On 8/22/08, Aspiring Social Studies Teacher wrote:
> First, since I've been subbing for three years already, I feel
> worried that if I continue to just add more years of subbing
> experience, it will be seen as a negative on my application.
It won't be seen as a negative, but I don't think it will be
seen as a positive either.
I
> suppose I haven't done any subbing in this area yet, though,
> since I just moved here, it is a little different.
Not really.
>
> Does anyone have an opinion on whether subbing or working as
> an instructional assistant is a better way to get "in" at a
> school or district?
The two BAD things about working as an aid, and being a
certified teacher are:
1. You are on a year long job interview. You need to be
interview sharp every day and with everyone you talk to. You
need to come into work and impress the pants off of, not only
administrators, but co-workers too. No (or very few) sick days,
and be the model employee times ten, AND you have to do it all
for an aid's tiny paycheck. Why? Because if you're not, and
one person has negative things to say, they'll just roll the
dice with someone they don't know in a field like Social Studies.
2. You're working well below your education and makes it
difficult to achieve point 1. You think you are doing great...
but your disappointment might show through.
> My concern about adding the extra endorsement is that I feel
> sort of philosophically opposed to applying to teach in an
> area that I don't feel passionate about. I became a social
> studies teacher because I LOVE it, and I would feel bad going
> into something like special education just for the ease of
> getting a job.
Well, lets look at that. I've heard this argument before.
First, you are talking about being an aid. Most TAs are special
education aids. There are very few non-sped aids in most
districts because of funding cutbacks, and the few slots that
there are, usually library or computer lab, get taken by the
veteran, "career" aids. So, you're going to be working one on
one with sped kids in an aid roll anyway, and as I said before,
you better be passionate about it to even get considered for a
teaching job. Also, in subbing, you're put whatever and
wherever you're needed, and most of the time you're putting in a
video, not too much passion there...
In Illinois, we're basically destroying the social studies.
See, we don't test them on our high-stakes, state test, so out
they go. More reading, more writing, more math. In my
district, the High School kids only take 1 full credit of Social
Studies and half a year of government to graduate. That's a
year and a half. I don't like it. I love history and have a BA
in Psychology, but its the way just about everyone is going.
Its not on the test... goodbye! I don't like that we are
graduating people who don't know who Winston Churchil is, and
not because they didn't pay attention, but because they didn't
have a class in history, but here we are.
I don't know if you're aware of exactly how terrible the social
studies job market is. Its not just bad, its impossible. There
are no studies available on-line that I can find. During a
master's program, doing a paper on the teacher job market, I did
find a book from the Wisconsin Dept. of Education that, in 2000,
compared grads by certification. I remember the ration being
something like 25,000 newly cert social studies teachers and 700
public school jobs filled in that year (not necessarily new
grads getting those jobs either). That means, in that one state
in that one year, 24300 teachers didn't get jobs out of 25,000
NEW teachers. Now, most of those 24300 probably stuck around
and applied for jobs the next year, and there were probably
about 25000 from the previous year competing with them, and
25000 from the year before that... and don't forget next year.
You get the idea.
Even Las Vegas says they're hiring teachers like MAD..., except
social studies. So, your choice is really either to look for a
new certificate or don't teach. Sorry. I hate to be the jerk,
but thats the way it is.
All kids deserve teachers who are passionate
> about what they do, and I'm afraid I wouldn't feel as
> passionately about sped. Maybe I would though, after I got
> into it.
I do too. However, I think all really good teachers like
teaching KIDS, not history, math, science, etc. The best
teachers are good teachers. While teachers need to know content,
the content focused people who LOVE (insert subject), but can
take or leave the kids aren't usually the best.
Also, from your comment, you might not know exactly how modern
schools are. I'll assume you're secondary since you're content
focused. You WILL teach, as a regular ed teacher, special
education and ESL students included in your classroom. As you
might imagine, they'll be your most difficult students and take
up the majority of your time. You may have a sped teacher in
the room with you, or you might get modifications from a
resource teacher who pops in. However, if by some miracle you
did get a regular education social studies job, you will be
teaching a WHOLE bunch of special ed students.
So, why wait around 10 years trying to get a job? Then when you
finally do, you find that you're teaching sped and/or ESL kids
anyway. You could've been making good money and teaching. I
suggest expanding your passion a bit, or you might find you'll
have to be passionate about working outside of education in a
cubicle.
I really think your decision is either to consider teaching in a
higher need field, or not teach. BTW, the high need fields, in
Illinois at least, are special education, esl/ell, Billingual
(some languages), Math, and high tech sciences like Physics and
Chem. English is almost in the same boat as social studies. If
you're going back to school, get a certificate you can use.
Also, remember that special ed and ESL do teach content. There
are ESL and special educators who teach social studies, and all
the others. As I said, most special ed kids are in the regular
classroom, and you might find yourself co-teaching with a
regular ed teacher in social studies. In my district, there are
far more "inclusion" teachers than there are special ed teachers
in their own classroom.
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