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Becoming a teacher
I have thought about what I would want to do after high school. Since I'm nearly finished/ I'm getting into the critical part I have thought what routes I could take. After about a year of thinking now I have finally come to a conclusion. I want to become a teacher, if possible a high school teacher.
Since I grew up speaking English but am born German and now have lived in Germany for 5 years I thought of doing German as a foreign language as one subject, and biology as another one. I hated the day I returned to Germany and have enjoyed every second of being back in an English environment. So I started thinking about becoming a high school teacher. If I understand correctly I have to have a Bachelor in one subject (it would be better if in 2) and then I need a Masters of teaching. Since there are a few teachers in this forum I just thought I would ask. Since if I ask any teacher at my school they say that the Bachelor and Master programs are worthless and that I should get a good old "magister", which is obviously false.
Since I grew up speaking English but am born German and now have lived in Germany for 5 years I thought of doing German as a foreign language as one subject, and biology as another one. I hated the day I returned to Germany and have enjoyed every second of being back in an English environment. So I started thinking about becoming a high school teacher. If I understand correctly I have to have a Bachelor in one subject (it would be better if in 2) and then I need a Masters of teaching. Since there are a few teachers in this forum I just thought I would ask. Since if I ask any teacher at my school they say that the Bachelor and Master programs are worthless and that I should get a good old "magister", which is obviously false.
Comments
Hey, Kiwi! Good luck at being a teacher, but not all youngin's are up for learning.
Teaching high school would be different for a couple reasons. The people I was teaching were mostly older, and wanted something. They were sick of doing jobs they didn't like, and they wanted to better themselves. High school students are not going to be as willing to listen and learn. I was also teaching a morning and evening class so I think public school teaching would be better when you look at the work hours.
Don't make a commitment to teaching unless you have a priest-like devotion to it, you're willing to be paid about the same as an Assistant Night Manager at McDonald's, you're willing to catch criticism from kids, parents, and administration, you're willing to hear conservative blowhards saying that you don't do your job and that you should be paid even less, and you're willing to abide a mountain of paperwork that's not really even related to teaching. It depends on where you are. When I taught at MMI in KY, I made $15,000.00 per year. Of course, I also had room and board as I was supposed to live on campus as part of the job. I made $48,500.00 at IDEA Public Charter, but I didn't (and still don't) have a teaching certificate. A teaching certificate would get you a better choice of school and a better income.
When I taught courses at community colleges, I'd usually get about $1500.00 per class per semester.
So could you may be tell me how to go about this? How do I become a certified teacher in biology and German ?
American parents have gone from acknowledging when little Johhny is bad an deserving of punishment to being affronted that a teacher would dare insinuate little Johhny is anything less than an angel.
When I was in school my parents would only stand up for me if what I was being accused of was outside of my character. If it was something they knew I was likely to have done they were ready with punishment. I have a kid now and I see the way many parents treat teachers who speak out about their kids problems and it is not pretty.
Right now my daughter (3rd grade) rides a bus with kids ranging from kindergarten to 6th grade. There used to be two buses (the grade school ends at 3rd grade) but due to a bus driver strike last year we now have one bus serving two schools. We live a good hour bus ride from the schools so my daughter spends a lot of time on that bus.
A neighbor of ours (who used to be a friend) has two sons on that bus. One is in 6th grade and the other is in 2nd grade. the 6th grader is a bully and everyone knows it. All of the moms of little kids hate this kid and his mother because he is rude and mean. Yeah, this is one of those kids that in 20 years when you read that he killed 20 people in a fast food restaurant you say, "yep, saw that one coming."
A lot of the problems this kid has began when his little brother was born because "his dad loves him more". Yeah, cry me a river. His mother babies him and defends him no matter what, never punishes the kid.
This is why being a teacher in America is a bad job. You never hear anything from the good parents but those bad ones? They are always in your face making your life miserable.
I can't help but wonder whether that's because their parents mollycoddled them as Steve said in the above quote. I know if I were on one of those shows and the judges said, "You can't sing." I'd say, "Well, you're better qualified to judge that than me. Thank you for your time." I think that's because the only time my pappy ever stopped telling me that I'm a worthless piece of crap was when he was asleep.
I hope that people self-select for stupidity and ego to be on those shows. It would scare me to think that most people are like that.
Which is worse in the long run, telling someone they are always perfect and do no wrong OR calling them a piece of shit waste of human life no matter what they do?
Slightly OT: We have this lady come by once per quarter from the "Parents As Teachers" group. She tells us what we are suppose to be working on with the boys to prep them for school, or where they should be developmentally. About the only thing she has told us we didn't know is we need to make our boys stop making "gun noises" and "gun gestures" and "stop them from talk about shooting or killing". "Once they are in school they will be sent home for that behavior". WTF that's like 50% of every little boy play time. Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, Ninjas and Pirates, Superman, Spiderman, Ben 10. I'm pretty sure that stifling that expression will have far more negative effects than just letting them play. Hell, the parents don't care and the teachers want these mindless zombies to sit in class and not cause problems regardless of if they are learning or not.
I wanted to teach music since I was in late high school and went to University for my bachelor's in Music Education. In Georgia, that's all I needed degree-wise to become a certified teacher since the program was constructed to get us certified. Other states have different requirements. I believe that NY requires a Masters degree within three or four years of starting. After I graduated I had to take a few certification tests (usually called Praxis or SAT II or something like that).
Getting a job in a specific subject like German (or music or nearly any other elective) is more difficult because you only have 1 of those teachers per school. Bio would be easier to land a job since science teachers are always in short supply. Finding a good school district takes time and research. My family is here in Georgia and my wife has a great job, so I'm more limited in my search area. Luckily there are a few good school districts around and some stellar private schools.
My advice to you is to first look at colleges and decide where you want to go. Most teaching programs are very similar, so the school itself is what makes a difference. Take it one step at a time from there and always remember that you want to teach kids because you love to do it. The rest of the stuff is time consuming, annoying and sometimes depressing, but finding ways to keep a positive attitude about what you are doing makes it all worthwhile.
To the rest of you complaining, it's fine if you weren't cut out to be a teacher. There are some crappy things that come with the job, but don't crush a kid because you couldn't hack it. Things don't suck everywhere.
If you want to do it, you have to really put your heart into it. It's very easy to just give up, feed into the system, and perpetuate the problems of many high schools. It's very difficult to affect change, but if you want to try, more power to you.
Personally, I think the state of many high schools, and the philosophy of high school in this country, is pretty poor. Really, it should be preparing you for The Real World™®©, but it usually does no such thing. Teachers are our most valuable resource for education, but because the system sucks in so many places, even the best can't do as much as they should be able to.
All I can say is, good luck.
When I was in high school, I was lucky enough to be mostly in honors and AP classes, so I was always around somewhat well-behaved kids. In the other classes, however, it was almost impossible to learn with all of the distractions. One of my teachers would be crying all the time because nobody listened to her and she had to pass most of her kids anyway or get fired (yay for no child left behind). Of course this is my school system, and it happened to be bad and under-funded. I'm not saying the less intelligent a kid is, the more they disbehave. It just turned out (for my school) that most of the kids in these classes were the ones that had behavior problems or did not care about school at all, and ruined it for everyone else.
So if I ever chose to be a teacher (hypothetically, because it will never happen), I would go for the upper level classes (where kids might actually care about learning), or school systems that are reasonably well-funded. Another option is to go for a second career, and do tutoring of some kind on the side.
Also, Joe. Those people on those reality shows you are talking about who can't take criticism. I'm pretty sure those are the indignant people we are always talking about.
We had both in spades.