Probably doesn’t help that misery has company, but most allied health professionals have unpaid internships as well. Back in the day as a PT intern many programs did not have adequate mentored spots near the PT programs so we often took 8-12 week internships in a different part of the state and had to pay our own travel and housing.
All this discussion of the challenges of teaching makes me a little depressed. But then I see my daughter who is inspired and a born teacher out there hustling for a job. She goes in with her eyes wide open (my husband is a retired teacher) and still with the joy and passion she will need to make it happen.
My daughter will take any position that opens up to get started. But she really would prefer working in a school with disadvantaged kids to ones with overly advantaged parents. She finds the students much easier to deal with than some parents. Of course it is all part of the job.
BU required 36 weeks of unpaid clinicals for my daughter, it was financially brutal. She was able to sublet her room and get an Airbnb in Brooklyn for her clinical at NYU, but didn’t get to work her 3 shifts bartending at Fenway, she tried to find something but couldn’t. Even now working she’s doing a neuro residency and is a TA at a local university, she’s thrilled she doesn’t have to pay for the credits but she’s not getting paid to teach either.
this unpaid business is unfair. I had a relative tell me once that for PA school they wanted a year or two of unpaid work. At that point the kids should walk away from these professions. This is also called becoming money minded rather than giving away your sweat and labor to someone else, and hoping for things to become better magically.
Well the challenge is that for many professions including teaching, PT/OT there is a legal requirement to be fully credentialed or licensed to work independently. Thus a mentor teacher or preceptor is required to be present. In my opinion this is a good thing as it ensures that students and patients have an experienced/licensed professional present while working with a student/intern.
I have been a preceptor for many PT interns over the years. It has always been rewarding but also labor intensive on my part. If done correctly, the role of the preceptor is to foster learning and experience in all facets of the profession in the clinical setting while maintaining patient safety and adherence to all of the regulations and quality standards. But by no means are most interns ready to be handed patients on their own until maybe their last few weeks of the internship.
If clinics and hospitals had to pay interns who do not generally improve productivity (let’s face it revenue) no one would take students. I’m assuming the same is true for school districts.
I do love the idea of scholarships for interns and student teachers.
Regarding salary and the chart that was posted up thread. The columns depend on how many units you complete after your bachelors degree. If one starts with low units (ex. Teach for America), they are in a lower column. If one has a masters and 75 units, they can be paid twice the amount that the teacher next door is making.
Life happens and once one starts working, it is more difficult than they expect to go back and get their masters or take additional classes to move up in columns. Also, things like National Board Certification take time and effort but can add a lot to a teacher’s salary in some districts.
People should walk away from these professions. This is the only way these professions can be fixed. Or, the 1-2 years of unpaid work should be rolled into the undergrad degree somehow so that kids don’t pay for both an undergrad and the 2 years for a degree that is not a professional degree, and doesn’t pay like one.
Well, public service is not private industry. Do you want your doctor learning on the job? (Yes, I realize interns and residents learn on the job, but they already have a foundation from med school rotations – what if they didn’t?) Do you want your kids to have a completely green teacher who’s never had any field placements? Who in the (underfunded) school is going to have time to give the new staff the full-time mentoring and feedback they need? What funding and staffing will those positions divert from other areas of need?
In one sense, everyone learns on the job. I usually tell my students that they’re not going to really feel like they know what they’re doing until they have a few years’ experience. But that only works only if they come in with a foundation of education and hands-on training.
Not everything works like private industry, and not everything should. If you think education should, maybe it’s time to step back from this discussion and listen to people who have experience.
It is rolled into the undergraduate degree (or the MA in education, if that’s where someone is doing their teacher training.) Field experiences and student teaching placements are considered coursework toward the degree.
Course credit that they have to pay for. There were days my daughter ran the classroom so that the supervising teacher could go to meetings, test students, etc. This is something they paid a sub to do in classrooms that didn’t have student teachers.
I mean, I was a wanna be sportscaster. That was a ton of unpaid - and then I got hired at a major sports network for $7.50 an hour (early 90s); paid 40 and working more than double that.
When you really want something, you make sacrifices.
Should you? Not necessarily.
Today wanna be sportscasters/journalists have more opportunity but still unpaid. Why? They have a phone so they can practice all they want.
Or you can work at Dunkin by me for $18 an hour.
But you gotta do what you love or what you think you love.
The biggest issue I see here - is managers don’t manage. At least in a sales environment, you hit your #s or get out - and it causes so much turnover. It’s terrible.
A good manager hired someone for a reason so if someone isn’t performing, they should diagnose and train them up.
But some managers today have so much individual responsibility on their own that the art of managing people has become lost.