I hate being cynical some more but the hiring manager should realize you're the worst type of employee...one who doesn't need it!
That takes away a lot of the ability to "put the thumb on you."
However, she does know you and expects your commitment is exactly that.
I did this when I retired, only at the local community college - mind you our CC had about 20K students and 1500 teachers - so not exactly small. The level of political crap was high, but we had a chair who handled all that and faded any heat......it helped somewhat.
I also had zero experience as a teacher and got hired one week before classes started. The day they hired me they told me to write up my syllabus and schedule for the year.....say what? Silly bus?
So what I did was shadow another teacher's class - he taught the same subject and his class was right before mine - I copied all his paperwork and just changed the name and times - done!
My students were fresh out of high school, so pretty much the same kids and I expected them to be like me and my buddies when I took auto shop in high school - that is, at least interested in learning or hearing what the teacher said. Sadly, these kids are different.....
I'd say about 1/3 actually knew what a screwdriver was and which end to hold, 1/3 were there because mom told them either go to school or get a damn job, and the final 1/3 were there on work release from jail and went right back immediately after classes.
I feel like it was mostly my fault that I didn't relate well to these kids - you need to reach them somehow and most teachers are fairly good entertainers - if you can get their attention you at least have half a chance. I tried to emulate some of the others who seemed to have better luck with their students, but I was disappointed at the total lack of interest most of them showed, and at the complete lack of basic education they had, coming out of one of the best, highest rated high school systems in the country.
For example: I wanted to teach the cooling system, starting with the thermostat - so I said now we all know what temperature water boils at? Crickets. No one in the class knew what temperature water boiled at, at sea level. No one out of 18 kids.
The next disappointment was when I wanted to teach induction - I started with magnets, and talked about them having two poles and.......no one knew what I was talking about. I discovered magnets when I was in first grade.
Another young man didn't know how to use an air chuck to air up a tire, or how to attach it to the air hose and turn on the air. Sure, it was easy enough to show him - several times over the semester - but I was teaching an advanced course - how the hell did he even get in my class?
Another time I was teaching tires, and one of the things I mentioned was the cone shape on one side of the lug nuts goes towards the wheel - this just seems like something any reasonably intelligent person could figure out just from looking at them, but after lecture we immediately went into the shop and the first car that was pulled in (our students worked on their own cars - that way they had ownership of the work they were doing) to balance his tires and every lug nut on his car was backward.
There were many "teachable" moments like this, plus I had to really be on my toes in the shop - I didn't have trouble with horseplay, but the number of scary things that can happen to a dumbass in a shop full of cars, lifts and equipment is legion!
I know this is a long post and maybe I lost everyone ten paragraphs ago but if you've read this far it wasn't all doom and gloom. In those few moments when you see a lightbulb go on in a kids eyes - those make all the other crap worthwhile.
I did it for 5 years and probably would have gone on 5 more but the school changed their requirements and I was deemed to old, so it ended.
I sure liked having access to the shop and lifts, alignment machines and such!
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Put me in the "I've heard worse ideas" group. I've been mentoring younger sales people in one way or another for the last 25 years and the teaching part can be very rewarding. With that said, private sector mentoring of adults and teaching high school kids is obviously two worlds apart.
As others have mentioned personal attitudes, politics, family issues, etc. will be real things that you'll need to be able to deal with. My daughter was a high school english teacher for 3 years before she changed careers; your mileage may vary but it just didn't mesh with what she wanted to be doing. (She's passionate about the subject, most high school aged kids are not.) Be prepared that while you may have a couple of rockstars in class that will make your day the majority will just be consuming oxygen and your patience. Also dealing with the kids is in some ways the easy part, the administration and associated politics can be just as challenging.
Another point to consider: Things have changed a lot since you and I were in high school. My wood shop teacher would throw a 2 x 4 across the shop at you if you were cutting up. He'd also hand you the keys to his pick up so you could take the piece of furniture you'd made home. There's no way on earth either of those things would happen in today's world. (Did we respect Mr. Arena? You bet we did!)
I only lost it one time......I had a student that was to put it mildly - a challenge. I have no doubt that this kid had plenty of problems at home and in every other aspect of his life, and I was not the only teacher that had difficulties with him.
