Teaching in Math & Science

Factual Questions
1

On one hand, schools are screaming for teachers, especially in math and science. On the other hand, they typically want you to be a degreed and certified teacher. (This seems to be the norm for public schools.) I don’t get it…doesn’t experience in math and science fields count? Why won’t they bend? (WAG: Job security?)

Also, is it true that private schools don’t require certification? I hear they pay less because of this, but doesn’t the state usually require it? If all this is true, why are private schools given an exception?

In summary, is it possible to teach (not just be a substitute) without a degree? Just looking for the facts on what makes a teacher today! - Jinx

2

Private schools can hire pretty much anyone they want to teach. In most states the only regulation of private schools is making sure the students can pass the standardized tests from time to time. With the possible exception of parochial schools, many private schools pay a lot more than their public counterparts.

3

It’s often possible to teach in public schools as well, as long as you’re willing to take some education courses in the evenings or summers at the same time. Do a search on “lateral entry teaching,” and you’ll get thousands of hits.

4

Also, have you considered that it might be hard to persuade someone working in math, science, or engineering to make the movie into high school teaching? Try telling someone who’s making $60,000 a year after ten years of experience who can expect to make $100,000 before they retire that they should take a job where they’ll start at $30,000 and might make it to $55,000 before they retire. And that they’ll no longer be working with intelligent, educated colleagues but with students who have real problems learning and who, at best, might someday in the future be somewhere close to those colleagues in educational level. Yes, some people will do it because they believe in it that much, and they will take whatever education courses it’s necessary to take, but isn’t it obvious why it’s hard to persuade them to do it?

5

I’ll echo what Wendell Wagner says. I’d wanted to be a teacher when I was younger. Yeah, math/science/computers – technical stuff. I was poor, joined the Army and got my GI Bill, got out of the Army and decided I’d had enough of low paying jobs. So I became an engineer in my state’s prime industry after working my way to it. The few occassions I train people with unbending minds isn’t as satisfying as teaching young people would be, but I gotta eat. (bad grammar intentional). Well, it’s satisfying to think I probably make a lot more than the pendejo vice-principal who suspended me a week before graduation.

If I could make the equivilent salary – even cutting me proportionally for the summer vacation – teaching, I’d jump on board. But it ain’t gonna happen (yeah, “ain’t” and “gonna” – I said the sciences; not English).

On the other hand there’s no way I’m going to want to pay higher taxes to pay more money for failing school systems. It’s a catch-22. What are we going to do? Maybe vouchers would bring things up, but we’d be wandering out of GQ discussing their pros and cons.

6

Geez, can’t I proofread at all? I wrote:

> Also, have you considered that it might be hard to persuade
> someone working in math, science, or engineering to make the
> movie into high school teaching?

I meant:

> Also, have you considered that it might be hard to persuade
> someone working in math, science, or engineering to make the
> move into high school teaching?

7

As Fretful Porpentine said, there are programs in most states that can fast-track professionals who want to go into teaching. No matter how good they are at what they do, it is still important that they learn how to teach.

Because someone is knowledgeable in a given field is no guarantee they’ll be able to teach that subject, especially to children. There’s a big difference between knowing something and teaching someone else about it. I know education courses get a bad rap, but I’ve seen good teachers and bad ones at work, and good teaching takes a great deal of effort and skill.

8

You hit it exactly on the head, except the price differential is larger. Without saying what I make, the differential salary I would make teaching High School versus being the Coal Goddess is about $70,000 a year.

Add to this the fact that most High Schools in the area would not hire me because I don’t have a teaching diploma, even though I’ve had so much more math, science, and physics courses than likely any science teacher here, AND have taught a couple university courses.

But still, if you like teaching, you like teaching, and there’s a strong desire to do so in me. But even at a university level I’d still take an enormous pay cut.

9

Better school districts still can insist upon certification for all teaching applicants. Often they do. The major problem of the teacher shortage is not a lack of qualified (certified) people to take the jobs, it’s attrition.

Urban and poor rural districts are desperate and many of the jobs are offer lower pay and harder conditions. Some of these districts have resorted to getting teachers from India and Africa for Science and Math. Brand New teachers (that start September) in Philadelphia have a 20%-40% rate of attrition before February.

Teacher preparation classes are generally poor at preparing teachers. I am not sure that any class where one sits at a small desk will ever prepare anyone for The Big Desk. Student teaching can be great depending upon who the Cooperating teacher is. What could give an uncertified teacher a leg up would be to visit schools and observe teachers. (Call first and tell the school you are interested in volunteering.) Find a good teacher and work with them. This will help prepare you to teach and will give you something to put on the resume. You will also need a BS or plans of getting one.

Good luck. There are only about ten good Math teachers currently working in schools. (I was lucky enough to meet one.)

