Educators of Oppo

"Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection" (itsalwayssteve)
12/08/2016 at 12:58 • Filed to: life, college, educational opportunity

I did a thing.

I’m enrolled

So I start this spring at Belmont Abbey College. While it isn’t my first choice, it has an excellent night program in educational studies and I’ll be teaching within 2 years.

I’ll be able to work full time during the program, too, which is nice. Also, it’s less expensive than UNCC, which is nice.

I don’t expect to make a ton of money, and teaching is the only thing that makes sense to me. So have I made a huge mistake?

DISCUSSION (22)

Twingo Tamer - About to descend into project car hell. > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:12

Im also applying for teacher training right now, I tried out helping classes at a local school and loved it. Hope I get accepted.

bwp240 > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:15

You could also do motorsports management

because monks know a lot about speeeeed...

http://motorsportprogram.com/

As far as your question, do what your passionate about. If you wake up each work day looking forward to doing what you are doing and it pays enough for you to live, I fail to see the problem.

vondon302 > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:16

Well my wife is a teacher and thinks she made a huge mistake. Although she teaches inner city kids and Michigan hasn’t been kind to public education lately. I’ll get her to post something later for ya. From listening to her teacher friends it sounds like the first 5 years are good then burnout sets in. In my opinion if that’s what you want do go for it.

E90M3 > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:24

How much is tuition?

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > E90M3
12/08/2016 at 13:24

$4000/Semester all inclusive.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > vondon302
12/08/2016 at 13:26

North Carolina is actively hostile to teachers as well, but I’m not tied to this part of the country too tightly.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:29

The first year is the hardest. That’s when you are building lesson plans, getting used to being in the school and around students, etc. Do everything you can to get a set of lesson plans to build from. That will save you a ton of time and effort.

Most of my assignments were take-home projects and the students were bad about not doing their own work. By the end of my second year, I had a full database of questions to pull from. I could use the database to generate a unique test for every student and had methods in place to make cheating hard and grading easy.

I decided that I would be happier in the private sector. I took a job with fewer hours, better benefits, and a 33% raise in pay.

E90M3 > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:31

Oh, that’s a lot lower than I thought it would be after googling it. It looked like it was $18.5k/semester. That really isn’t bad at all. I got lucky and tuition at Georgia Tech was only like $3600 per semester before living expenses. So that kinda skews my baseline for an affordable education.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > E90M3
12/08/2016 at 13:39

That’s for the standard undergrad, including room/board etc. The night program is geared for adults who are working full time so I’ll be spending 8 hours a week in class - from 6-10 pm 2 days a week. Tuition is $4188/semester.

E90M3 > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:45

I still think $18.5k is a lot of money even if that includes room and board and a meal plan.

Noah - Now with more boost. > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:50

Not an educator but a few of my friends are - it’s the administration that makes or brakes a school system. The horror stories they tell me about infighting and teachers vs. admin showdowns sound horrible. Add teacher cliques and state obsession with standardized testing into the mix too. Did you rase that 4th grader who couldn’t read at all to a 3rd grade level? that’s nice, but you will be punished when they fail the big state test.

shop-teacher > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:57

I love teaching. Of course there are days when I’d like to throw my keys on the principal’s desk, do a burnout in the parking lot, and never come back, but every job has those days. You want to try and find a district you’re happy in within five years or so of beginning your career. After that, it’s hard to move around because you’re a more expensive person to hire.

Be prepared for a lot of double talk from people. They love to shit on teachers as being lazy and overpaid who just want summers off. They won’t do it to you face though, so it’s fun when you get to spring that on them AFTER they’ve just shit all over you because they didn’t know you’re a teacher. Lot’s of elastic faces and back tracking and stammering occurs after that.

It’s a hard job, but every job that’s actually rewarding is hard. Pay is decent if you get in a good district, at least around here. I like to say I make medium money. I’ll never be rich, but I’ve never worried about being able to pay my mortgage. I’m fine with that.

What subject/grade levels are you studying to teach? Some are a lot easier to get jobs in than others.

shop-teacher > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 13:58

Whatever you do, don’t come to Illinois. Our pension system is the worst funded in the nation. They take almost 10% of my pay to put into it, and it’s very unlikely I’ll ever see a dime of it back. Teacher’s don’t get social security, so the pension plus your own savings will be all you have.

shop-teacher > Twingo Tamer - About to descend into project car hell.
12/08/2016 at 14:01

One of the guys in my program emigrated to the UK to teach, because he loved the way technology education is taught there.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > shop-teacher
12/08/2016 at 14:04

Science and math/ late elementary.

Like 5-7th grade.

I’m not tied to the Carolinas at all, and even the starting salary for teachers in North Carolina is more than I’m making now, despite the fact that our state is actively hostile to educators.

I know that’s a high demand field as far as teaching goes - and I’d like to branch into occupational stuff eventually. I’ll probably need to go up north or out west anyway because my wife is studying mortuary science and I’ll need to make enough money to support her while she does her internship (at age 40)

shop-teacher > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 14:10

You should be fine getting a job then. I’d be worried for you if you said English or History, or PE. Openings in those areas bring hundreds of applications. Will your certificate be K-8? It’s good to get as wide of a range in grade levels on your certificate as possible, it keeps your options open.

I really haven’t done any research as to what states are better than others to teach in, but I know Illinois sucks because of the pension debacle, and Wisconsin sucks because they took collective bargaining rights away a few years ago.

SteveLehto > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 15:22

I taught law school for ten years and undergraduate history for 2 years. I LOVE teaching. I hate grading papers and I dislike the fact that a certain number of students (undergrads primarily) don’t take classes seriously. I could always count on one or two students per semester who could take the fun out of it.

