If you love crunching numbers and finding answers to complex story problems, you might be thinking about becoming a math teacher. After all, what could be more fun or satisfying than playing with numbers all day long and challenging others to find the answers with you? While working as a math teacher certainly has its satisfying moments, there are some potential downsides as well. Therefore, it is a good idea for you to explore the pros and cons of becoming a math teacher before you decide if it is the right move for you.

Pro: No Essays to Grade

Perhaps one of the biggest pros to being a math teacher is that you don’t have to worry about spending long nights grading essays or long afternoons preparing your classroom for science experiments. When it comes to the high school level, working as a math teacher is generally considered to be the position that requires the least amount of advanced preparation and requires the least amount of time to grade papers.

While this may be true to a certain extent, it is important to remember that being an effective math teacher requires doing more than assigning some problems from a book and simply checking whether or not the answers are correct. Rather, you should take the time to examine the work of your students in order to determine why they are obtaining the wrong answers. By looking at the work carefully, you may be able to catch a simple mistake that can be easily remedied so your students can enjoy a greater amount of success.

Con: Not Everyone Thinks Like You

A potential con to becoming a math teacher is the fact that not everyone thinks like you. In other words, while you may have a method that you use for solving math problems, this method may not make sense to all of your students. In order to be a successful math teacher, you need to be willing to explore a variety of methods for solving problems and to be open to exploring methods that make sense to your students while also keeping them on track for learning more complicated math concepts.

Pro: Job Security

As a certified math teacher, you will likely have plenty of employment opportunities available to you. In fact, most states are reporting a shortage in math teachers, which means there is actually a pretty large demand for qualified individuals to teach the subject. In addition, since state and federal governments are continually placing more emphasis on teaching mathematics, you are not likely to face job cuts within this field. Of course, on the downside, the shortage may also mean that your classes will be overloaded while your school district tries to find other qualified teachers to help handle the load.

Con: Standardized Testing is Getting Harder

Unfortunately, math teachers generally face a great deal of pressure from their school districts to improve the standardized test scores of their students. If your students do not score well on these tests, your lesson plans are likely to be scrutinized and your teaching practices may be brought into questions. As such, working as a math teacher can be quite stressful and may be frustrating, as you are held accountable for the performance of your students.

So, what is the bottom line? If you enjoy mathematics and have a solid understanding of the subject, you will likely find plenty of employment opportunities available to you when you pursue a career as a math teacher. Just remember that being a great math teacher requires teaching to a variety of different learning styles and analyzing the work of your students you can help them gain a better understanding of the concepts you are teaching.