Why did you become a teacher?

[chervilant]

Are you currently unemployed? If so, how long have you been looking for a job?

Here's a good article about why we teach:

http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/10/why-do-we-become-teachers/

[femmocrat]

1. That was a great article.

Whenever I get stressed out over my job, I try to remember that there is a LONG line of applicants who would do anything for a position.

I spent a lot of years subbing and looking for a permanent position. I know how hard it is and I know how fortunate I was. I was hired by one of the districts I subbed for. I was just in the right place at the right time. I never take it for granted.

[chervilant]

3. Subbing would be fine,

if the pay would be enough. I went through accelerated certification to get a contract, only to have my principal lie about hiring me after a veteran teacher with 12 years experience put her resume on his desk. I was in an ultra conservative school district, and had no recourse.

[duffyduff]

5. Few people can survive on sub pay

Education is the ONLY field I know where you go into debt for thousands of dollars just so you can work as a temp for years and years.

BTW, you can follow all of the rules and still be targeted by principals. You have no rights at all as a teacher.

In Oregon, subs are paid around 162 a day, but big whoop. Districts deliberately overhire for subs, so you may work one or two days a week if you sub for several districts. You still cannot support yourself on it.

[knitter4democracy]

2. This fall, I'll be in my 7th teaching position for 10 weeks or longer.

In the last four years, I've subbed more than taught and even was a parapro for sub pay for a year and a half. I thought I finally had a good job only to have the school board vote to close my school. I really hope my new job is stable.

[chervilant]

4. I hope so, too!

I would love to be teaching, but I can't get anyone to even interview me.

Good luck with your current position!

[duffyduff]

6. Why are you still subbing and not trying to go into another field?

Doing this temp crap for more than a year or two doesn't cut it if you must support yourself.

Even if you got a regular teaching job, you are simply going to be treated like crap anyway.

[knitter4democracy]

9. I know this is old--sorry. Been busy.

Teaching is the best job in the world! We get to be a part of magic every day, the magic of a student figuring something out for the first time, the magic of relationships, the magic of kids turning into adults and into their very own people. There is no job better, no job that could possibly be as amazing, interesting, frustration, or magical. I've worked retail, I've worked in offices, and there's nothing like teaching.

I've been lucky in that I was able to sub for as long as I did. I've started my master's in ESL teaching, so I'll have more education options after that's done.

We teachers may be treated like crap, but when I'm in my own room, magic happens.

[duffyduff]

10. You don't have to tell me about teaching. I have been there.

But the workplace abuse is horrendous, and the privatization movement may succeed in getting rid of real teaching altogether in favor of online "teaching."

The starry-eyed naivete will soon give way to fear and apprehension. You may think it won't happen to you, but it doesn't take much, let me tell you, for your career to be ruined. Then try and get a teaching job somewhere else; it is virtually impossible.

All of those years of studying down the drain, tons of debt still to pay, and then being forced to start all over.

I don't recommend teaching to anybody in this climate.

[knitter4democracy]

11. I've been a teacher since 1997.

My last job gave me PTSD, so yeah, I get it. The school board voted to close my school and turn the district into K-8 only, and there are just too many stories to tell it all properly.

Thing is, it wasn't the kids. The kids make it all worth it.

[Igel]

7. Why did I become a teacher?

I was teaching summer school at a university.

Had a student who was going to be a 4th year senior in the fall, a student who was going to be a 5th year senior in the fall, and an incoming frosh.

The two seniors were functionally illiterate. Why, I thought, was I trying to teach them Russian literature in translation when they couldn't write a coherent sentence, when one stumbled over the word "can" and couldn't sound out "Brooklyn", and neither of them were keeping the journal that was going to be 30% of their grade? I asked the administration where to get help for them and was told that at a Tier I university what I was describing was quite impossible. And to stop asking embarrassing, hurtful questions.

The incoming frosh was great. She went through an IB program. The two seniors were football players.

So I entered an ACP, figuring in high school I could spot and get help for students. Did the student teaching gig. Physical sciences. Sent out perhaps 10-15 applications, got a job on my second interview a couple of years ago during the Great Teacher RIF of 2011. Turned down a third interview minutes later. Still at the same school.

Wife was similar, did the same program, she got a job offer on her way to her third interview.

[chervilant]

8. Your experience gives me hope.

I want to reach our sixth and seventh graders, at the point where math becomes algebraic -- and a bit more cerebral (at which time they rarely have a frame of reference for The Calculus).