Half the reason to be a teacher is because half the job is having fun. Most curricula is set in stone and requirements are nationally standardized (US and Asia). You more or less get summers off (there are conferences and summer school) and there are almost no jobs where you can take ~1.5 months off every year. Teaching is also one of the few steady jobs in rural America.
I feel like most people haven't been in an actual ~5th grade classroom in a long time -- literally half of it is playing games/trying to have fun.
And Youtube, good god has the educational content on Youtube evolved in the last decade.
5th grade education for my children has one 45-minute “play” recess (which doesn’t involve direct teacher instruction) and one 1-hour Physical Education class lead by a gym teacher.
The rest of their day 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM is composed of maths, language, science, history, and technology education all done on paper or at purpose-designated computers. Next year they will receive their own devices.
The playing with blocks and Lincoln logs ended in kindergarten, with the introduction of spelling test and arithmetic quizzes in first grade, so I’m not sure if I’d characterize the work my childrens’ teachers do as “literally half of it is playing games/trying to have fun” or that “[h]alf the reason to be a teacher is because half the job is having fun.”
Seems like it is hard work, with both practical instruction directed toward 20-30 children with varying levels of discipline, interest, and abilities, and management of just as many if not more parents with similarly varying levels of discipline, interest, and abilities.
This is a public school in one of the largest state systems in the country (United States) so perhaps your experience is informed by something more niche.
Being around kids all day isn’t fun. It’s stressful. Part of the job is appearing to be calm and approachable to the children and it absolutely wears out most people.
It’s just like thinking enjoying having a pet means you’d love working with dozens of dogs all day. If you’re lucky to have well behaved dogs, it’s okay. But you’re most likely going to have some barking all day, one’s going to vomit, some are going to fight, and any time anything happens the owners completely blame you and will threaten you in every way they can imagine.
Professional sports. If you work in professional sports there is a baked in 1 to 2 month vacation for all players, coaching staff, and assorted player personnel.
Teaching is work. I have the feeling you haven't been in a 5th grade classroom in a long time. Or any grade. People get into teaching because they want to help others. Especially if they get into special education.
You know, having known and being related to multiple teachers, I've not heard any of them express it as -fun-. Meaningful, important, challenging, yes, but not 'fun'. The two college professors I know have expressed it a such, but that's it. Of the teachers I had, I could see some of the advanced placement ('gifted') teachers viewing it as fun, because we were generally well behaved and smaller class sizes, but even there a common through line was taking advantage of the class' temperament and offloading the curriculum back onto us (i.e., "pick a topic in (X) to teach to everyone").
There is a tradeoff in lesson planning; there are resources around the proscribed curriculum (i.e., teach to the book), but that is decidedly not fun or interesting and the kids -will- misbehave more; the alternative for most classes (the advanced placement as mentioned above notwithstanding) is to prep something more interesting, but that requires using more time outside the classroom for 'work'.
Outside of the workday, which runs from 7-3:30 or so (and sometimes both before and after, if there are faculty meetings and things, or if they recruit from the teaching pool to help with kid drop off/pick up), there is grading, so it is not uncommon for a teacher's workday to run close to 12 hours.
You do, as you say, get summers off, but again, nearly all the teachers I know use that time to look for summer jobs, because the pay is so poor. Sometimes it's summer school or just independent tutoring, sometimes it's service industry work; nothing quite like running into your students from the prior year while handing their mom their McDonald's from the drive through. The only teacher I know who didn't (recently retired) do that had inherited their house, so had no rent/house payment to make, and -could- live, frugally, on a teachers' salary.
I feel like most people haven't been in an actual ~5th grade classroom in a long time -- literally half of it is playing games/trying to have fun.
And Youtube, good god has the educational content on Youtube evolved in the last decade.