@austinmshauri I want to be a journalist and the schools I want to go to have renowned journalism programs. I would need to have access to internships and extensive alumni networks to make it up the ladder to a prominent position in this country. That is not necessary to become a teacher. But this is not about me. I’ll bite my tongue on this from now on. I was just asking the OP a question. He never answered, so it’s over.
@CaliCash, Don’t take it personally. You’re a teenager, so you still have lots of time to learn. I don’t know if journalists make much money, so I’d be careful how much debt you take on to be one.
This is not necessarily true! My boyfriend, who is passionate about journalism, went to a SUNY with me and is doing fine. He’s one of the editors of our school paper and has interned at Entertainment Weekly, Interview Magazine, a newspaper in Israel, and a few other places. He’s interviewed some very famous people, and while I admittedly can’t yet say if this all got him a job (we’re still in college), the school definitely hasn’t held him back. Our friends from the school paper who have graduated are all doing fine too. Did I mention our school doesn’t even have a journalism major?
It’s not about who you know and where you interned so that you can get to a “prominent” position (whatever that is) in journalism. It’s also about you ability to write and to look OBJECTIVELY at issues. Like, not thinking that a student at an elite college is “wasting” their education by becoming a teacher, and having a clue that elementary teacher doesn’t equal professor and that elementary teachers should “aim higher”. I guess you haven’t run into those types who think “anyone can write. Why don’t you aim higher?”
I think teachers don’t get enough credit in this country. I love me a highly educated teacher!
Minor derail here. Reading through this whole thread, with “only a teacher”—I wonder if I should confess I am “only a stay at home mom” with an Ivy League degree. I never really had a career (only worked outside the home for 3 years).
I can, however, do the NYT crosswords in pen, so there’s that.
I know a few journalist, they started when they were in high school, yet while they are now nationally known, I expect they would be thrilled if their income was as stable as a teachers.
Stories don’t care what name is on your diploma. ( although one of them has several best selling books which helps the bottom line)
Education is a very portable field, particularly k-12.
I love that quite a few kids that I’ve watched grow up are now teachers after attending private schools through college graduation. Some are in the private sector, and some are teachers and principals in the urban public district.
I think something the profession (& our country) needs is an influx of people who have had strong educations, particularly without the endless testing that some districts push into the classrooms.
Bring back emphasis on curriculum and on encouraging experienced teachers to develop their own.
Administration is a different career. While I think ALL administrators should be encouraged if not required to volunteer in the schools that their decisions affect, many in our district never are held accountable for making decisions that hurt the classroom & the kids.
We shouldn’t have people making six figures x___, when some schools have 10-20 portables, which reduces playground space, without increasing capacity for restrooms/ cafeteria/gym/ library…
Here’s one for the few here who think teaching is a waste of education–my husband, with a medical degree and a distinguished medical background, teaches biology in a public high school now, and loves it (accept for the idiotic assessment stuff going on now, but that’s a different topic.)
Hard to believe someone would “waste” an education like that, isn’t it?
^doh! except not accept! yeah, I’m educated. 
What I am having a problem wrapping my head around, is that many of the CC parents here are looking for their kids to go to school with the some of best and the brightest; Ivies, elite LACs, Honors colleges, schools where they are at the top of the pool to obtain significant merit $$, but they don’t believe that their kids or the next generation should be educated by some of the best and brightest? Is there a bit of a disconnect here or what?
CaliCash, I have been both a teacher and a journalist. One thing about journalists is that many of them are very open about their salaries, so I have a pretty good idea how much journalists earn. And teacher salaries are public record. If you are going into journalism to make money – well, that’s funny. Very funny.
Many starting journalists earn less than starting teachers. It’s not uncommon for an entry-level journalist to earn less than $30,000/year. Many teachers start at higher salaries than that. In many places, teachers earn more than journalists. Especially if they are nonunion journalists.
Sure, if you grow up to be Brian Williams you’ll earn a lot of money. But even journalists for major metro papers rarely earn above $100,000/year. Teachers in affluent areas sometimes do earn more than $100,000.