10

I second everything InternetLegend said here. I am a high school science teacher. I got a degree in physics with the sole intent of becoming a teacher. People think I’m crazy. My parents and friends tell me I should be in another field making more money. But teaching is what I want to do. I’ve been at it for seven years now and I love it! But it’s definitely not for everyone and there really should be more training for teachers about HOW TO TEACH.
I got my degree from a large university with a physics department that is fairly well-respected for its professors and their research. Of all the physics professors I had, only a couple of them could actually teach. They all knew their stuff really well, it’s just that very few of them knew how to communicate it at the appropriate level. (I hate to say it, but this seemed to be a particular failing of my math and science professors–I also took a fair number of liberal arts classes and those profs were by far better teachers.)
Primary and secondary school teachers are no exception. There are those who are very good at it and there are those who couldn’t teach a fish to swim. Being knowledgable–even an expert–in your field isn’t enough. Being a teacher requires certain skills and talents which can be learned and developed, and teaching certificates should indicate that a person has those skills and talents. Unfortunately, many education courses are a joke. Honest to God, I had to take an “Educational Technology” class where they spent a semester teaching us how to use an overhead projector! Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but I did write a letter to the school stating what a waste of time and money that class was. Anyway, my point is that training in the art of “teaching” can be just as important as knowledge in the subject matter you are teaching.
One reason private schools pay less money is because it’s a more attractive teaching job to some people. The students are generally better behaved and they tend to be more serious students. A private school teacher doesn’t have to put up with many of the negative aspects of teaching in a public school. (I will be the first to admit, though, that teaching physics in a public school is an entirely different experience than teaching, say, remedial algebra.)
As others have said, you can look into an alternative certification which would put you in a classroom right away while you work on certification classes on evenings and weekends.

11

I wrestled with this issue last year, when I got out of the Navy, and for me, it came down to money and job satisfaction.

My background: I have a B.S. and an M.S. in Chemical Engineering and Civil/Environmental Engineering, respectively. After serving as a submarine officer in the Navy, I had the opportunity to teach chemistry and physics at the Naval Academy Preparatory School (NAPS). I absolutely loved it.

I had no background* or experience with teaching, but found that I was very good at it. In fact, I was selected as Science Instructor of the Year twice, and Instructor of the Year once. I managed to repeatedly extend my assignment, and ultimately taught there for 7 years (5 years chemistry; 2 years physics).

As far as teaching goes, NAPS was very near an ideal environment. The students were highly motivated to succeed, and very disciplined. The instructors were available for extra instruction (EI) every afternoon for nearly two hours. There were monitored, mandatory quiet study hours in the evening. As an officer, I had nearly unlimited authority over my students, who would lose privileges for even minor infractions. Talking back to an instructor was unheard of.

In any event, all things come to an end, and the Navy was not going to keep an officer in one spot forever. As I exited the Navy, I had to decide what to do with my life.

I considered teaching public high school, but would have to jump through all of the certification hoops, and was basically looking at twice the work for half the pay. (At NAPS, I taught three sections of about 25 students each. For 4 of my 7 years, I had only one daily class prep—the other 3 years merely involved a different level, or “track.”) High school teachers generally teach 5-6 classes a day, with 2-3 daily preps. In addition, in a high school, I’d have to deal with more immature, less motivated students, not to mention their parents.

Private schools pay even less than public schools. (I knew a colleague who was offered a starting salary of $20,000 at a private school, less than 1/3 of his Navy pay.)

Teaching at the university level requires a Ph.D., which I had no interest in getting. Also, the focus at most universities is not teaching, but research.

Teaching at a junior college is usually a part-time endeavor, depending on the number of classes taught. You also generally work semester to semester, never knowing if you will be employed three months in the future.

All of this was being compared in my mind with going into engineering, which is what I ultimately chose to do.

*We did have faculty development programs in the summer, however, that dealt extensively with education theory. They were largely useless, BTW.

12

Around this district, 1/3 of the teachers are provisionally cerified, and rotate every 30 days between schools. This is because they aren’t allowed to use a single uncertified teacher for more that that on a single class, but they are allowed to degrade that class’s standards even further by having serial subs, which is far more disruptive.

13

Wendell, and those in agreement with Wendell: Your point is well taken, but this is NOT the point to this thread. You are off-topic (OT). I’m talking about those already willing to make the change…not those wanting to be persuaded.

I am posting this for clarification to re-hijack back my OP.

  • Jinx
14

Individual schools don’t have a choice about who they can hire. They are following state laws about the certification that a public school teacher has to have. The only way to change this is to have the state legislature vote to change the law.

So why don’t state legislatures vote to change the laws so that people of the sort you’re asking about can teach in public schools? Well, consider the following: Why don’t state legislatures vote to greatly increase the amount of state funding given to poorer schools so that teaching jobs there will be much more attractive to teachers because they pay well? Because the legislators don’t care. Their children don’t go to the poorer schools that are the ones having trouble getting good teachers. They go to better public schools or to private schools. Those schools are not having trouble recruiting good teachers, since they pay better and they are nicer teaching environments.

It all comes down to money. The state legislature could change the law so that anybody whatsoever can teach in a public school and it still wouldn’t change the quality of the average teacher. Good teachers are paid well. Until the voters insist that state legislators increase the funding of public schools (with appropriate tax increases), the quality of teachers won’t improve.

15

In fact, it’s worse for primary and secondary school teachers, since “the appropriate level” is that much further from the teacher’s level. If a prof in a sophomore-level physics class starts going off on a tangent on Lagrangian mechanics, he’s not going to do nearly as much damage as would a junior-high science teacher on the same tangent.

There’s an old joke about the bright but troublesome third grader who, one day, informed his teacher that he was done, and wasn’t going to come to school any more. The surprised teacher asked him what he was going to do with a third grade education. “Teach second grade”.