No one will ever convince me that teaching is hard. Period. Teachers here earn insanely high salaries relative to the amount of education they have -- and they get 3m of paid vacation annually (2m summer, 2w Christmas and 2w Spring Break), plus 6 pro-D days (and they want 5 more, but that ain't happening, as the media just busted a HS pro-D day that involved playing games at a dude ranch).
I know many many teachers IRL and they work 8:30 to 3, on a long day. Once they have a couple of years of experience and lesson plans, its just routine -- no prep involved, they just show up each day and teach. They get regular breaks through the day. They don't even have to mark at night b/c they get marking time during the work day. Every single person I knew in university who went into teaching did so b/c they did not get into any other professional school and they wanted buckets of vacation time -- nice motivation!
Trust me, as someone who has practiced law for almost 2 decades now, teaching is a cakewalk compared to litigation. I can't remember the last time I took a lunch or coffee break. I certainly don't get 3m holidays a year and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to take it due to crushing workloads.
I don't have anything against teachers making a fair wage for their relative schooling. But I definitely do not think that they are underpaid and overworked.