But aren’t most industries moving away from unpayed internships?
We all learn on the job the first time. The medical people learn as interns. The surgeons learn as fellows. The teaching profession needs to figure out how it trains people without asking them to do something on their own and come in later.
I think you’re not paying attention. No one’s asking teachers in training to do that. Field placements/internships/student teaching (different labels in different programs) are all part of the degree program and involve a team of people – including the instructor/supervisor of the placement, and the collaborating teacher – to mentor, observe, and offer feedback. Students do not graduate or get certified without these experiences. My students go through three 45-60 hour field placements before a full semester of student teaching. They get course credit for each placement. The complaints from students have to do with the fact that these placements are similar to other kinds of internships or even subbing, but they are not only unpaid but students have to pay (tuition) to complete them. I am sympathetic to the idea that this feels like unpaid work, but they are getting a degree and endorsement out of it.
Obviously students continue to learn on their first jobs. Just like doctors, lawyers, and anyone else who does something that requires years of expertise and experience beyond the conferral of the degree.
This fact has been explained multiple ties in this thread. You ought to read those posts rather than hammering away at a point that has been refuted with explanations.
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Pardon me if I see this in black and white that those internships as unpaid, and a mandatory part of the system. And I find this part of the system as being unfair.
There are fields besides teaching that require unpaid internships, rotations, etc. This is part of the training and is required to enter the profession. It is included in the tuition.
These individuals continue to learn once they graduate, but it is not realistic or safe to think that students can enter a school, clinic, hospital etc without some degree of training…either during undergrad or professional school.
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You do see this as black and white, and that’s really a problem with your perspective and unwillingness to learn from people with expertise, not with the system.
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Student teaching, health care student clinical experience, etc. are not that conceptually different from something like engineering design project courses or art studio / performance courses (“learn by doing”).
The main difference is that the work the student teacher or health care worker does provides a service to others, since it probably is not realistic to have simulated or hypothetical K-12 students or patients for these “learn by doing” experiences. However, the training and supervision required means that the student teacher or health care worker ends up being a cost rather than a benefit to the organization – I.e. it costs the organization more to supervise the student teachers or health care workers doing the services than to have teachers or health care workers provide the services without any student teachers or health care workers.
However, there are certainly kinds of work where entry level jobs are unpaid internships that are not considered part of any educational or credentialing process needed for the job. Some of these may be legally questionable, as well as being barriers to entry against those who do not come from family money.
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Please lets get this thread back on topic which is specifically about education majors in the job market and not about internships, student teaching, unpaid training, etc…
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Education majors could easily find a job in my rural CA school district. The district has been hiring 10-15 teachers a year from the Philippines for the past 3 years to fill vacancies. They have 3 year ‘cultural exchange’ visas that can be extended up to two more years and they are considered ‘fully credentialed’ which makes our numbers look better to the state. It is a short term ‘solution’ to a larger issue of recruiting teachers to rural areas.
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In NJ you are allowed to work as a classroom aide while also completing your student teaching. There are colleges that are set up to make this work, and I know 2 students currently doing this.
It is easier to get a job if you are certified and willing to work in special education, but not everybody is wants to do that type of work.
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In CT, I believe all elementary teacher training programs are now double major with special education, or at least have significant special education courses required. Really, folks with special education interest/experience have better job application outcomes than those that don’t…at least that has been my experience and observation.
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It’s likely better too, for job opportunities.
My daughter was first offered Special Education and while it didn’t not interest her, she felt, as a new teacher without training, it would be tough. She was fortunate that they moved her to second grade (at her request) before starting.
I’m not sure about the in state thing (going where you want to teach) because she doesn’t have an education degree and only needed to take a year of one night a week classes at a local state school (where a poster here is a prof) to get certified. And it didn’t seem that complicated academically - and she got certified.
If she had a teaching degree, I’m guessing it’d have been easier - but that’s likely a state by state thing.
There’s definitely teaching jobs out there but as some of these states (mine included) are funneling money away from public schools, it can’t be a good thing for the districts in general.
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I just looked up our district’s elementary school starting salaries - low $50’s. I know a number of young people who have been hired in the past few years by this and surrounding district. Haven’t heard of any education majors not employed.
High school is different- helps to take a long term sub appointment and be able to coach a sport. Gets you a foot in the door.
