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Some quick background. Early 40s, work in engineering doing fairly non-technical work, have several degrees, including a bachelors in engineering and a Masters in what could be considered social science I guess. So I am capable of math/science and writing, though I'd probably be trying to teach math/science.
I very much dislike my job. I dread going in almost every day. I've broken down what I dislike about it and it is the following...
-The corporate mentality of everything needing to be as perfect as possible in as short amount of time spent in order to maximize profits and efficiency.
-The corporate hierarchy of competing against and burying your peers, hoarding work for yourself and presenting yourself to your superiors properly in order to gain promotions and raises and supervisors pushing their subordinates to be perfect so they can look good and raise their salaries.
-My work has very little meaning and though we spend a lot of our clients $, sometimes we make little progress for them (not our fault always, don't want to get into this).
-Very high stress environment where you get buried for mistakes and supervisors hold them against you for eternity.
-Extreme attention to detail where menial details need to be pored over for hours upon hours, which suits anal retentive personalities, which I am not.
So, at my point in life, I've figured that a less hierarchical, less corporate, more meaningful job would work better for me. One of the ideas was to change careers and the ones I'm looking at are, in no particular order: nurse, social worker, teacher, physical therapist.
For a number of reasons, teacher has been gaining momentum. I am thinking of being a middle school or elementary school teacher in math or science. My state is NJ, but I could also potentially teach in NY or PA.
Things I do not care too much about at this point...
-Pay
-The fact that I'll be a male teacher and any stigma that carries in terms of social stigma or decreased desirability for dating.
-Pay
-Working long hours. I've always been a hard worker. However, anybody who has worked in the corporate world knows that is often not enough.
-Pay (of course, I need to make a little, but I'm talking ~50K after several years of experience being OK.)
At this point in life, I am looking for a job that I can look forward to going into at least once or twice a month. Happiness is what matters.
Lots of people transition into teaching. I have pretty much decided to do the same thing and I have an MBA. Before you start teaching sub to see if you like it (I love it). In many states you can get a sub license without a teacher's license. I went that route.
I found the career assessment tool on onet career assessment very helpful.
Teaching won't be much different than what you have now except you won't have any control over the raw materials you receive. And if those raw materials don't work it will be your fault.
As an engineer you will be over qualified to teach the bonehead Algebra and Math For Living classes you'll have your first several years.
It won't be much different from any of the points that you made about your current job.
You picked 3 states that are saturated with teachers, even in math and science. They also have very different requirements for certification with different testing requirements. Ir would be easier if you picked an area where there is an actual teacher shortage, usually in the low paying states.
I have a similar background to OP except BS & MS in engineering, although I believe my English skills and science skills are strong as well.
One point on certification - elementary education is different from middle school in most states. Some states can have an elementary "specialty", but you end up teaching all subjects is most cases. Middle school is certified more similarly to high school in that the certification tests are by subject matter (ELA, math, etc.). Math for Living style courses are typically high school level where students must complete a minimum number of math credits but are tracked away from strenuous math courses after completing Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II.
In my experience, there is less competitiveness amongst teachers as there is no real advancement opportunities (other than those that wish to go into administration) and the pay scale is fixed. Depending on the school, stress is generally lower. For the most part, you are left to do your own thing each day. Yes, there are school/district procedures and state standards, but there isn't an administrator to monitor you all day. Oftentimes, you won't interact with an administrator at all in a given day. Teachers do work outside school hours of course, but schedules are very fixed. There is obviously lots of vacation time and holidays off. When school is out, you can leave work at work (assuming you prepare enough for the 1st day or 2 back). I was rarely ever able to leave work at work on vacation in other jobs and always returned a mountain of crap when I got back.
The two worlds aren't really comparable. Some people would prefer one over the other. But like "corporate America" there are good schools/teachers/administrators and bad ones just like good/bad companies/employees.
