Do you enjoy your job?

I love my job most of the time, I teach in an alternative provision for kids that get kicked out of school. They’re great (when they’re not being complete assholes) and I really get to see the impact I’m having on their lives which makes all the stress of trying to make sure they don’t kill each other worth it. I’m part time (30h/week) so only do 4 days and because of that my work life balance has improved massively, the day when I would have been at work is used to unwind, and do life admin (washing, cleaning, shopping etc) which means that my weekends are actual weekends and I can do what I want with them without having a massive list of jobs to do as well. The downside to this being that I’m on 80% of a full time wage, which isn’t very good to begin with. The whole of education is also fucked financially, no one has any money to spend and our kids need money spending on them. They can’t just sit in a classroom for 5 hours a day they need to be doing things, which we are told we have no money for. Then the kids misbehave because they’re struggling and the management come at us like we’re not capable of doing the job. There’s been at least 4 or 5 occasions since we came back from Christmas where I have almost told one of the college leadership team to do it themselves if they’re going to criticise us in the way that they do. They’d get absolutely eaten alive and would probably quit day 1, alas, I need the job so can’t suggest this. I often think about what else I could have gone into and how much better off I could have been financially. I teach maths (which I am good at), have a masters in psychology (with specialisms, not just psychology), and I’m great at solving problems so there was definitely a few alternative well paying careers out there for me. I, like many other teachers, chose it for ‘the passion’. Passion only lasts so long before burnout takes over.