I hope this information will be useful to someone else who follows this path some day...
When hunting for a teaching gig, it's useful to establish a limit for yourself on how far/long you're willing to commute and then look for jobs only within that area. I've set an upper limit of 1 hour for a 1-way commute. I hope like hell I don't have to commute 2 hours per day, but if that's what it takes initially, so be it.
Over the last two months I've applied to somewhere between 2 and 3 dozen positions for physics teachers at high schools within my search radius. I have received exactly zero return calls. I don't think my return on investment in job application was this low even when I was a fresh-out. Is it time to panic yet?
Maybe not. I talked to a local HS teacher who went through the same program I'm starting in June. He said that he went through exactly the same cycle I'm in now, and it wasn't until he had his certificate at the end of the program (which is also the end of the summer!) that he got calls back from the schools to which he had applied. He said, "you just have to keep applying and have faith that as soon as you have your certification, the floodgates will open and you'll be a hot commodity."
Comforting words in the context of my job hunt results, but I'm not exactly a "faith" kind of guy when it comes to employment. I've never left a job without already having a another one. From here, this feels like the most ridiculously risky thing I've ever done.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Job Hunt
Many of the job postings I see say things like, "FILL OUT OUR ONLINE APPLICATION. DON'T SEND A PAPER RESUME UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. IT WON'T BE READ. BESIDES - REALLY, REALLY BAD THINGS MIGHT HAPPEN IF YOU SEND US A RESUME. WE MEAN IT."
So naturally when my wife was looking for a job earlier this year, I thought that a good way to differentiate herself from the herd would be to send off a bunch of hardcopy resumes with cover letters. We sent off about 90 of them to local districts and schools, and within 72 hours, she received several phone calls. Some were just to say that they had received the material. But she also got two interviews out of the deal. Not a bad return on investment, and so much for all the dire warnings about sending resumes in the mail, right?
So when my turn came, I did the same thing. I put almost 100 resumes and cover letters in the mail, and I waited. And waited. And waited.
Only one district responded in any way, and that was to send me an automatically generated card that told me to visit their website if I was interested in employment. That was about 3 months ago.
I suppose the morals of the story are these: 1) don't be afraid to break away from the herd, 2) results may vary, so brace yourself for a long battle.
So naturally when my wife was looking for a job earlier this year, I thought that a good way to differentiate herself from the herd would be to send off a bunch of hardcopy resumes with cover letters. We sent off about 90 of them to local districts and schools, and within 72 hours, she received several phone calls. Some were just to say that they had received the material. But she also got two interviews out of the deal. Not a bad return on investment, and so much for all the dire warnings about sending resumes in the mail, right?
So when my turn came, I did the same thing. I put almost 100 resumes and cover letters in the mail, and I waited. And waited. And waited.
Only one district responded in any way, and that was to send me an automatically generated card that told me to visit their website if I was interested in employment. That was about 3 months ago.
I suppose the morals of the story are these: 1) don't be afraid to break away from the herd, 2) results may vary, so brace yourself for a long battle.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Summers off, big compensation - Fat City, right?
George Takei (of Star Trek fame) recently posted an image on his facebook page that says: Teaching - We're not in it for the income; We're in it for the outcome.
This, of course, drew many murmurs of agreement from teachers, as well as the predictable dissent from those who assert that teachers are overpaid, get too much time off, enjoy the protection of powerful unions, have tenure, etc, etc. I've already talked about tenure a bit, so I want to say a word about salary.
One pundit offered the following (and I paraphrase, slightly): "Teachers in Wisconsin make $89k per year on average, and still went on strike for better pay and benefits. That's greed at it's (sic) worst!"
Quick! Grab the torches and pitchforks!!!
Or maybe not.
My first thought was that I live in one of the best school districts in Illinois and our average teacher salary isn't anywhere NEAR that high. Smelling a rat, I did some Googling. Turns out that the average teacher's salary in WI is about $50k. The $89k figure apparently came from Fox News anchor Eric Bolling who was interviewing a Democratic Representative on his show in February of 2011. Bolling was stirring outrage by comparing teachers salaries (including benefits) with the private-sector average which he put at $48k (salary plus benefits). I know what you're thinking:
if DataSource = FoxNews then EndOfConversation;
else Continue;
And I'm usually with you on that since I value quality data. But in this case, a little more reading puts things in perspective. First, Bolling's numbers were off. His estimate of teacher compensation was too high and his estimate of private sector compensation was too low (no surprise there, based on my own experience). Furthermore, when you compare average teacher compensation with average compensation of professionals with similar career requirements (education level, for example) rather than just comparing it to the average salary of the entire population, you find that teachers are actually making less than their private sector counterparts. Here's a study done by Boston College that compares private and public sector compensation, including benefits. And while public benefits tend to be better, they still don't close the compensation gap brought about by the difference in salary. So if you want to complain about teacher compensation, you can complain about the benefits relative to those offered in the private sector. But be careful: if you're successful in that argument and have even a modicum of intellectual honesty, you'll then have to argue for higher teacher salary to compensate.
