Teaching in Texas (Austin, Fort Worth: student loans, school, to live)

[TelecasterBlues]

A word of advice for those doing the whole "certified from another state but hate it here and want to move to wonderful/amazing Texas to teach" type of thing.....just learn to appreciate where you are and forget about it, focus your resources and time on building contacts within your local area or continue with your job if you already have one. I was in the same boat right out of college while applying to schools in TX/NC/WV/PA/MD/OH....there's many, many hoops to jump through and general craziness when it comes to getting credentials from one state to the next/applying/filing information/etc. I more or less exhausted myself trying to land a job around Austin/Raleigh/Charlotte and ended up with a local district within my back yard near the WV border due to ties/grant writing skills and nothing else in the way of a serious offer. I was in back and forth small talk with PR people within a couple of Texas districts, but I imagine that's what their job was and there really wasn't much else to it as I was one of hundreds......same thing with North Carolina, as I made some contacts through a job fair that turned into not much of anything when the state hit a massive shortfall for their education budget.

Long story short, I've forced myself to appreciate Appalachia and just be happy with where I am. I wanted Austin or one of the nearby Hill Country communities more than anything and still do as I love that part of America, however Morgantown WV and Pittsburgh aren't terrible fallbacks. If you already have a good job and she's just subbing around...then you may just want to stick with that. The other realistic solution is for you to get hired out of state and work as the backbone with her subbing in your new location just as a way to get you to where you want to be. It's going to be way too tough for her to pull it off in a single year as trying to find a job as a teacher has become something of a 1-5 year excursion for most if not even longer. It's possible for her to pull it off, but it's going to be incredibly hard without having some sort of "in" or a steady start for her employers to go by. My country bumpkin district interviewed 25 applicants in addition to myself during one evening for the position that I got...some being randoms/experienced teachers from other districts/college kids/district subs and workers/etc and I got the thing because I contributed to their grant writing staff and they know that I'd be able to continue with that as long as I'm hired within the district. I imagine they could have easily found another 50 or so people to interview over the next day or two as well if they wanted to...and this was a tiny little district out in the middle of nowhere. I haven't had any contact from other schools about openings since being hired either despite having my papers on file.

Honestly, I think you should try your hardest to make things work for you in a realistic way...if you're in Detroit and hate it, then head to Ann Arbor for example. It may not be your dream, but things are incredibly screwy in this country right now and it may be necessary to put some of those lofty ideas on teh backburner for now if you've got a decent job and she can still sub daily. Something is better than nothing.

[ScoPro]

My DIL is in charge of the substitute teacher program for Austin ISD.

She says her office is absolutely flooded with applicants every semester. She cuts it off after a couple thousand, IIRC.

Subs get paid $80-$85/day

Here's the regular teacher pay scale for Austin:

http://www.austinisd.org/inside/docs/hr_salary_10_11.pdf (broken link)

[loves2read]

for a newbie looking for a job with a BA general business degree -- you are going to be offered basic jobs--min wage jobs really
like working for Enterprise auto rental as a "manager in training"

my take--both of you would be better off joining the air force and trying to get into officer school--
they might take advantage of your girlfiend's music background and put her in band program or something to do with music
you could be in any type of management stream that does not require flight training which is really limited to the "best and brightest" but you can get some decent computer skills, management exp if you stay in long enough to manage a section

or take two years and join the Peace Corps together--find out if you have what it takes in your relationship to make it through marriage--get some skills that make your resume stand out and maybe earn insight into what you want to do with your lives...

[chris0681]

Summer22, Im near Traverse City, Michigan not in the more happening downstate areas.. born and raised in this area and theres really not much here except a lot of trees. We are actually trying near Chicago in Illinois and in areas of Wisconsin as well to land jobs as you mentioned try Chicago, which we both seem to like to visit, but so far no luck. I guess if it comes down to it we could always just relocate near there, with me trying to land a job first. But we are trying other states right now, at least she is getting certified in Colorado, Florida, Wisconsin, and Illinois right now. I realize it may be very hard for her to get hired but we are trying this route first and then going to see what happens after that. It seems that Texas wont work out due to the budget issues for education in Texas and the overpopulation, but what other states should she being a music teacher try? It sounds easy, apply for any job that comes up but like people have said in here, its a long process getting certified in alot of states and costly.

