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<p>Even the interested students, or perhaps especially the interested students…</p>
<p>Forty years later, when you’re cleaning out your classroom at the end of your track, putting tidbit things into boxes, throwing old course material away, with your wife/husband waiting at the parking lot with an old Volkswagen to take you home, you’ll gaze over the empty campus, and wonder what more you could have done with your life.</p>
<p>I love how we’re all encouraging musicallylatin to completely ignore her interest.</p>
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Now that’s some good deterring!</p>
<p>The only things HS kids want from their teachers are no homework assignments, multiple make up quizzes/tests, easy A’s, and great recommendations no matter how much you hate them. You could help all of them a bit by giving out A’s or you could help one student every few years get into their dream colleges by challenging them and guiding them along the admission process.</p>
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<p>Well that’s what she told us to do…</p>
<p>I’ve actually considered this too. I’m a really good math tutor, and a lot of times I teach things better than my teachers. I just feel like all of the smart people don’t become teachers, and so we’re left with incompetents teaching our future leaders. I know I can do a much better job than my calculus teacher, who does squat right now.</p>
<p>My English teacher said that she went into teaching because she was appalled at the quality of teaching, and felt she could do so much better. Her parents apparently are still upset.</p>
<p>I know that I probably won’t end up doing it in the end, but maybe I’ll tutor part time or something.</p>
<p>Most of the teachers that I know became teachers for a variety of similar reasons:
They are lazy and wanted an easy job (the bare minimum effort you can put into teaching is VERY low)
Job security (it is almost impossible to be fired, flip side is that this means that you will have a lot of incompetent co workers working with you because they can’t be fired).
They weren’t exposed to the private sector/other jobs
They are imitating adults that they admire</p>
<p>Whatever teachers say about teaching being a stressful job is a load of BS. They aren’t under constant pressure to perform or be fired. They have no quotas to make, or goals to reach. They have no competition. The vast majority are government sponsored baby sitters.</p>
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<p>Wow, what type of school do you go to? :P</p>
<p>You should try a teaching internship. I did one last year with the Breakthrough Collaborative, which is a pretty cool organization. I had two small 7th grade science classes and one slightly larger Latin class. I learned I could never ever be a teacher. When I find out a student is both unintelligent and uninterested, I give up. Now if a student is only one of those two things. I will gladly work with the kid. But if he or she is both, I’m not going to spend any time. I guess I’m not that good of a person.</p>
<p>Teaching is sort of fun though. Setting up all the activities, doing guided notes, playing around, knowing <em>all</em> the student drama (my fave part was collecting notes and reading them aloud in the teacher break room afterward). But I got annoyed with a lot of the stupid procedures. Even though my early bell science class sucked, I held out for them, I liked (most of) them, but I couldn’t hold out for some of the stuff we had to do and some of my annoying colleagues.</p>
<p>One thing I have to say, please don’t go into teaching to save kids. And if you are going to watch an inspirational teacher movie, please don’t watch one where some teacher takes on the “white man’s burden” and lifts a bunch of ghetto minority kids out of a rut as no teacher of their own race could. No teacher is a savior, especially not ones with preconceived notions of their own importance.</p>
<p>Hey, I kind of wanted to be a high school teacher too. And then I got a job at Kaplan, and long story short, standing in front of a class for three hours lecturing on basic math and reading really sucks. Well, I actually kind of liked the math part, but for the writing section it really sucks having to explain why answer choice (E) is better than answer choice (D)…it’s kind of like having to give an oral presentation every day, except on really boring stuff. After an hour you get really tired. I imagine it’s easier if you’ve taught the class before.</p>
<p>But hey tutoring, now that’s kind of fun.</p>
<p>Kind OT: Has anyone here had a job as a tutor with some company? How would you go about doing that?</p>
<p>Millancad- How did you go about doing that. That might be just the thing I need. :)</p>
<p>[Welcome</a> to Breakthrough Collaborative](<a href=“http://www.breakthroughcollaborative.org/]Welcome”>http://www.breakthroughcollaborative.org/)</p>
<p>That’s where Millancad taught. (Or, rather, the company :P) Applications for this year are closed, but you can apply from HS Sophomore year to Undergrad Senior.</p>
<p>It looks really nice. I’m going to have to remember this in 2 years!</p>
<p>I would really like to be an English teacher in the same sense some of my really good teachers were teachers to my classmates and me, but I fear that if it doesn’t work out the way I want it to, I won’t be happy. Like I can’t imagine I’d be as happy teaching uncooperative students as I would be teaching the kids at my school, who for the most part, actually pay attention in English if the teacher is okay.</p>
<p>Think about your teachers. Do you really want to be any of them?</p>