Getting a Master in Education is good. It will start you out at a higher pay scale than just a bachealors. Teaching history or english is more likely to get you hired. Teacher pay is based on educational level and number of years you have taught. Bonus are sometimes available for coaching or running extra-curricular activities.
Irregardless of your education level you will have to re-certify to teach every five years or so.
Course, if you teach english or history, and possibly poli. sci., you will be teaching general courses which means that you'll get just about any kind of student. This could mean that you'll start out with some of the rougher students.
As far as the teaching hours, well everyone says that the first couple of years are the hardest. Once you've established a number of different lesson plans and curriculums it gets easier. Course, you'll be grading papers which is just time-consuming.
As far as to what you'll learn in a education program, well there's a lot to learn. Grading and assessment, curriculum development, discipline, people management, special education, and psychology of learning. Hopefully your program will cover a lot of that. If it doesn't then things will just be rougher for you when you start teaching.