Teaching grade school? I doubt you could pay me enough. While the notion of teaching is elegant and beautiful, we all know that there will always be the kids who hate being there, love being smart asses and so on. And dealing with parents nowadays? No thanks.

But then again, someone has to do it. I feel for anyone who goes into this profession at any level; teachers actually are the most important people in any society.

MustangSally06GT > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/08/2016 at 18:40

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Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/09/2016 at 01:51

Where you are, and who you work with, will have a lot to say about whether you are happy with what you do or not. Some of my Oppo-colleagues have posted some horror-tastic scenarios, some ups and downs. Every situation is unique, but I don’t think anyone is immune to trouble in any field or any career.

Get comfortable.

I wanted to stay in academia. As I started my master’s program, the plan was to graduate with a SECOND music performance in clarinet degree (because my bachelor of music performance degree was worth a LOT!...if you paired it with $1.99, you could get a cup of coffee!), find a small university, and become a professor of woodwinds, and eventually get my doctorate. A nice, sleepy life teaching private lessons, music history courses, and direct some ensembles.

I got what I wanted. I ended up with a master of music conducting, and also a teaching licence (my department head found a way to con me into taking the courses for education licensure...thank God), and almost immediately, was hired by a small university’s music department. But two months into the job, I realized that I was that professor...the one we all made fun of, the one who had all the theoretical knowledge and authority, but zero real world experience to back any of it up. The vast majority of music students at most universities are music ed majors...so here I am, training the future music educators of our public schools, with no real proof that anything I was teaching was actually applicable in a public education setting. That stung, because I didn’t want to be THAT professor.

So, into public education, I needed to go. I’ll do this for two or three years, get the practicum that I need to feel legitimized in academia, and all will be well.

That was 12 years ago, and I have no plans of quitting anytime soon. I have learned to relate and connect with many of my students, and while literally two-thirds of them have given me my share of white hairs and whiskers, the one-third of them who I watch grow from 6th to 8th grade make the job worthwhile. I don’t even consider myself a “kids” person, I’m a music person. Except, now the clarinet isn’t my primary instrument, the kids are. One of my first students from that first year just graduated as a music ed major, and was the superstar performer of his university’s (french) horn studio. I watch one out of three kids fall in love with hard work...or at least, the results of their hard work. Got an 8th grade flutist who will honestly play the same five notes 100 times in a row in a single session to ensure the pattern is embedded into her muscle memory; she’ll never play that wrong again. And her desire for excellence is such that the effort is worth it. My best student of all time is a senior this year, and is working on memorizing her fourth solo for the Texas State Solo and Ensemble Festival (she still studies with me for private lessons weekly). This is her performance from last year (yes, this is all from memory):

So, is being an educator worth it? All things being equal, when you look at the body of work I’ve been a part of, the experiences I’ve had (many good, and many many bad), any of the personal struggles my job has put me through (and God has pulled me out of)...for me, the answer is unequivocally yes.

But not all things are equal.

I teach in a fairly well funded district. My head principal is the biggest fan of music ed, and will tell you that middle school band probably saved his life (it really is quite a story)...he moonlights as a metal drummer in the evenings. As a whole, Texas pushes the arts fairly hard, band especially (because FOOHBAWW *grunt grunt grunt*). The majority of my students come from solid middle-class homes with solid middle-class incomes and the kind of parental support that is available from families who are not below the poverty line (El Paso’s median household income is $42k). The district fine arts department is very supportive...and very quick to put me back on track if I’m not getting results. Make no mistake, even as an elective class, education is a results-driven career field these days, because politicians and mouthpieces have forgotten that our job is to help produce productive and functional citizens, not to produce test scores and trophies, but in the case of music, the drive to produce scores and trophies has resulted in a lot of support from my school district. I am incredibly blessed.

These are not the circumstances that most educators work under. Not all things are equal. And yet, there are educators who thrive and succeed and find passion, even in the “worst” schools (Ron Clark is probably the best example, but how often does lightning like that strike twice?). It’s hard when the kids are already coming from tough situations; it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest when young educators burn out after only two or three years. We don’t just teach anymore; we feed, we clothe, we life-coach, we intervene, we counsel...and this is regardless of whether you teach in the richest ‘burb or the stricken inner-city. In the end, as long as YOU understand that your REAL job, your “industry,” I suppose...is producing functional, productive PEOPLE, then you can make it. And you can sleep at night, and be happy with what you do. Because once you understand that your job is about making the best people you can make, then the scores and trophies and test results? They end up starting to improve on their own.

(Of course, it’s always some politician who is going to tell you that they didn’t improve enough, so you’re fired. Someone on that school board has to yell about something once in a while to make sure people remember to vote for them again. *sigh* )

LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/11/2016 at 11:08

From what I hear CMS is quite demoralizing, too. Maybe work in York County somewhere . . . good reputation for schools, don’t know how they treat teachers. I’ve also heard good things about the schools elsewhere in SC.

LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
12/11/2016 at 11:10

Oh, yeah, I wonder what charter schools would be like as an option for you.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com
12/11/2016 at 12:45

I’m fundamentally opposed to Charter schools because they tend to suck dry tax dollars that could go to making public schools better. only about 1/3 of charter schools end up meeting educational standards and budget. When you turn public service over to for-profit companies it generally doesn’t benefit the people receiving the service.

I’m also not tied to the Carolinas much and I have family and friends all across the US. if I found a job somewhere and needed a place to stay while my wife and I relocated that wouldn’t be a terrible thing.