i hate my cushy bullshit job where i make obscene amounts of money. should i quit my job and become a teacher? here's what i'm thinking so far:
pros:
- i won't hate my job anymore
- my job is a real job where i actually contribute to society
- summer vacation sounds dope
cons:
- maybe i still hate my job
- my job would be a real job where i do work
- i won't make obscene amounts of money
- wtf grad school is expensive
alternatively, are there other jobs i should try to do instead? mind you i have no skills and would probably need to go back to school.
I think you two are talking past each other. I think that hamid gave their advice to OP specifically and you are turning around and asking "What is your systemic solution to the problems you believe are present in public school" which is interesting but doesn't necessarily follow "is this a good idea Y/N?"
Well depends on what they'd be teaching I guess. Math is hardly propaganda.
Unironically it is though. We teach math wrong in the United States (it has gotten better since I graduated high school, but its still pretty shit). You get taught the wrong way to use math because it's what capitalism demands from a teenage workforce, you spend undergrad unlearning everything, then finally get to what you should have been doing the whole time in graduate school, which will leave you """over qualified""" and in debt with zero job prospects outside academia.
It's the entire reason the US is behind every other developed country when it comes to math.
Below is a blog post from a teacher about "What if we taught art the way we taught math?"
What if we taught art the way we teach math? We start by showing students all the colors, not to play with, but to memorize. Then, after a few years of that, we give them two or three colors and permit them to only paint straight lines over and over until they've mastered them. Then we work on arcs and then other curved lines for a few years. Finally, after many years of this sort of drilling, we move on to shapes where we drill some more. Then comes more repetitive drilling on colors, color mixing, composition, until finally, after many tedious years, the art student, now at a university, is finally permitted to actually create something of his own. Oh, and never, ever take a peek at someone else's paper. It's a ridiculous, backwards idea, but in a very real sense, this is exactly how we attempt to teach math.
This is a summary of the book "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart (I have not read the whole thing, so if these people are full of brainworms I wouldn't know). An excerpt from his book:
By removing the creative process and leaving only the results of that process, you virtually guarantee that no one will have any real engagement with the subject. It is like saying that Michelangelo created a beautiful sculpture, without letting me see it. How am I supposed to be inspired by that? (And of course it’s actually much worse than this— at least it’s understood that there is an art of sculpture that I am being prevented from appreciating).
If you graduated high school before 2010, you were taught math completely wrong. Only in 2022 were the first students graduating high school that were taught using common core, a half-cocked remedy that fixes a lot of problems, but still leaves a bunch in place. Basically, you were taught things like multiplication tables, told to memorize formulas, etc. etc. Never were you taught the proofs mathematicians used to come up with this stuff. For example, multiplication and division are shorthand methods for addition and subtraction. So when kids are taught only to memorize, when they encounter numbers they have not memorized, they don't know what to do.
That's not how mathematicians do things. Instead, they're focus is on finding proofs for unsolved problems. Knowledge of formulas and how numbers interact are simply tools to go in your toolbox. It's like arguing a court case where you cite precedents. We already have the proof for the Pythagorean Theorem so there's no reason for you to prove it. Yet that's what we have kids do. They practice problems using the Pythagorean Theorem while groaning about "When are we ever going to use this?" This method of teaching is great for creating a workforce that can count change or take measurements. It's not great at creating the people that will discover a unified theory of gravity. In order to make new discoveries, it would help if children were introduced to algebra and calculus a lot sooner than 8th. and 12th. grade (respectively). More importantly, it would help if they were taught how algebra and calculus solved problems that weren't understood (like the exact volume of a water bottle shaped like a bear).
Probably the worst culprit is homework, which is used to get children to accept being available to their employers at all times. When you're off the clock, they want you to perform unpaid labor. Even when that unpaid labor is bullshit other people figured out 2,000 years ago.
This is a tough one. On the one hand, the structure of most public schools and esp. public schools for proletarian children are very dictatorial and designed to develop children into workers. On the other hand, most schools are running on shoe string administration and the amount of oversight in practice is very low beyond a pro forma checklist. In these environments, individual teachers have a lot of room to practice radical care politics. However, they have very little support to do so and many barriers in the way.
I'm gonna say no. Cushy is good, a lot of people wish they had cushy.
