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I'm perplexed. Why would a school, of all places, expect someone to disobey the instructions prominently displayed on their website?
If a student flagrantly violates the principal's rules, he gets tossed into suspension. But teaching applicants are supposed to do the opposite, making them and the principal a bunch of hypocrites starting August 24?
I don't doubt what you are saying, I'm just saying that the system makes absolutely no sense.
I went to a seminar by an HR rep who said that if you are certified to teach math, you can pretty much just leave the seminar now because you don't need his advice on how to get a teaching job. I stuck around anyway but relied on his advice that you don't need to sneak around the rules and brownnose the principle. How wrong I was.
On the bright side, my business job is the best job I have ever had, so I'm staying. I don't want to hear schools whining "we're desperate for math teachers" because it only means that they are so full of bull crap it's coming out their nose. If I hear that again, I may have to write a letter to the editor to straighten them out.
p.s. I was told by a career counselor that the way to get a job in the business world is networking, that applying on-line rarely results in a job. Yet the job I got was from applying on their web site. I tried to network the best I could but I don't know a lot of people. A company representative contacted me, arranged an interview, and two months from uploading my resume, I got my company badge. Hmmmmm....
Clearly, everybody has set you up by giving you the worst possible advice.
It is a tribute to your raw ability and perceptiveness that you have a job and have overcome the conspiracy against you.
I'm perplexed. Why would a school, of all places, expect someone to disobey the instructions prominently displayed on their website?
Actually they expect a very large majority to follow that rule and it helps them sort out most of the people who are not seriously looking for a job, those who only submit an application online.
My daughter's district had well over 2000 applications filled out and had approximately 120 positions, according to their district report sent to the teachers.
So, lesson learned, if not for you, then for prospective teachers, to not expect much from just an online application or job fair.
For some perspective:
In the Spring/Summer of 1983 I applied to forty three different PA school systems for a full time teaching job (nearly 10% of the total systems in the state), including the ones I had been substituting for. I got exactly zero interviews.
I am livid. I blew $640 on tuition and TX state exam fees (just the down payment on the total tuition of $4,000) and three weeks of time to get a math teaching certificate.
I was told that schools are desperate for math teachers. If you want to teach history or English or elementary, your chances are slim, but if you are certified to teach math or science, you will get multiple job offers.
That is a bunch of B.S.!
I applied to every school district in Tarrant County TX (Ft. Worth) and got one job interview and no job offer. The idiots couldn't even be bothered to send me a rejection letter, which is really sad after interviewing with them and being told there's only one other candidate. Kudos to Crowley ISD for sending me a rejection letter and thumbs-down to the rest of District 11 for totally ignoring me.
I got a job offer in the business world in July and I am so glad I didn't turn it down hoping for a teaching job.
Today was the first day of school, so that means it's officially over. If a school calls me because the person they hired walked out, I will tell them "you had your chance, now you have to live with it, bu-bye".
From now on, when I am presented with an option to vote for a tax increase for more money for public schools, I am voting NO. These idiots are full of crap and there is no reason for us taxpayers to throw good money after bad.
I was advised that I would have better chances at a job if I applied to a rural school district for $28,000 a year. Yeah, I'm going to move away from my family to earn peanuts teaching a bunch of hicks.
In the business world, I make the same amount of money that first-year math teachers in the Dallas/Ft Worth metroplex make -- 50 big ones.
Obviously the teacher salaries are too high if they are getting way more applicants than positions. But if the schools cut teacher's pay, the teachers would arrive to school with torches and pitchforks.
If schools were privatized we would not have this problem. As long as schools are government-run, the taxpayers will be taking it in the shorts and the children will suffer because of the schools' ineptitude.
Enough is enough!
P.S. Don't tell me it's because I'm too picky. My mother has a Texas teaching certificate in math and refuses to teach because she doesn't like anyone who isn't white. She would get priority over anyone (like myself) who doesn't have any experience in the classroom. I spent a week at Trimble Tech High School in Ft. Worth, which is something like 90% non-white, a place my witch mother wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I had a wonderful time and was able to connect with the students and help them learn some Algebra I and Algebra II. I actually shed a tear when the week was over because those students needed me (they said 'please come back next week'), and I desperately wanted to help them avoid dropping out and selling drugs, which is their only realistic choice if they don't graduate.
With the snotty attitude of "teaching a bunch of hicks," you don't DESERVE to be a teacher.
OK, I was being a little mean. What I really didn't like was that I'm expected to move 100 miles away and make almost half less because there aren't any jobs for me in a huge metro area that whines that there aren't enough qualified teachers. Huh? I want to teach but I have limits.
I don't hate hicks, and I don't hate black people and mexicans either. I thoroughly enjoyed my short time in the black/mexican classroom. I would probably enjoy a classroom of hicks as well, if any such thing existed in the metroplex, which it doesn't.
You people who get offended by terms like "hick" and so on need to get a life. I can be PC at work but I refuse to be PC 24/7 and if that makes me a bad teacher, then count me out. I don't think that is the case, but it seems like some people are just looking for a reason to blame the whole nonsense of "we're so desperate for math teachers" all on me as if I'm responsible for the B.S.
This is where the "teacher shortage" perception comes from, but I don't blame you for not accepting a bad position.
I graduated last spring and I don't have a teaching job. I know that I could walk into certain schools right now and start teaching if I wanted to (I was offered jobs, but they were not acceptable). There are very poor rural areas that have underqualified people teaching because they can't get anyone to move there and there are thousands of qualified teachers who want a job, but not bad enough to move to B.F.E. to teach.
You, and anybody preparing to work in the field really need to understand that alleged teacher shortages really aren't universal. They're not universal by subject matter, as you seem to realize, but they're also not universal by region, either. If you truly want to work in this field, go where the jobs are. Perhaps they're simply not in your area. You either move to where the work is, or, if you're unwilling to do that, you find another line of work. If you don't want to teach THAT badly, that's fine. But don't make it about some system screwing you over, your own choices play a role.
When people said "we are desperate for math teachers" they didn't qualify the statement to read "we are desperate for math teachers in rural school districts that pay state minimum salaries". Otherwise I could have saved myself $640 and a bunch of time.
Yes, I would like to teach but I AM NOT GOING to move away from family to do so! There are 1.75 million people in Tarrant County, with student populations that range from all white in snotty Trophy Club to 99% non-white in ghetto Fort Worth. Unlike some people, I'm not picky, and actually I prefer inner-city.
Let's say you want to be a lawyer. You are told lawyers in big cities make $150,000 a year and they're "desperate for lawyers". Then you discover that your choices are to move to a small town and make $40,000 a year or be a lawyer in a big city representing people who don't pay or doing pro bono work pursuant to the 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
You might re-consider going to law school, right?
Yet according to some people on this forum, you are clearly not meant to be a lawyer if you aren't willing to go to great lengths to be one.
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