<p>My sister doesn’t have an account on here so I’m writing for her.</p>
<p>She is graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology (her thesis is on bullying) and a master’s degree in elementary education and desperately wants to live and work in New York City. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>As of now, NYC has a freeze on hiring. Her only option is to look at private schools or to reverse commute to nearby suburbs. The only catch is that very few of them are hiring either and the competition is fierce.</p>
<p>It would probably be best if she enters the teaching field elsewhere and comes to NYC when things have changed and she has some experience. </p>
<p>Good luck to her!</p>
<p>I have two friends whose kids are both working as NYC school teachers with only a year or two’s experience. Both are worried about keeping positions next year. Without a special ed degree or a math/science degree, getting a new job could be hard. (They’re both also relying on parents who happen to still have apartments that the kids can use since housing is so incredibly expensive.)</p>
<p>My daughter managed to get a job teaching in a charter school in NYC starting last fall but was given a contract before the hiring freeze took effect. Her good friend who got a masters from Columbia Teachers college searched for a job anywhere in NYC - public and private and was unable to get a job since she started looking after the freeze.</p>
<p>Check out the NYC teaching fellows program. My daughter is currently in the program and is teaching in the Bronx, she had to pound the pavement looking for work, even being in the program. She is teaching 5 science classes in middle school (grades 5, 6, 7) and it’s pretty grueling and the children have some discipline issues, however she enjoys the challenge. She graduated in May 2009 with a biology degree. The program also includes the opportunity to earn a Master’s Degree in Education, which your sister already will have, anyway, but she can check their website. The school you attend depends on the bourough where you are assigned; for the Bronx,the school is Lehman College.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The politics of the NYC Dept. of Education are so Byzantine that it defies imagination. It was very, very difficult this year for any new teacher to get hired in NYC, and the ones who were hired may have come exclusively from Teach For America or the NYC Teaching Fellows program. People who actually prepared themselves to be teachers in college got the short end of the stick.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t think you can enter the Teaching Fellows program if you already have an M.Ed. It’s sort of beside the point.</p></li>
<li><p>If you want to stay abreast of what’s happening, I strongly recommend gothamschools.org. It’s not for the faint of heart, however. Follow it for a few months and you will be in utter despair.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Right now there is even a freeze on getting a substitute teaching license in NYC. It is really going to be hard to get a job in common branch (elementary ed) because there are a glut of teachers. Right now the city is looking to layoff teachers. Since the current contract has a no layoff clause, the first to go will be teachers who are not fully certifed in their license area. As others have mentioned, there are shortages in the following areas: </p>
<p>•Science
•Special education
•Speech improvement
•Math<br>
•Spanish
•English as a second language
•Bilingual education</p>
<p>Perhaps she could look into taking additional courses to get either a sped or esl extension.</p>
<p>IS your sister fluent in another language? If yes, I think she should consider getting a masters in bilingual school counseling, bilingual school social work or bilingual school psychology. these are shortage areas where the DOE will pay for her to attend school.</p>
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<p>hope this helps</p>
<p>New Jersey’s new Governor is proposing some long overdue changes to state/county and municipal workers pension plans. And they are most are likely to adopted. It is anticipated that there will be a flood of employees, including teachers, who will put in for their pensions prior to the changes becoming effective. Hey, it’s only across the river.</p>
<p>Do you know when these changes are to take place?</p>
<p>[HAI</a> - Prevention Education](<a href=“Unveiling the Mysteries of Genetic Disorders”>Unveiling the Mysteries of Genetic Disorders)</p>
<p>These guys are very cool. They do anti-bullying workshops in NYC public schools.</p>
<p>I have absolutely no idea if they are hiring. I post them here as an example of being creative to apply her credentials within the nonprofit sector. Seek out independent agencies that serve the schools with various special programs, in other words.</p>
<p>There are no easy solutions here. Is it possible to try to apply around 90 minutes upstate from Manhattan and just come in on weekends? Some of the poorer rural school districts such as in Sullivan or Ulster Counties might be a starting spot within NYState.</p>
<p>That sounds interestting since she is an “expert” on bullying.</p>
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<p>No, I do not</p>
<p>Hey, my brother wants a teaching job in NYC…still. He mentors teachers, works with new, inexperienced teachers to help them improve their work… Guess what, he’s being phased out. His school has too many special needs kids, who seem to be a drag on statistics and No Child Left Behind. Bloomberg’s solution; close the school and scatter the special needs kids to the winds. The replacement charter school won’t have to take these kids either.</p>
<p>Don’t bother looking for a job in the suburbs of NYC (CT) either. Too many teachers + not enough kids + budget cuts = layoffs or hiring freezes. Even have a friend who has her certification to teach ELL and she doesn’t have more than an assistant position, after ten years of teaching in the system.</p>
<p>Hi Lima; what’s “ELL”? I’ve mentioned to my brother about investigating private, parochial & charter schools, community colleges etc. Anything to get out of the NYC public school system quagmire. He is loyal to his students though.</p>
<p>English language learners; formerly known as ESL, english as a second language…</p>
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<p>Does your brother work for the DOE or does he work at a charter school?</p>
<p>Schools are not phased out because of “His school has too many special needs kids, who seem to be a drag on statistics .”</p>
<p>When a school is being phased out unless there are some extreme circumstances, it does not happen immediately. What a phase out means is that the school no longer takes in new students, at the high school level this means a new 9th grade class does not come in. </p>
<p>The process in day high school takes place over the course of three years because the current students are given the opportunity to graduate from the school. Students who do not graduate by the end of the phase out period are then place in alternative settings (YABC, GED, other high schools specifically designed for students who are over aged and undercredited).</p>
<p>Over the course of the phase out, as the school gets smaller, there are less teachers needed because there are less students. Teachers get excessed according to seniority in title. When a teacher who works for the DOE gets excessed, they still have a job with the DOE because there is a no layoff clause in the contract. Excessed teachers always have access to the open market system (even at times when open market is closed to other DOE employees) so they know when jobs are opening up.
Even when a DOE school phases out, a new school opens (because students still have to attend school). If a new school opens in the building where a school is phasing out, employees in the phase out school have the right to apply for a job and be interviewed by the new school.</p>
<p>One of the biggest problems with excessing is that because each school has their own operating budget, many principals doe not want to take the hit by taking on a highly salaried teacher. The solution that the DOE came up with is when a principal takes an excessed teacher they are nly charged with half of the teachers salary with the DOE picking up the other half of the salary (this happens for ~ 8 years). </p>
<p>There is no “forced placement” regarding excessed teachers. This means that if you currently work in Manhattan day high school, you do not have to take a job outside of the Manhattan high school superintendency and no once can “force” you to take a job in the Bronx, Far Rockaway, etc. However, this does not mean that you cannot take a job there if you chose to. There will also be times when there are borough wide job fairs, specifically for excessed teachers. Excessed teachers are required to attend and interview for jobs.</p>
<p>As I stated earlier, teachers who work for the DOE and who are under the UFT contract have a no layoff clause in their contract. If your brother works for a charter school, they are not under the UFT contract which is would explain why he would be losing his job when his school closes.</p>