Jobs to go around?

Just a quick update on the jobs situation for my class.

There are 13 people in my class, one of which had a job already when she started. Of the 12 that remain, 6 have jobs now.

Considering that I was told by an Alt Cert alum that the offers wouldn't start coming in in earnest until I had a certificate (which none of us yet has), I guess 50% employment is pretty good. We'll see.

Dogs are barkin'...

This week, we spent Mon-Thurs teaching something called the Summer Sleuths, in partnership with the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Sleuths is a kind of science summer camp for students entering the 5th - 9th grade, and they spend 4 days investigating a problem developed specifically to teach kids about problem definition, research, critical thinking, data gathering and analysis, and presentation of results. You know - science. They are four very, very full days. And we were all really, really tired.

Comparing notes afterwards, we found that many of us had a similar thought: that if four days of this were so demanding, how on earth would we handle a full school year of it?

To our amusement, we found that we all rationalized our way to a list of reasons that this experience was actually more demanding than teaching a regular class, and that it wouldn't be so hectic once we got into our own classrooms. And we may have been right about some of that, but the conclusion is inescapable for the 13 of us in the class who are to become teachers: we're going to be working our asses off in our new careers.

That said, this week was simply awesome. I can't wait to start in the fall.

The fat is in the fire.

I've been offered a job at a large, suburban, public high school teaching five sections of physics, starting in the fall.

And I accepted.

My god, what have I done?

I commented to some people close to me that it's odd how years of planning, preparation and even anticipation of this moment still didn't fully prepare me for the shock of actually saying "yes" when offered a great position. I'm still reeling a bit, but this all just became a lot more real for me.

I don't "officially" have the job yet, since they can't legally hire someone without a certificate. But we do have an agreement that upon successful completion of the Alt Cert course at Benedictine, the job is mine. (So the school and I are not married yet, but we're engaged.) It seems quite solid - and by that I mean that they're very sincere and I have little doubt that this deal is all but done - but there's a little discomfort associated with not having a contract signed. Guess I better get used to a little discomfort regarding job security.

There are 13 people in my class at Benedictine, all following a similar path. So far (1.5 weeks into the 8-week class) only one other person and I have gotten jobs. I'm told that it's normal for so few to have jobs at this point in the summer. I trust the wisdom of the folks here since they've been doing this for more than a decade. But i'm VERY relieved to be in the position I'm in.

It's a far, far better thing that I did...

As a followup to my post on the physics content test, I'm very pleased to say that I've passed. As I suspected, I aced the physics portion and lost points on the earth science and biology parts. Not nearly enough to fail though, so onward and upward!

(At the very least, it's one less detail I have to worry about.)

Job Hunt - II

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.

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.

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.