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Having multiple jobs can be a juggling act starting and ending in the early hours of the morning. For NS teacher Rickie Stewart, days are spent working for an accounting firm, readying lists of supplies for her farm, coaching volleyball, and taking care of kids.
For Stewart, having multiple jobs isn’t financially driven, but she recognizes that it can be for others.
“For me, it’s different than for others who are the breadwinners of their families, ” Stewart said. “They do pick up second jobs because one, they have the time to do it in the summer or otherwise, right? But two, if you’re the breadwinner and you are trying to support a family on a teacher’s salary, it’s often difficult.”
According to a recent survey among NS teachers, nine have a second job. For NS math teacher Matt Syme, the summer break was one reason that getting a second job was something that made sense to do.
“You think to have ten or twelve weeks off is a good thing, but after a week or two, you’re driving yourself crazy because you just don’t have anything to do,” Syme said. “So, you know, having a summer job or something to do in the summertime, it just gives you something to do. You can only do so much fishing and can only do so much vacationing before you get bored of it.”
After leaving youth corrections, having worked there for eighteen years, NS teacher Bill Pollock considered doing his second job, shoeing horses, as his primary career.
“When I got out of youth corrections and I was trying to decide what I wanted to do, I really contemplated just shoeing horses full time,” Pollock said. “Obviously that didn’t happen because I went back to school, and the reason I did that is because of the stability of school. It comes with salaried income where you’re getting income every month that’s the same, retirement, some benefits, and horseshoeing doesn’t.”
The benefits that education offers, such as insurance and retirement, can be a large part of what motivates teachers to start and keep teaching.
“If you quit teaching school and go someplace else, the insurance and the retirement goes away,” Syme said. “So once you’re in, once you’ve been in long enough, you’re kind of stuck there because, I mean, after teaching school for fifteen years, you’re that close to your secure retirement, it’s so hard to give that up and then start a new career.”
Syme has spent previous summers working for the forest service during the break between school years. Working for the forest service was a more enjoyable job for Syme than teaching because of the outdoor setting and the type of work he was employed to do.
“If I could make the kind of money I do teaching school working for the forest service, I would probably do that instead,” Syme said. “The kind of work I was doing for the forest service, you can’t make that kind of money teaching school. Most of the high-end jobs working for the forest service were people sitting in offices. But I really, really enjoyed getting out in the mountains and, you know, getting my hands dirty.”
For Stewart, having multiple jobs can be a good thing since she enjoys being busy, but it can be challenging to balance them.
“You feel like it’s like a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of thing,” Stewart said. “Like it sometimes feels like that … and there’s a time and a season for sure, but it sometimes feels like I’m not good at any of them, if that makes sense, like I’m just doing the bare minimum to get by.”
Though having multiple jobs can bring some difficulties, it brings variety, since not all effort is spent the same way. This variety is something that Pollock sees as highly beneficial.
“You have to be balanced in life, you can’t just be all into one thing,” Pollock said. “You have to have a healthy balance of things. There’s got to be other things to distract you from work, and from play, and from whatever it is that keeps you a balanced person. And that’s another reason why I do more than just teach.”