From personal experience, I can only advise that you avoid school teaching as much as possible. It’s a horrible, thankless job that puts you in numerous no-win situations. I’ll spare you the full length report, but speak to a number of teachers and you’ll hear plenty of sorry stories. Speak to any ‘good’ teacher and they’ll tell you how much it sucks to care about the job and be powerless to do it well.
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summer vacation isn't as long as you think, what with keeping up with your teaching license and your turn at summer school
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Beware, the job has just as many things that make it hateful as any other, being hamstrung by policy, uncaring incompetent superiors, what/how you may teach
Source: grade school teacher friend who vents to me
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That stinks. My old principal took on the righteous struggle against phones and got swung on by a parent.
I can't say whether this would be a good decision for you to make, and I doubt anyone here could.
However, if education is something you're passionate about, I might recommend looking into adult education to see if it's right for you.
I love my job. It's hard. It's emotionally difficult. My students have been failed by society at every level: they are in prisons, they live in tents, they are parents, they are addicts, they have learning disabilities, they are adults who cannot read full sentences or do basic arithmetic. They are people who have had every opportunity taken from them, but they are showing up, not because parents are forcing them to, but because they want to learn and grow.
Also, there is much less oversight about curriculum, so I have been able to build a curriculum that favours abolitionist viewpoints (which resonates, obviously, with many of my students who have been criminalized since childhood), Indigenous perspectives, queer ideas, and even Marxist teachings. Who will stop me? The schoolboards truly do not give a shit about these people and have already given up on them, and the educational authority of the state (not being specific so as not to dox myself) is not willing to invest the time and resources into actually providing and enforcing guidelines on my curriculum.
What I do is heartbreaking, and tiring, and deeply rewarding. I just helped a woman get her high school diploma in her eighties, who was a grandmother that believed dropping out of school to work and raise her kids had meant that she would never have that opportunity.
Not trying to proselytize, but education is truly such a powerful part of growing communities, and so if you have a feeling that it might be for you, it's at least worth looking into.
How did you end up in adult ed? I am currently an early elementary teacher but would like to work in the environment you describe.
I sort of fell into it by accident. I am the education coordinator for a small grassroots org, and as part of that I started volunteering as a tutor at a local nonprofit that teaches adult literacy. Then that nonprofit started piloting a programme to help adults get their high school diplomas (a thing that no other organization in the city helps with, and until recently was impossible for anyone over the age of 25 as they were considered to have aged out of the high school system). I tutored through the pilot year, and started helping with curriculum stuff, so when the educational authority approved the programme permanently and decided they wanted to roll it out everywhere, this nonprofit became the only place in the city adults can get their diplomas. They contracted me after that to help build the curriculum, and I've been working on that and with students ever since.
So basically: if you're already in education, I recommend looking into whatever organizations in your area actually provide supports for adults attempting to learn. These organizations tend to be overlooked even more than the school districts, and while early childhood education and adult education are not the same, many of the skills are transferable, and a desire to actually be there is already a huge point in your favour. Lots of schools offer certifications (distance courses, diploma additions, professional development) that you can do to bridge the gap in your credentials if necessary, though depending on the organizations needs, that is not always essential to have upfront.
IDK. It's not really reasonable to expect that everyone has a job that makes the world a better place. It's just your job. If being a techbro permits you the time and material comfort to have a dignified existence and you're not doing anything uniquely harmful (like working for the NSA etc) then like, w/e get that money and tithe 10% to a local org or something and use some of the extra time you get to help organize.
If you want to change because you really hate your job and you genuinely want to teach, then yeah cool but don't forget yeah you get summer vacation but you'll also like you say really have to work.
Just don't become a teacher because you think it's A Noble Job and you think it's very important for you individually to feel like you have A Noble Job so you can consider yourself A Good Individual.
I'd further add that you wouldn't necessarily be making the world a better place by becoming a teacher anyways unless you have some reason to believe you'd be a better than average teacher in comparison to other teachers in your area. There will still be the same number of teaching jobs but your inclusion in the labour pool will make other teachers getting a job (who maybe don't have an option to become a techbro) incrementally harder.
I suggest you volunteer/substitute/teach part time before committing fully to it.
Do online tutoring to see if you're cut out for teaching. You can do it for free or you can squirrel away the money and use it while you get your teaching certificate.
i was a high school teacher for seven years. it was hard, rewarding work. and i do not want to go back because my current job also contributes to society and is a tenth the effort
gotcha! just trying to think of what my next moves could be if I ever get tired of teaching.