I pound into my kids that they must wear safety glasses in the shop - no exceptions. It's my rule, it's the school's rule and it's the state's rule. They sold them in the vending machine right outside the shop for $1.50 fer chrisakes.....
Every shop day this kid walked right into the shop without them - said he didn't have a pair or the money to buy them, I always had an extra pair in my desk and would give them to him - next class, same thing plus he no longer had the pair I'd given him. By the 7th or 8th class of this (we met twice a week) I finally had enough and unloaded on him. I shouldn't have but everyone has their limits.......I only yelled, I didn't smack him up the side of the head like I wanted to and I took him out of the shop before I let him have it.
I was wrong to do that on many levels, it was my inexperience that took me down that road, I had neither the training or experience to deal with students with mental issues...... plus you never know today when a student will decide to go home and get his AR15 and come back because someone yelled at him.......
As it turned out one of the other teachers that had issues with this kid was the department head and the next day the kid acted out in his class and he was Ford Econoboxed by campus police off the school property and told not to come back.
I had a student's mother call me one day to ask if her son had been attending class or not, as his attendance determined his scholarship $$$ amount. He hadn't been but I was not allowed to tell her that, or that he was failing the class. In order to tell a parent how their kid was doing I had to have written permission from the student. I thought this was pretty stupid.......
I teach high school driver education. I'm entering my 12th year at this school. I've been licensed for 13. Before that I was a para-educator and also did a couple stints teaching automotive technology at the high school career center attached to the high school I currently work at. The administration and front office is where the job is made or broken. I did not last in the tech job. I had little support and had to deal with students unaccustomed to being held accountable for their actions. I gave them a chance twice. I had an opportunity to try a third time and said no. That's when I became a para.
I thoroughly enjoy teaching high school students. I have greater issues with parents. But, I don't understand the politics comments everybody makes. Most all of my time is spent teaching. In the classroom and in the car. And I'm a building rep for the local association.
You will be teaching skills for sure, but also building relationships. In the shop it's about safety, problem solving, and communication. There are national organizations that support high school level auto and offer competitions and scholarships for the kids.
Not sure what your state rules are, but in Vermont a professional like you entering the teaching field would be under a provisional license with a mentor teacher, while enrolled in a licensing program.
Contact me if you want to talk.
It's very rewarding to see young people learn about themselves and have aha moments. I see kids from ten years ago and it's always a happy and positive interaction.
Go for it. The personal reward of making the difference in one student's life is worth it.
I'm going to pass. Reading the duties and responsibilities list for the district's "high school teacher" job description made me realize that I don't want another job.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:I'm going to pass. Reading the duties and responsibilities list for the district's "high school teacher" job description made me realize that I don't want another job.
Smart move. Maybe there is a bike shop or something you can pick up a few hours a week, and all you gotta deal with is childish adults. At least you can tell them to cram it.
93gsxturbo said:AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:I'm going to pass. Reading the duties and responsibilities list for the district's "high school teacher" job description made me realize that I don't want another job.
Smart move. Maybe there is a bike shop or something you can pick up a few hours a week, and all you gotta deal with is childish adults. At least you can tell them to cram it.
Yet somehow here i am, sitting in front of my laptop waiting on a call from an "executive recruiter" to discuss a Director position with an automotive tier 1 supplier a few miles from home. I don't even know what company it is for. It would be cool to have Director paycheck for a year, while the Childo money grows (assuming good market).
Not even looking for a job and have 3 reasonable opportunities to turn down. The third one was a chassis controls technical specialist at another EV company. I screened with the recruiter on Monday, and was supposed to have a call with the hiring manager next week. The appointment they sent included "please review these materials so you're better prepared to interview with us" links to a bunch of artsy fartsy crap that made me want to hurl. I watched the videos at 2x speed and decided within the first few minutes that there's no berkeleying way i want to be part of that. So this morning I replied to all "Well, the good news is I'm freeing up some time on your calendars..."
I don't see myself working for anyone other than myself ever again.
EDIT: i just spoke to the recruiter for the Director position. It was for a technical area in which i have very little experience, and it would be interfacing with Chinese suppliers and customers. Hard no.
I do have to say, in spite of me being a know-it-all smartass. I had some great teachers in HS and a couple really great shop teachers. I owe those guys a lot.
About ten years ago I contacted the ones I could find and thanked them for everything they did.
