Becoming a high school teacher

I would also stay away from doing special education unless your heart is 100 percent into it. It is a very demanding area of teaching.
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However, if you can get into the special ed thing, you're golden. Both of my parents were teachers/administrators, and special ed teachers can write their own ticket.

 

It is in mine. Too bad Dubya's scheißer brother helped ramrod through a "tax-relief" proposal that's gutted the state budget to the point where everybody from teachers to law enforcement officers are being cut loose.

 

Well, I've spent the past 15 years dealing with parents who are unhappy about the coverage their kids get, so I guess I'm qualified for that part of teaching.

 

Several states have alternative license plans.

Mine (IN) will license you if you go through a transition program (every school that offers education is required to offer one, though some schools basically have created a transition program that pretty much requires you to become a full-time student to dissuade people from doing it) and have at least 20 (or thereabouts) hours in that subject area. I had to do 2 semesters of student teaching to do it.

I couldn't get English because my journalism credits didn't count as English credits, at least according to the school I went to. I ended up as a social studies teacher, because the liberal arts credits I took as an undergrad (J-major) were pretty much all in social studies -- history, law, psychology, political science, geography, economics.

Believe it or not, I have 9 years as a full-time journalist, 4 as an SE, a journalism degree, and I am not licensed to teach journalism in my home state because of the bureaucratic rules. They won't license me unless I take a journalism methods course, which I haven't taken. My school has a good journalism program with an established teacher who's younger than me, so I haven't had much impetus to pick it up.

If you have a choice between a program that offers student teaching vs. one that just allows you to get licensed by taking a test, do the student teaching. If you don't, spend a year as a substitute. Do something -- don't go into the classroom blind. It's a different world, and high school kids can be sharks. Classroom management means a whole lot more than content knowledge. I went in with a lot of knowledge of my subject and virtually no classroom management skill, and my students ate me alive as a student teacher.

Two years in, and I've got a better finger on my classroom.

93Devil's list is very good. Here's another -- you might have 150 kids. 140 of them are perfect -- participate in class, turn in everything, never give you any problems, A students. 10 of them are deadbeats. Don't care, don't want to be there, don't turn anything in, think it's their birthright to sleep in class, biding their time so they can turn 18, drop out and get a GED ... You'll lose sleep trying to figure out how to reach those 10 kids, and you'll lose even more if you can't "save" them -- and you probably won't. As a HS teacher, their habits are ingrained and you have to realize that they've pretty much made their choices and they have to live with them.

Great thing -- you can string. I teach, coach basketball (which, next to the classroom, is the most rewarding and mentally stimulating thing I've ever done), string for an area newspaper when time permits, and run my own broadcasting company, where we do live-streaming Friday-night football webcasts. The set schedule allows for lots of free time to do a lot of different things.

That, and my salary as a teacher -- first year -- was higher than it was in my 9th year as a journalist (4th as an SE at a paper that allegedly paid well). This year, I'll make about $9K more than I would have had I still been at my old newspaper. Plus, I have lots of job security.

 

Our former editorial page editor took a buyout earlier this year. I had lunch with him a couple of weeks ago and he said he's now been accepted to teach middle school history in the local school system.

 

Looks like I'm going to Texas if this journalism thing doesn't work out.

 

If you want to move, I would check out the starting salaries and the cost of living in an area.

Some districts start at 38K, but you can't rent anything there for under $800 a month, so you are spinning your wheels.

 

my dad has been a teacher for about 20 years in a rural school out in the middle of the woods.

his very first day on the job, he was teaching a fourth-grade math class and when he called role, one of the kids said 'here' and added, 'Mr. Teacher, did you know boys have pencils and girls have erasers?'

 

Don't forget benefits -- my worst benefits teaching were better than my best benefits in journalism.

 

Seriously. I just paid $75, sent in my college transcripts and took some test and I'm good to go for three years.

 

Another rule of thumb. If you're in a state bordered by water (especially in the South), there is probably a teacher shortage. If you're not (Midwest, Plains)

Florida, Arizona are growing so fast, they'll pretty much hire anyone (even unlicensed teachers). Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina ... teachers are in high demand there. I'm not as familiar with the west coast, other than hearing that Arizona is opening schools fast and is always in need of teachers. A fellow ex-journo friend left Indiana to teach middle school history in Arizona about the same time I was getting my license.

If you have a math or science license (which anyone here probably doesn't have), you can pretty much go wherever you want -- you will be in demand. If you're in English, it seems that the supply/demand are about equal, so you should find something if you look hard enough. If you're in social studies (like me), ed schools tend to put the coach wannabes in social studies and/or PE. So, there is a glut of teachers and not as many jobs available. I interviewed for 7 different jobs at schools before landing at my current one (one of the schools -- a sports-crazy rural school -- offered me a job, then the new superintendent rescinded the offer because I didn't coach football. They hired an assistant football coach instead, and I ended up landing at a school 30 miles closer to home that paid $8K better a year).

The nice thing about Florida, too, is that you can collect an FL teacher's pension after 5 years of service. Most states require 10 years of service. A lot of veteran teachers "retire" to Florida, teach five more years in the FL public schools, and then hang it up and collect two pensions.

 

Nastier, more contentious and more resentment-filled than I remember my sister's teenage sleepovers being.