Finding meaning in work is subjective. There are hopefully things you find meaningful in your work, but there are certainly elements that you will find meaningless. Even those intrepid entrepreneurs of the world have to complete mundane tasks such as bookkeeping.
I have a similar background to OP except BS & MS in engineering, although I believe my English skills and science skills are strong as well.
One point on certification - elementary education is different from middle school in most states. Some states can have an elementary "specialty", but you end up teaching all subjects is most cases. Middle school is certified more similarly to high school in that the certification tests are by subject matter (ELA, math, etc.). Math for Living style courses are typically high school level where students must complete a minimum number of math credits but are tracked away from strenuous math courses after completing Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II.
In my experience, there is less competitiveness amongst teachers as there is no real advancement opportunities (other than those that wish to go into administration) and the pay scale is fixed. Depending on the school, stress is generally lower. For the most part, you are left to do your own thing each day. Yes, there are school/district procedures and state standards, but there isn't an administrator to monitor you all day. Oftentimes, you won't interact with an administrator at all in a given day. Teachers do work outside school hours of course, but schedules are very fixed. There is obviously lots of vacation time and holidays off. When school is out, you can leave work at work (assuming you prepare enough for the 1st day or 2 back). I was rarely ever able to leave work at work on vacation in other jobs and always returned a mountain of crap when I got back.
The two worlds aren't really comparable. Some people would prefer one over the other. But like "corporate America" there are good schools/teachers/administrators and bad ones just like good/bad companies/employees.
Finding meaning in work is subjective. There are hopefully things you find meaningful in your work, but there are certainly elements that you will find meaningless. Even those intrepid entrepreneurs of the world have to complete mundane tasks such as bookkeeping.
Definitely not that way in NY/NJ, which is where the OP wants to teach. It can be very cutthroat and stressful. You would be surprised at how much backstabbing goes on among teachers, depending on the school. You can never leave work at work. Lots of work is done at home and in many cases, emails from administrators/parents nights and weekends, just like in the corporate world.
Some quick background. Early 40s, work in engineering doing fairly non-technical work, have several degrees, including a bachelors in engineering and a Masters in what could be considered social science I guess. So I am capable of math/science and writing, though I'd probably be trying to teach math/science.
I very much dislike my job. I dread going in almost every day. I've broken down what I dislike about it and it is the following...
-The corporate mentality of everything needing to be as perfect as possible in as short amount of time spent in order to maximize profits and efficiency.
-The corporate hierarchy of competing against and burying your peers, hoarding work for yourself and presenting yourself to your superiors properly in order to gain promotions and raises and supervisors pushing their subordinates to be perfect so they can look good and raise their salaries.
-My work has very little meaning and though we spend a lot of our clients $, sometimes we make little progress for them (not our fault always, don't want to get into this).
-Very high stress environment where you get buried for mistakes and supervisors hold them against you for eternity.
-Extreme attention to detail where menial details need to be pored over for hours upon hours, which suits anal retentive personalities, which I am not.
So, at my point in life, I've figured that a less hierarchical, less corporate, more meaningful job would work better for me. One of the ideas was to change careers and the ones I'm looking at are, in no particular order: nurse, social worker, teacher, physical therapist.
For a number of reasons, teacher has been gaining momentum. I am thinking of being a middle school or elementary school teacher in math or science. My state is NJ, but I could also potentially teach in NY or PA.
Things I do not care too much about at this point...
-Pay
-The fact that I'll be a male teacher and any stigma that carries in terms of social stigma or decreased desirability for dating.
-Pay
-Working long hours. I've always been a hard worker. However, anybody who has worked in the corporate world knows that is often not enough.
-Pay (of course, I need to make a little, but I'm talking ~50K after several years of experience being OK.)
At this point in life, I am looking for a job that I can look forward to going into at least once or twice a month. Happiness is what matters.
Any opinions?
If you're going to change careers into teaching I recommend aiming for teaching college. We have a glut of teachers right now. Many are not working in teaching because they have either decided the career is not for them or they couldn't find work. I'd make darned sure you can find work before making this switch.
