and I also come from a military background (used to be an army sgt). I switched to teaching in my mid 30's. I took a massive pay cut to do this and have no regrets. I plan on being here another 7 years, then retiring. If I were the sole bread winner in my family I'd be stressed about budget stuff, but my husband's still in the defense industry so he has job security. I can afford to weather the swings from full time to part time to full time plus an extra class.
As for the actual job conditions - I think in some ways it's easier to appreciate the work coming from the military. It's easier to keep things in perspective.
I don't teach a core academic subject so the testing isn't affecting me directly. I love working with the kids, and especially appreciate seeing the differences between when I was in school and nowadays. For instance today kids got off topic on a short gender role discussion, and one of the kids announced to the class that she self-identifies as "gender queer." The fact that she's comfortable announcing that to a room of peers/teens is amazing and awesome.
I teach in a public charter (not a corporate owned or managed one). We're a title one school, with a slightly higher special ed population than the local city schools. Teachers who left our school for other traditional public schools have sometimes tried to come back. The size of the schools was a contributing factor - the larger the staff, the less like a family they become, and support from coworkers is hugely important.
If you have a chance to sub in a few schools, I would recommend that. We've hired some permanent teachers from long term subs, it's a good networking opportunity. But more importantly, it lets you test out the waters and get a sense of what different local schools are like before making a long term commitment to one of them. Subbing sucks, you can't judge the teaching job by that, I hate subbing during my prep hours in my own school. But you can get a feel for the overall climate, especially if you can get into different schools to see differences in how staff and students interact, if classes are so overcrowded that teaching is impossible, etc.
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