ShawnG said:I do have to say, in spite of me being a know-it-all smartass. I had some great teachers in HS and a couple really great shop teachers. I owe those guys a lot.
About ten years ago I contacted the ones I could find and thanked them for everything they did.
My 10th grade English Composition teacher was a bit eccentric. I realized much later that his eccentricity was really brilliance that my 14YO brain didn't understand. He told us how to write every kind of paper we would ever have to write, and even gave us "fill in the blank" forms to make it easy / make it stick. I used his method for every college paper and every technical report I ever wrote.
i looked him up about 10 years ago and thanked him, told him how much I used what he taught us. He was pretty happy to hear it.
In reply to SV reX :
Amen.
Some people are born to teach.
Some are not. 🙋♂️
Most of the great teachers I know are creative, caring, and inspiring, but also good rule followers. They are very good at working within a system and not coloring outside the lines.
I think that leaves me out.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:I'm going to pass. Reading the duties and responsibilities list for the district's "high school teacher" job description made me realize that I don't want another job.
Look around for a university that needs a shop/tool manager position.
Two of my buddies at USF work in the Art Dept maintaining tools, aiding students in projects, ordering new tools and project inventory. They are "Teaching Lab Specialist" and "Teaching Lab Manager" respectively.
They teach the students how to work with the tools and techniques to get the look they want for a particular project, but other than an initial "here's the shop, here are the basic tools, here's how to not lose a finger" class they dont teach-teach.
Might be exactly the thing?
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Go back to your "lady in charge" at the school and offer to be a guest speaker, subject matter expert. Prepare a few days of presentation. My guess is they are not going to get or be willing to pay someone as knowledgeable as you. The person they do hire could use some help.
Go in for a few days. Do it for free. You never were doing it for the money. Also, since you are taking nothing, you owe them nothing and they will not be in a position to make demands on you. Think of it as a slight trial run to the bigger deal. However, I think you will be more effective as a supporting cast member.
Think of friends in other disciplines who also might be willing to come in for a day. Real access to real people actually doing it or who have done it will bring real value to the classes.
I worked as a vendor/tech for the school system until covid hit in the music department. I think I worked for every high school in my county along with a few middle schools and the occasional fill in role at the local college. I was the person they called during marching band camp season or just before major competitions or judgings to work with a specific section. The pay wasn't great but (almost) all of the kids wanted to be there. It was most of the fun of teaching with zero administration, minimal discipline issues, honing skills instead of starting from scratch, etc. I don't know if the same thing exists in shop classes.
I kept at it until my primary career picked up, covid made spitting at people professionally a bad idea, and I had kids. I will go back at some point.
I'm not a teacher by trade, but I have done it plenty. My whole family are teachers. I just accepted to teach a class at the local community college and I'm having anxious feelings about getting back in the classroom.
I do help out a local high school with their spring musical building the set, and there are a ton of students that help me there. The thing that makes that palatable and tolerable is the fact that those kids WANT to be there. They're also in a.... um.... privileged bracket, which means that a higher percentage of them aren't dealing with hunger, drug-user parents, or other hardships associated with poverty. I compare stories with a friend of mine who teaches at Milton Hershey school which is entirely underprivileged kids, and the things I hear would make your toes curl.
But, it can be rough. You have to love it, you have to want to see kids thrive. I had a high school kid threaten to kill me if I gave him detention. Not sure how I didn't lose my mind when that happened. Many high school kids have all the emotions (and more) of an adult, but not the self-control to manage them. That often means that every single thing in their brain exits their bodies through fists, mouths, or some other way before it gets run through a filter.
If you'd like to give it a go, your local community college could be a better choice, you generally don't need a teaching cert to take on a class and in my case it was two days a week for about 5 hours.
The equipment will probably be better and you're free to teach it in any form you like, unlike high school that requires a specific curriculum and tests. Of course, the main idea is to get the kids interested in what they're doing.
In our school our program was a bit more structured as it was designed to feed our 2 year students directly into the state universitie's 4 year program, or into one of the Mfrs dealer tech programs - we were associated with both Ford and Toyota. This gave our graduating students a real leg up if they wanted to work as techs - they would put them straight into a dealership and send them thru the Ford or Toyota training programs.
