Is it wrong to want to be a primary school Chinese teacher and not a junior high school teacher?

Hello, landlord!

You're just starting out, right? Choosing a career is the most important decision you'll make in your adult life.

A job is about more than just your current qualifications. It's also about your future career development. This can indirectly affect other aspects of your future life, such as income level, whether it is easy to advance in the industry, and whether you can easily change jobs. This is why everyone around you is eager to help and give advice!

You already had an idea and had it all figured out, but then someone gave you some advice and you became undecided. This kind of conflict can be very painful and mentally draining. You must feel stressed and confused. I am certain that this is a process that every young person has to go through after finishing school and entering the workforce. If someone gives you some affirmation and support, making a decision may become much easier and more enjoyable.

Let me be clear: your doubts and uncertainty are not a result of being influenced by others. The real issue is that you lack clarity and certainty about your needs.

If you know you love being an elementary school teacher, find it meaningful, don't care if the income is lower than a middle school teacher's, and are willing to do what you want, then ignore what others say. The "good" they say isn't what you need, and the "bad" they say isn't what you feel. You won't be easily influenced.

Ultimately, you are the one who decides what kind of job you want, who you want to be, and how you want to live your life. Everyone has a different perspective on this. There is a Chinese idiom that says, "Your honey is someone else's arsenic." It's about the differences between people. If you listen to other people's advice and choose a certain job based on what they think is "good," but you end up feeling particularly bad about it, and it's difficult to do well and persevere in this job, what do you think?

Make a list or table of what you "want and don't want," and rank them in order of importance, with the most important at the top and the less important at the bottom. Note that the importance of each item on this list must match your own feelings and thoughts at the moment. Is the most important thing the salary or the distance from home?

Is it your current competence or the possibility of changing jobs in the future? Or do you prefer young children rather than middle school children?

Once you have made your list, score each item and choose the one with the highest total score for "want" and the lowest total score for "don't want." Base the weight of each item on your current feelings and thoughts. No one can replace you in feeling what is important and unimportant, what you want and don't want, and what is good and bad.

You can certainly take advice from those around you, but you must test it in reality. What do they mean when they say "good" and "bad"? Is it different from what you understand? If so, you're wasting your time.

You can't be sure whether these feelings and thoughts will change after working for a year or two. When the time comes and you need to change jobs, you can make a new list of feelings and thoughts. People don't have the ability to travel into the future and foresee what is most important to them at a certain moment in the future. It's impossible to decide whether being a primary school teacher or a secondary school teacher is better for the rest of your life. Even if you think you know what's "good" for you now, it may change to "bad" in the future because people themselves are developing and changing.

From your description, it's clear you're drawn to primary school teaching. Secondary school teaching, on the other hand, makes you feel uneasy. You believe you're not qualified and that you're too short. You feel out of control and afraid of not being able to cope. This choice is driven by fear, which can lead to an irrational decision. You need to understand the practical aspects of teaching before making a decision.

I advise you to research this area. For example, do junior high school teachers manage students based on physical strength? Are there any explicit regulations on academic qualifications for the teacher recruitment exam that say non-teacher training undergraduates can only apply for elementary school teaching positions? You have previously taught at the elementary school level, and this experience has made you confident that you can do the job well. This gives you a sense of security and control. Therefore, your sense of loss of control over the profession of secondary school teacher may simply come from the fact that you have not taught at the secondary school level. When you prepare for class and see knowledge that you are not familiar with, it feels scary. You need to find out whether it is really as scary as you feel. You can do this by looking for opportunities to volunteer at a nearby secondary school, find a past secondary school teacher, or seek experience from an extracurricular training institution.

You'll see that high school teachers are not as difficult as you thought.

I know that holders of a high school or junior high school teaching certificate can teach in both high schools and elementary schools, but holders of an elementary school teaching certificate cannot teach in high schools. If you are considering changing units for future career development, you need to confirm whether the professional experience of an elementary school teacher is interchangeable with that of a high school teacher. A wider range of choices may be more beneficial to your career development.

However, a teaching certificate allows you to teach in a middle school, and an elementary school teacher's professional experience does not affect their future teaching in a middle school.

Furthermore, everyone has their own area of expertise. The benefits of focusing on developing yourself intensively in one area may be far greater than the difference between secondary school and primary school. As the saying goes, there are 360 occupations, and each one can produce a master. Even if you are not a master, you can still gain an understanding of reality and verify it for yourself. Once you know that your choice is what you need, you can be sure of it.

You must choose the best option for you in the moment. However, this does not mean it will be the best choice for you forever. You will change and so will your needs and feelings.

The above. The world and I love you.