[summer22]

Chris, good luck with your decisions, and I'm sorry to hear about all the expense your gf is putting out for certifications.

I would love to have more certified states too, but I can't afford to go through the process of paying $200 plus for each one right now. For me, I'm relying on my certification in one state to get me the interviews, and picking up substitute certificates (which are simpler and less expensive) in nearby states where I have interest. We REALLY need regional or national teaching certification. It would make things a whole lot easier and level the playing field.

The Chicago area is challenging, but, try the suburbs for substitute teaching opportunities. There are 200+ suburbs (someone in the Chicago forum has a list of them compiled) and I would estimate that in those 200 suburbs there are at least 100 K-8 districts and 100 high school districts. It takes some hard work to make the phone calls and find out who is hiring, but, there should be some opportunities there. I had good luck in 2009-2010 with entering that market as a sub. Where things go from there, career wise, no one can predict with today's market, but, subbing does pay the bills. I've had two or three long-term subbing opportunities, and a friend of mine has had similar opportunities come up. None of them has led to a permanent teaching job, but, they keep your references fresh.

I honestly don't know what kind of job you might land in the Chicago area, but craigslist does seem to be picking up a little bit lately. Maybe try responding to ads from a suburban mom-and-pop business that needs an accountant or manager, and you might have a little less competition. Retail is always a possibility too, and easier to apply to because most retailers have web-based applications. If you're the aggressive, sales type, or can convince them that you are, the apartment leasing companies always seem to be looking for people.

Wisconsin does have a very nice system for teaching applications/job postings which is statewide, and does make things much easier. Out of about six jobs I applied to in Wisconsin last year, I got no callbacks and only got one letter acknowledging my submission. I imagine they were pretty swamped with apps.

[HappyTexan]

This is January..we have 12 months to go. State budgets had problems last year and even had stimulus money to help them out. Not so this year.

I'd sit tight where you are. States are just coming to terms with the types of cuts they will have to do across the board. Maybe by June or so the dust might settle, but now in January there's still too much planning they need to do.

[loves2read]

first of all--you don't HAVE to have your out of state certification changed to TX certification to actually be hired for a job--or certainly apply for one--
there are people who work under temp certification because they get hired and then apply for the recertification
the state just penalizes schools who have teachers who are NOT state certified or certified in their teaching area when they rate them for their TAKS evaluation--so that is why being hired and not being certified is a liability...
it just depends on YOUR desireability for a vacancy--
some people are going to be hired whether or not they are certified because they have qualifications that make their job slot hard to fill--
a coach for sport like wrestling for example--this is sport that is fairly new to TX UIL competition--someone from out of state who has coached winning teams and won at state or regional levels and has a teaching field like math or science would be ahead of the game (IMO) over someone who had only wrestled in school and was a new TX education grad...or someone who had the teaching exp for the vacancy the school wanted to tie with wrestling vacancy but no wrestling exp even if that person was willing to take the coaching job...

people who have general degrees with sort of blank resumes/exp even in fields like special needs or elementary math specialization are just swimming upstream against a huge opposing current---

In the real world of natural selection, there are relatively few salmon percentage=wise who actually make it to the breeding pools each year--and that is the way with getting a teaching job in this current climate

and again I have no clue why there are projections that teaching is a growing field in the coming years--
all indications are that there are plenty of teachers who can't find a job and that the tendency to go to e-learning and other off-site teaching formats is growing--so that fewer teachers will actually be required to teach students
the only teaching jobs that are growing are those in daycares--and those don't even require an education degree...and pay minimum wage to boot
encouraging people to go into teaching actually works to drive down the professional/bankable aspects of the profession because it creates a cut-throat hiring situation

[JS1]

Don't waste your time. I tried getting a job as a high school math teacher in the D/FW area and struck out. The people who say there is a shortage of teachers may as well be saying the Earth is flat.

[crbcrbrgv]

Texas is a red state. Keep that in mind when considering moving here for employment as lately it means "in the red" as opposed to "Republican".

[tititopai]

Hi if anybody can give me a quik help. My wife is a ESL teacher for Secondary and we are thinking to move to Texas, We are looking to areas from Austin to Fort Worth and will like to know if anybody has any pointers into where we should look first and where not to look at all. We have 3 kids ages 12 And soon to be 3 set of twins. Any help would be gladly appreciated.