The wealthiest journalist I know was a financial reporter who started his own hedge fund and became a millionaire.
I wish more smart kids would become teachers. I wonder if one of the problems is that while teacher salaries are well publicized, most people don’t know what typical salaries are and don’t realize that teacher pay is, relatively speaking, pretty good.
Teaching is also very hard work.
Whereas friends who have flex time- work from home, and have control over how they spend their time when they are actually at work- taking breaks, chatting, surfing the web…aren’t really interested in a career where you never have enough time. First you are responsible for 30 kids or so a day( elementary school teacher), spend a great deal of time on your feet walking around the classroom, but your lunch time may be cut short by recess duty, and you not only have to spend your own money to buy supplies for the classroom but you have meetings at night to attend, which is when you correct papers and plan curriculum.
Of course if you are a journalist overseas, you may be shot at.
( or as a teacher in the USA)
I attended stanford university and became an elementary school teacher. My own mom at one point said, "We never would have sent you to stanford if we had known you would just become a teacher. "
That hurt. But I proved them wrong and my parents eventually regretted that view. They were blown away by what I was accomplishing in the classroom and the lives I was impacting.
My high school allows for students to be on the allocation and hiring boards for teachers and classes, and many of friend who participate actively tell me they’d be more likely to hire a teacher from an IVY (but some emphasized this would only be the case for either high school or an AP). But personally, some of my favorite teachers came from ‘lower ranked’ flagships.
to say that you would give preference to one candidate over another because of their undergraduate affiliation, and not their resume or recommendations, sounds short sighted and immature.
What did they have to do to be on the hiring committee?
I remember how surprised I was when one of my classmates from college told me he couldn’t believe I would “waste” my education by choosing to be a SAHM. A good education is NEVER wasted!!! And count me in with those who said they appreciate a well-educated teacher.
“the ability to make informed, considered decisions on Election Day should be sufficient validation for an education”
-This has nothing to do with higher education, in most UG, students get brainwashed really badly and nothing else.
On the other hand, nobody needs to have a reason for education, we are in free country yet, so if one watns to go to college, why not? Go for it!!! However, keep in mind, even at college, it will be up to student to get educated, the place itself will not accomplish that. In this sense, if one does not want to go to college, the person still can get a great education on his own, but many dorrs will be shot, many places will not hire an employee who do not possess a certain degree.
So, before any decision is made, maybe it is a good idea to have a clear goal for your UG education or lack of it and then educate yourself about the life that one can excpect with and without college education (with diploma, which would require to attend at certain UG or without diploma thru self-teaching)
The debate/discussion is confused, because the question posed is distorted.
The right question is how much is it worth to you to attend a top 25 school in order to prepare to be a high school teacher? Our family has two teachers (relatively young) who both attended top 25 universities. When you are full pay, it has to raise a question. Aren’t you better off (re;out of pocket costs) to attend Ohio State than you are to attend Johns Hopkins if you are an Ohio resident and expect to teach there?
The other question is whether you are better prepared to be a teacher having attended one vs the other. That’s tougher to answer. There’s no doubt that you are more broadly prepared for working life if you don’t spend all four years in the school of education somewhere, but that’s a separate question.
To an extent, the question is answered by the elite schools themselves, which often don’t offer courses of study aimed at producing secondary school teachers. It may be worth it to you, but apparently its not worth it to them.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say “it’s not worth it” to elite schools. But a vocational undergraduate major isn’t part of their mission/strategy. You can’t get a degree in “prelaw” at any of the elites, but a large number of their grads go to law school.
Training future “whatevers” has not been the mission for over a century.
@MiamiDAP wrote: “This has nothing to do with higher education, in most UG, students get brainwashed really badly and nothing else.”
I’m issuing a call for evidence here. This is the kind of rhetoric that gets thrown around a lot until people start believing it’s true, but it’s actually a pretty extraordinary claim, and thus requires pretty strong evidence.
Not a waste of education if you teach IB/AP programs at any educational institution.