Why can't I do this? (job, companies, pay, interest)
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I'm a straight A student in the master's program for Education, and I've only been able to find work as a substitute teacher!
I'm so tired of failing. Why can't I do anything right?
The problem, from reading your posts, seems to be you always want someone to teach you everything. You don't want to learn anything on your own. You don't want to *do* anything without the approval of some educational this or that.
I told you before it's time for you to go out and do something! Stop looking for the answers in a book. Go out and find the answers by *figuring* them out yourself!
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,936 posts, read 37,160,747 times
Reputation: 40641
Quote:
Originally Posted by kmb501
I almost feel like I'm being punished just for trying this. What kind of sane profession gives its trainees virtually no real training and expects them to be able to thrive or even perform adequately?
Virtually every profession, actually.
Teachers get a lot more real training with student teaching than most professions.
Last edited by timberline742; 07-30-2014 at 07:51 PM..
I would start by asking why I was fired from my other jobs? Is it your presentation? Did you consider the work beneath you? Use the substitute teaching to build your confidence. Ask if you can observe a successful teacher and analyze why there are successful. No one is going to hand you a job, you need to work for it.
I almost feel like I'm being punished just for trying this. What kind of sane profession gives its trainees virtually no real training and expects them to be able to thrive or even perform adequately? There is a lot the teacher training program left out, including the idea that you need a certain kind of personality to even succeed in the profession. I know why I like teaching. I like interacting with kids and explaining things, but I don't know how to effectively lead discussions, assign projects, match student names with faces, grade writing assignments, etc., things I expected to learn in school.
Knowing how to effectively lead discussions and match peoples faces to their names are soft skills you need to have in any job. Organizational, multi-tasking, working under pressure and working with difficult personalities are skills you need for every job. No job is going to sit down and walk you through the above mentioned skills set because it is up to you to develop a system that works for you.
If you are not working with nasty kids that try your patience, you will be working in an office with nasty adults that try your patience every day. How will you handle them? Work in general is a pressure cooker and you need to develop the personal skills to navigate the land mines at EVERY job.
Well just because you meet the education requirements for a job doesn't mean you have a right of entry into that career field. Finance majors certainly aren't entitled to careers in investment banking.
I am not sure where you are located, but have you thought about applying to inner city schools? Teaching profession supply and demand. There's a huge supply of teachers, with more every year, but limited available positions. There's not as much demand to teach in inner city schools - try proving yourself there.
I'm a trained teacher (A's in my education courses too) but I hated the actual practice. A degree in teaching isn't what teaching is really about - it just compliments it. If you aren't a good teacher then it is OKAY to seek another path.
A lot of your complaints are general work related though, it sounds like you are very academic but need basic work skills. Training is not meant to be hand-holding and many academics forget that work is the real classroom.
I almost feel like I'm being punished just for trying this. What kind of sane profession gives its trainees virtually no real training and expects them to be able to thrive or even perform adequately? There is a lot the teacher training program left out, including the idea that you need a certain kind of personality to even succeed in the profession. I know why I like teaching. I like interacting with kids and explaining things, but I don't know how to effectively lead discussions, assign projects, match student names with faces, grade writing assignments, etc., things I expected to learn in school.
It sounds like it wasn't a very good program. Classroom management is the key to teaching. You can know everything about a topic but not have a clue about how to teach it to a group of diverse personalities and maturity levels. You may not have the right personality for that.
A quality school would have required you to have a certain amount of student teaching, but before that you would have had several classes in which you would make up your own lesson plans, practice leading discussions, grade assignments, etc.
It sounds like it wasn't a very good program. Classroom management is the key to teaching. You can know everything about a topic but not have a clue about how to teach it to a group of diverse personalities and maturity levels. You may not have the right personality for that.
A quality school would have required you to have a certain amount of student teaching, but before that you would have had several classes in which you would make up your own lesson plans, practice leading discussions, grade assignments, etc.
What was your undergrad major??
I'm guessing I sort of did it backwards. I majored in English / Language Arts and Secondary Education as an undergraduate. After I graduated, I found out that I would have been better off getting a degree in Elementary Education instead. Elementary Education majors work a lot on lesson planning and classroom management, while perhaps they assume that Secondary Education majors have already had Elementary Education experience and so perhaps do not work a lot with us on it. I wish someone would have clued me in to that before I signed up for it and finished the program! To avoid further confusion, I just majored in ESOL for my master's. I still don't have a lot of the lesson planning and real classroom experience, but at least I'll have more options when I graduate.
I'm guessing I sort of did it backwards. I majored in English / Language Arts and Secondary Education as an undergraduate. After I graduated, I found out that I would have been better off getting a degree in Elementary Education instead. Elementary Education majors work a lot on lesson planning and classroom management, while perhaps they assume that Secondary Education majors have already had Elementary Education experience and so perhaps do not work a lot with us on it. I wish someone would have clued me in to that before I signed up for it and finished the program! To avoid further confusion, I just majored in ESOL for my master's. I still don't have a lot of the lesson planning and real classroom experience, but at least I'll have more options when I graduate.
Elementary and secondary education are totally different, and one does not lead to the other. Your degree track sounds like that of a lot of teachers I know. You should have learned plenty about lesson planning with basically TWO degrees in education.
Like I said before, you need to be supremely motivated and a relentless salesperson to start your own business. I would look for an academic job in an office setting. Or you could apply at a commercial tutoring center like Kumon.
I'm a straight A student in the master's program for Education, and I've only been able to find work as a substitute teacher! I've gone to several interviews and failed the interview questions miserably, because the questions were actually geared toward people who actually have classroom teaching experience. I feel lost in the classroom, but I tell myself it is because I haven't worked there. Everything I've been trained and taught to do I do well. Substitute teaching, though, the only paying job that has been offered to me, is killing my enthusiasm for the whole profession. I'm so tired of failing. Why can't I do anything right?
Although I've been able to go to school and make good grades, I haven't been able to hold down a job, any job. I was fired from my position as a food service worker before I started college; I was unable to find anything in work-study, even though plenty of people were hiring, and now, even with almost a master's degree, I struggle to find a job that will actually pay anything. What on earth am I doing wrong? Why is it so hard for me to find work? To put this into perspective, I know someone who has no college education and an okay personality but suffers from bi-polar disorder, and she has an easier time finding paying work than I do. What is wrong? I didn't do all of this work to sit around unemployed my entire life. I have dreams and aspirations, too. Why can't I find a path toward fulfilling them?
I too have an education degree. BS in elementary education. I have found it difficult to find good paying work as well. I currently work a retail job I hate, but have been looking for something else. Education degrees are a dime a dozen these days. If you want a job that pays anything, get in line with the rest of us and keep looking.
Meanwhile, I would just take any job you can and learn from it. If you're a substitute teacher, have you thought about bartending or waiting tables at night? I am considering that myself.
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I wish someone would have clued me in to that before I signed up for it and finished the program! To avoid further confusion, I just majored in ESOL for my master's. I still don't have a lot of the lesson planning and real classroom experience, but at least I'll have more options when I graduate.