My friend’s daughter just started her 11th year of teaching- she started at a low income high HS teaching a subject she did not want to teach- moved to a middle school in high paying district and for the last 5 has been at our very good HS , teaching history and now makes just over $100k. When she had a baby she could have taken off 1 year ( only did 1/2).
When she was an assistant coach for a sport she made an additional $5k. She loves her job.
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Or coaching chess, debate, model UN, Wall Street Challenge, etc. And for an old HS friend of mine- bus para before and after school. She said it was the worst part of her day by far, but she’s about to retire and it boosted her pension significantly so she’s now decided it was the BEST part of her day! I think there are some districts that don’t allow teachers to “double dip” as paras, but if they do, it’s a nice add-on for the years you’re doing it- and apparently a GREAT add-on once you’ve hit your number!!!
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I’m assuming I’m the poster you’re referring to here (unless I have a colleague on this thread and don’t know it!). Your daughter is actually a case in point – she did her licensure work here, in Colorado. We have lots of post-BA students who either have moved here right after college or have decided on a career change, and as long as they do their licensure work here, it’s easy to get a job here. For most, it takes 1-2 years, depending on the program and required field placements. So the point is more where you do the teacher training than where you do the BA degree, although for most people, that’s still the same place.
gotcha - yeah she’s part of TFA and went Tuesday nights for a school year at your school but they were flexible with missing and she worries about a lot of things, but that part wasn’t stressful for her.
Obviously, I don’t know the ins/outs of an education major but her “education” education, even during certification, didn’t seem substantial.
But I think that’s the allure of these kids filling gaps.
It’s hard to understand that people are saying teachers can’t find jobs when you have programs and not just TFA, that are being utilized by school districts that cannot find people.
But it’s like any job - you have to go to where there’s an opening. So perhaps many not finding jobs are unwilling - but that’s no different than any graduate with any major/desire. You have to bend to the employer; not necessarily vice versa.
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Ok, TFA is an entirely different thing – they offer enough training to get their teachers into local schools wherever they are, usually with an alternate route to licensure (I’m actually surprised it took a year – hopefully the six-week crash course they used to use is a thing of the past). Most people don’t go that route. Had your daughter gone the typical post-BA route here, it would have been a program of classes and field placements, but it still wouldn’t have mattered where she’d gone to college because the certification piece would have been here, according to state requirements.
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Very true. We have plenty of openings in rural districts, but most people don’t want to live there (and the pay there is quite low, even for the low cost of living in those towns).
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But economically all jobs aren’t equal. An engineer goes to a less desirable place they are still making what, 70-80k? The way we fund public education teacher salaries are dependent on the local tax base. Which is low in rural areas. So the teacher is making maybe 40, 45k. In a city you can get a few roommates, rent an apartment in a dicier neighborhood, take public transportation and make it work. In a rural area there are very few rentals and while not as expensive as NYC say they still aren’t cheap. There are few other young people looking to share so you’re stuck paying the full rent on your own. You need a car and need to pay for gas, repairs, insurance, etc. Things like electricity cost just as much or more. Food, especially decent food, is paradoxically more expensive given transportation costs and lack of turnover (not talking restaurants, just basic groceries - my friends from NYC are always shocked at the prices in my rural grocery store. Plus in rural areas you don’t necessarily have the discount stores within a reasonable area). So at some point the economics just don’t work unless you have family in the area you can live with or a spouse /partner who also has a decent job.
And not just an opening geographically.
Teaching a third grade inclusion class. You’ve got kids with a full time aide who are non-verbal and who rotate in and out during the day for their mandated services; you’ve got kids who are off the charts intellectually but who use a wheelchair and you’ve got to know how to navigate classroom dynamics with that; you’ve got two or three kids who do not speak English at home and are having trouble reading, and to round it off, you’ve got a handful of kids who are living in a nearby homeless shelter and are transferring in from various other schools- some with NO paperwork from the previous schools. And then the third week of school a kid in foster care shows up-- parachutes in from somewhere else, social worker can’t tell you if the placement is temporary/emergency or a few months or maybe permanent, who knows?
Our schools reflect our society. And the above (a real scenario btw) isn’t always what a new teacher is ready for/can handle. The content prep AND the pedagogy doesn’t prepare a new teacher for the challenges of our society.
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