My likely salary as a teacher will be less than half of my current, private-sector salary. So no, teachers aren't in it for the income.
'But you get your summers off...'
Great topic for another entry.
This, of course, drew many murmurs of agreement from teachers, as well as the predictable dissent from those who assert that teachers are overpaid, get too much time off, enjoy the protection of powerful unions, have tenure, etc, etc. I've already talked about tenure a bit, so I want to say a word about salary.
One pundit offered the following (and I paraphrase, slightly): "Teachers in Wisconsin make $89k per year on average, and still went on strike for better pay and benefits. That's greed at it's (sic) worst!"
Quick! Grab the torches and pitchforks!!!
Or maybe not.
My first thought was that I live in one of the best school districts in Illinois and our average teacher salary isn't anywhere NEAR that high. Smelling a rat, I did some Googling. Turns out that the average teacher's salary in WI is about $50k. The $89k figure apparently came from Fox News anchor Eric Bolling who was interviewing a Democratic Representative on his show in February of 2011. Bolling was stirring outrage by comparing teachers salaries (including benefits) with the private-sector average which he put at $48k (salary plus benefits). I know what you're thinking:
if DataSource = FoxNews then EndOfConversation;
else Continue;
And I'm usually with you on that since I value quality data. But in this case, a little more reading puts things in perspective. First, Bolling's numbers were off. His estimate of teacher compensation was too high and his estimate of private sector compensation was too low (no surprise there, based on my own experience). Furthermore, when you compare average teacher compensation with average compensation of professionals with similar career requirements (education level, for example) rather than just comparing it to the average salary of the entire population, you find that teachers are actually making less than their private sector counterparts. Here's a study done by Boston College that compares private and public sector compensation, including benefits. And while public benefits tend to be better, they still don't close the compensation gap brought about by the difference in salary. So if you want to complain about teacher compensation, you can complain about the benefits relative to those offered in the private sector. But be careful: if you're successful in that argument and have even a modicum of intellectual honesty, you'll then have to argue for higher teacher salary to compensate.
My likely salary as a teacher will be less than half of my current, private-sector salary. So no, teachers aren't in it for the income.
'But you get your summers off...'
Great topic for another entry.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
A bit of perspective
In a previous post, I commented that I didn't really understand tenure. I compared teaching to a job in industry and, overall, felt that no one is entitled to a job simply for having been there for a certain number of years. I still feel very strongly that that is correct. However, having been in the job hunt for a few months now, and having a better understanding of the dynamics, I understand a big argument in favor of tenure.
Unlike a career in industry, there's a common cycle of hiring and firing that has nothing to do with the performance of the teacher. For example, a school district might be embroiled in budget negotiations for the following year and might not have budget to support its needs. The result? A bunch of teachers get laid off in the spring and have to wait for the district to get its budget approved for the following year, and hope that they're re-hired in the fall. This practice is far more common than most people realize. It happens all the time.
So the teachers who get laid off are left to spend the summer in limbo, wondering if they'll be rehired and looking for a job in case they're not. And what if one of those teachers is offered a job in a district that's farther away while she is waiting to hear from her original district? She's got a family to feed, and there's a job on the table, so she might take that job that's farther away just to insure her kids don't starve. Now she's got to learn a new faculty, administration, department, etc - not to mention she's now got to figure out what to do with her own children while she spends the extra time commuting. And guess who's first on the chopping block in this new district come spring when the new district has its own budget issues to consider?
From that perspective, it's completely understandable that, at some point, a teacher would want some insulation from that kind of turbulence. From that perspective, I completely understand tenure. I still don't like it, but I can see that it's a reasonable reaction to some of the more anxiety-inducing aspects of the system.
Unlike a career in industry, there's a common cycle of hiring and firing that has nothing to do with the performance of the teacher. For example, a school district might be embroiled in budget negotiations for the following year and might not have budget to support its needs. The result? A bunch of teachers get laid off in the spring and have to wait for the district to get its budget approved for the following year, and hope that they're re-hired in the fall. This practice is far more common than most people realize. It happens all the time.
So the teachers who get laid off are left to spend the summer in limbo, wondering if they'll be rehired and looking for a job in case they're not. And what if one of those teachers is offered a job in a district that's farther away while she is waiting to hear from her original district? She's got a family to feed, and there's a job on the table, so she might take that job that's farther away just to insure her kids don't starve. Now she's got to learn a new faculty, administration, department, etc - not to mention she's now got to figure out what to do with her own children while she spends the extra time commuting. And guess who's first on the chopping block in this new district come spring when the new district has its own budget issues to consider?
From that perspective, it's completely understandable that, at some point, a teacher would want some insulation from that kind of turbulence. From that perspective, I completely understand tenure. I still don't like it, but I can see that it's a reasonable reaction to some of the more anxiety-inducing aspects of the system.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
"It is a far, far better thing that I do..."
It was hard not to channel Sydney Carton as I headed in to take my content test today. This is the second part of my testing to qualify for certification in Illinois - the part that's actually supposed to test my physics knowledge so I can get a physics endorsement on my credential, so I can actually teach physics. Keep that word in mind: "physics".
