find hardest in their first year?”
“What would you tell somebody choosing their teachables at 18?”
“What is the part of the job people do not see?”
“What makes you stay?”
“Would you choose it again?”

Could you own one of these?

The part other career sites never mention

Not the classroom itself, but teaching converts into business more often than people expect: tutoring, test prep, instructional design, training for companies, educational content. A certified teacher who can also run a business is unusual and valuable, and plenty build something on the side first.

Business 101 is free and teaches that part

Not sure this is the right list to be reading

Start from yourself, not from the job.

Future Finder is free, takes about ten minutes, needs no account and stores nothing. It will tell you which kinds of work you lean toward, and which of these pages are worth your time.

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