I was an engineer in a former life. I switched to teaching because they were saying there was going to be a shortage of math and science teachers but changes in the way teachers are certified actually created a glut and made people with single subject certs almost unemployable. Here in Michigan it is rare for a school to post for anything other than general science which requires a general science cert. I'm stuck because of my age and having left the engineering profession. Both count against me when interviewing for jobs. Make darned sure this is what you want and you can find an acceptable job before you do this. With two masters degrees I'm unable to make more than $40k/year in this field. My age, prior non teaching career, and certs work against me. When you do find a job you find that districts no longer give step increases so your pay is frozen.
Be forewarned that schools prefer younger teachers and dislike people coming out of industry to teach but they also prefer male teachers so that might wash out for you. Make sure your ducks are in a row before you jump because you may find you cannot jump back.
Fortunately, even though the pay stinks, I landed with a district that supports their teachers where there are a lot of teachers like me. My current position also provides for my job being more meaningful too as I have the opportunity to impact students who come from impoverished backgrounds.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 12-14-2017 at 07:33 AM..
Definitely not that way in NY/NJ, which is where the OP wants to teach. It can be very cutthroat and stressful. You would be surprised at how much backstabbing goes on among teachers, depending on the school. You can never leave work at work. Lots of work is done at home and in many cases, emails from administrators/parents nights and weekends, just like in the corporate world.
Every Principal I ever had cultivated a network of informants among the staff. Rewards were better schedules among other things. Of course, there was some sleeping with the staff issues involved.
Wow you sound so much like me. I had toyed with changing to teaching from IT in my early 40s, and being laid off in 2008 finally did it.
I live in NY and didn't have the time or money to go back for a full teaching degree. Because math and science are "shortage" areas, there are "career change" programs where you can shortcut your way to a middle or high school teaching license for a lot less time and money, called "alternate route to teaching programs". At the time the only such program I saw in NY was the NY City Teaching Fellows which is hard to get into as it has a national rep and following; a friend of mine who lives in CT (I live right on the border) told me about a similar program in CT that was statewide that I got into in 2009. NJ has a program similar to CT and PA is one of a few states that lets you do an alternate route program online from your home (NJ, NY and CT are not).
I have had mixed success, I taught f/t for a year in a very rough inner city school where I held my own but was not renewed and have had a lot of long-term sub gigs of half a school year or so. While it is similar to what others have said here, I'll clarify it a bit more as well as give some other insight:
1) There is a shortage in very tough, inner city areas, less of one in "cities in general" (I don't know what part of NJ you are from but let's call Newark, Camden, Trenton, Paterson and Elizabeth "inner cities" and we'll call places like Jersey City, Bayonne, and New Brunswick more the 2nd category), and a glut in the suburbs, especially the most desirable ones.
2) You will spend more time figuring out how to keep kids interested and motivated than you will doing lesson plans, grading and paperwork. I found it similar to the corporate world in terms of hours, and while you get more time off, I did plenty of work during that, but I found a lot more "control" and "self motivation" in the teaching world than in the corporate world.
3) That said, a lot of the "corporate culture" issues, occur in schools as well, and like someone else said, especially in the NY/NJ/CT tri-state region. Part of how I lost that job I mention above is that "network of informants". Ditto a l/t sub job that was going to go for the whole school year and would've gone perm after that.
4) Teaching has both more and less age discrimination that the corporate world. They prefer younger, but also seek out male teachers among the older, especially at the middle and high school level. On the other hand I think it's an easier career for someone in their 40s and 50s to suddenly get into than most others.
Definitely not that way in NY/NJ, which is where the OP wants to teach. It can be very cutthroat and stressful. You would be surprised at how much backstabbing goes on among teachers, depending on the school. You can never leave work at work. Lots of work is done at home and in many cases, emails from administrators/parents nights and weekends, just like in the corporate world.
That is your experience, not fact. I had a different experience. So what? No need to try and call me out as wrong.
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