The test was at the same place as the last test I took, and there was the same throng of educators waiting to get in. The $86/person/test figure flashed into my consciousness, as did the fact that Pearson Education never answered the email I sent them, asking for a statement of how much money they rake in annually from ICTS.
Anyway, back to me and Sydney: I felt a little apprehensive since there's been an awful lot of water under the bridge since I last cracked a physics text in anger. I wondered if my appreciation for the finer points had dulled to the point that I would be hopelessly lost during the test. A bit of a sinking feeling set in as I considered the possibility that I'd recognize the questions but not be able to recall how to set up and solve the problems. Was I trundling off to my own execution here? Only one way to find out, I guess.
I shuffled in with the herd, found my seat and sat down. I noticed right away that the ICTS-approved-and-supplied calculator on my desk was algebraic-entry and NOT the Reverse Polish Notation style that I'm used to. *sigh* Now I'll have to spend valuable time learning how to use this calculator rather than actually solving problems. We had some time to kill, so I sat there making sure the calculator was in degrees rather than radians, figuring out how to enter exponents properly, trigonometric functions, factors of pi, etc. It wasn't too bad, but the possibility certainly existed for some calculator-related mistakes. Just what I needed, I thought.
As it turns out, the calculator was almost unnecessary. The test was 125 questions, and question #44 was the first one that was really related to physics. The first 43 questions covered general science/earth science/biology, and seemed to range from the absurdly vague to the absurdly specific. Then the physics questions started, and they were pretty trivial. I mean, if I have a degree in physics from anywhere other than Podunk Hollow Online University, we should all just agree that I know enough physics to pass that test and skip it. But I know that a career in education will expose me to new worlds of mindless bureaucracy, so I better just get used to it.
So Sydney Carton was spared the guillotine. Or was he? I certainly could have failed that test (and Murphy, being the bastard that he is, might yet apply his law in this case). But if I did fail, it certainly wasn't due to any lack of physics knowledge. No - if I failed that test it's because I didn't remember the finer points of cell biology (not even sure I knew them in the first place), or earth science, or one of the other subjects that was interwoven with the physics. In other words, if I fail to obtain my physics endorsement by failing this test, it's because I'm rusty on some subjects other than physics. How insane is that?
The troubling thing is, I don't know what (if anything) I'm going to do about it if I fail. I'm certainly not going to go back and take some biology and earth science courses just to prepare to re-take this test, and then NOT get an endorsement in those subjects. Maybe Syd's still in the wagon after all...
The test was at the same place as the last test I took, and there was the same throng of educators waiting to get in. The $86/person/test figure flashed into my consciousness, as did the fact that Pearson Education never answered the email I sent them, asking for a statement of how much money they rake in annually from ICTS.
Anyway, back to me and Sydney: I felt a little apprehensive since there's been an awful lot of water under the bridge since I last cracked a physics text in anger. I wondered if my appreciation for the finer points had dulled to the point that I would be hopelessly lost during the test. A bit of a sinking feeling set in as I considered the possibility that I'd recognize the questions but not be able to recall how to set up and solve the problems. Was I trundling off to my own execution here? Only one way to find out, I guess.
I shuffled in with the herd, found my seat and sat down. I noticed right away that the ICTS-approved-and-supplied calculator on my desk was algebraic-entry and NOT the Reverse Polish Notation style that I'm used to. *sigh* Now I'll have to spend valuable time learning how to use this calculator rather than actually solving problems. We had some time to kill, so I sat there making sure the calculator was in degrees rather than radians, figuring out how to enter exponents properly, trigonometric functions, factors of pi, etc. It wasn't too bad, but the possibility certainly existed for some calculator-related mistakes. Just what I needed, I thought.
As it turns out, the calculator was almost unnecessary. The test was 125 questions, and question #44 was the first one that was really related to physics. The first 43 questions covered general science/earth science/biology, and seemed to range from the absurdly vague to the absurdly specific. Then the physics questions started, and they were pretty trivial. I mean, if I have a degree in physics from anywhere other than Podunk Hollow Online University, we should all just agree that I know enough physics to pass that test and skip it. But I know that a career in education will expose me to new worlds of mindless bureaucracy, so I better just get used to it.
So Sydney Carton was spared the guillotine. Or was he? I certainly could have failed that test (and Murphy, being the bastard that he is, might yet apply his law in this case). But if I did fail, it certainly wasn't due to any lack of physics knowledge. No - if I failed that test it's because I didn't remember the finer points of cell biology (not even sure I knew them in the first place), or earth science, or one of the other subjects that was interwoven with the physics. In other words, if I fail to obtain my physics endorsement by failing this test, it's because I'm rusty on some subjects other than physics. How insane is that?
The troubling thing is, I don't know what (if anything) I'm going to do about it if I fail. I'm certainly not going to go back and take some biology and earth science courses just to prepare to re-take this test, and then NOT get an endorsement in those subjects. Maybe Syd's still in the wagon after all...
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