I would like to ask the Administrators for input.
I am turning 40 this year. Years ago I was an Education major and in my Senior year was persuaded to change to Business Administration. I have been a Business Professional now for 11 + years. I routinely create curriculum, processes and provide training on a Corporate level. I am at the point in my life where I am wanting to get back to my true passion--educating Children. I would like your opinion. Would you hire a 40+ year old career changer with a B.S. in Education? If I completed a Masters instead would that work for or against me? I am a single empty-nester which works to my favor as I have little obligation outside of work. Input? Thank you in advance. Leslie
I doubt she--most likely a she--cared much for my response, which is in three parts:
Forget teaching, period. There are no jobs to speak of, and if by some miracle you get one, you are treated like garbage by principals who most likely are failed teachers themselves.
You will find yourself harassed out of a job and a career. You will need to be lawyered up, not because of parent lawsuits but because of administrators who regularly flout the law. You are too old at 40; age discrimination is rampant in the field and you have little recourse legally.
You have to understand that public school districts are not about the children; they are about preserving the people in administration and at all costs. This is the bitter truth about public education in the United States. Stay away, please. This is the best advice you could ever get.
Additionally, you CANNOT rely on the unions to help you if or when (most likely WHEN since the majority of the principals in the U.S. are not the best candidates for those jobs which provide unlimited and unchecked power over subordinates) a principal harasses you or terminates you for bogus reasons (principals call it "for cause"-- a total joke because "for cause" is whatever a principal says it is and he or she can
fabricate charges without any accountability or loss of job). These unions will knife you in the back; their law firms are also in cahoots with the districts in "due process" hearings, which are jokes, as I learned from experience. Administrative law is not worth the paper it is written on. That is why I say you have to be lawyered up in order to keep your job, should you ever be able to find one in public school districts anywhere in the United States these days. The unions will NOT tell you about EEOC and other alternatives to their "due process" hearings that are conducted along the lines of the kangaroo court in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Thousands of people continue to go to college to train for a career where the working
conditions are horrible and mistreatment by administrators is rampant. These would-be teachers want to help kids, but the administrators who run the schools and districts are NOT in it for the kids. They are in it solely for the unlimited and unchecked power, perks, and obscene salaries. And therein lies the rub. Teachers don't have a chance in such a filthy, corrupt system.
You also must read the newspapers and know how teachers are demonized by the media. "Reform" efforts are underway to deskill and deprofessionalize teaching so that "teachers" will have "careers" of only two or three years and they will be fired or nonrenewed so they will never be vested in pensions and never be
able to work in their chosen profession again. It's all about the money now. The privatizers want the public schools to loot to enrich themselves while the administrators want the cheap bimbos they can use up and spit out. No "reform" efforts get at the real problem in public education and that's with the unchecked and unaccountable power principals and other administrators hold over teachers--there is nothing even
remotely comparable in other public sectors or in private sector employment. Why don't "reformers" care about this very real issue? Because many of them are cut from the same incompetent or sociopathic cloth as most principals.
People don't like what I have to say, but the truth hurts.
When I substitute taught a number of years ago, I would go into the teachers lounge and overhear teachers complain about administrators and think that these teachers should have been grateful to have jobs. I felt at the time these teachers needed attitude adjustments. There are hundreds of people standing in line just
dying for a job like theirs, I used to think, yet they had no clue how hard it is to get a teaching job.
Well, I have been on the OTHER side of the fence as a teacher, and now I know these teachers were WARNING me in their way to stay away from education. I had to learn the hard way just how bad the job
is.
In private sector and other government sector work, your supervisor is closely supervised and held accountable (usually), but in public ed, principals get away with murder.
----
It's the truth, but unfortunately I had to find out the hard way and am still paying dearly for my "career choice."
I can't stand the way the website formats posts, and I had to try and reformat it so it is halfway readable.
No comments:
Post a Comment