I will also add that I started university in Biology Education. I was watching my Boomer dad getting frustrated with the new younger teachers, the new laws, the new clueless admins, so he took an early retirement that they called 30-and-out. The hope was that Boomers would slowly decide to exit instead of all of them retiring at a more condensed time. It didn't work very well in PA. Something like 78% of Boomers exited ASAP.
Meanwhile, I saw my fellow college students graduate and hit the market, and not very many of them lasted long. One of my friends came back to get a different cert and get a master's so he could get a college job. Another friend lasted about 5 years and then switched to Real Estate. For myself, after 3.5 years of a bio education degree, I switched to Music Theatre.
That is completely anecdotal evidence, and YMMV, just know that a teaching job can be wonderful if you have mostly privileged kids, a good admin team, well funded district, and small classrooms. It can be horrid if the opposite is true.
I'm a little late to the conversation but can add a slightly different perspective. I retired from an automotive OEM 18 months ago. Not wanting to go full retirement just yet I took an adjunct professor job at the local community college. In my career I had taught at a tech school in the 80s and then at two different OEMs. All of the positives as said above apply to what I have experienced and overall, I really like it. But, to survive, can you put up with the downside? I can but only because I only have one foot in the door and the other outside. I don't need the job and therefore do not get involved or invested in the political and administrative BS that is academia.
For me, the biggest change and challenge has been teaching this generation.
1. Most students have absolutely no attention span and will use every opportunity to have their face in their phone. I am assuming HS is quite different than a CC but don't really know.
2. Accountability. Some of the participation trophy generation really have no idea about "actions have consequences" and they are shocked when I drop them the day before the final or fail them for poor grades or do not offer to accept an assignment late. There is always an excuse and I have heard "It's not my fault" way too many times. I am far from a hard ass and in the case of dropped student, gave him many second chances at that point.
3. The lack of basic mechanical skills is shocking to me. I had three older brothers who were always in the garage working on bicycles and motorcycles. That is an even more rate thing today. I like to ask a question during introductions on day-one of class. "How old were you when you took apart your first bicycle?". When I get answer like "8", this student will universally excel. I laughed to myself when I got "Why would I take apart my bicycle?". That guy failed.
As with any stereotype there are those who don't fit. I had a young lady who wanted to go on and get her BS in mechanical engineering and was very capable of doing so and showed the initiative. I called a former colleague who I had advised and mentored when she was in college and was now working for the same OEM as I had spent my career. The working ME is now mentoring this student from the perspective of a 25 YO who is only a few years ahead of the student I had. I am sure both of them will gain alot from knowing each other.
I had spoke with three CCs before taking this position. One was terribly managed, one had no budget to pay the professors ($25/hour), and then this one. Decent budget, very well organized, and open to new ideas. If I can answer any of your questions I would be glad to. I will say, go for it. Regardless of how it works out, you will be a better person for doing it.
In reply to Scott_H :
My son taught at a small university in Peoria, Illinois for 4 years - all levels of chemistry classes. Many times he has had to stop the class and tell the students to get off their phones. Being on the phones is a problem everywhere.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:I'm going to pass. Reading the duties and responsibilities list for the district's "high school teacher" job description made me realize that I don't want another job.
I didn't know you had retired, but congratulations. My company laid me off 4 years ago after I turned 65 and it was a blessing. I too had thought about looking for a side gig, but I just don't want to do nuthin.
Good decision not to try to be a teacher this late in life. I tried to be a substitute teacher at 63 at a vocational school that had students from 6 high schools. Most of the kids were behavior problems that there home school wanted out of the building for 3 hours. A few were really trying to learn a trade, they didn't have a chance. I once had to get between two females in baking class that were throwing punches at each other. When they were suspended, I had to defend myself to one of the parents who claimed his daughter was a little angel. There is no real discipline in high schools today.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:ShawnG said:I do have to say, in spite of me being a know-it-all smartass. I had some great teachers in HS and a couple really great shop teachers. I owe those guys a lot.
About ten years ago I contacted the ones I could find and thanked them for everything they did.
My 10th grade English Composition teacher was a bit eccentric. I realized much later that his eccentricity was really brilliance that my 14YO brain didn't understand. He told us how to write every kind of paper we would ever have to write, and even gave us "fill in the blank" forms to make it easy / make it stick. I used his method for every college paper and every technical report I ever wrote.
i looked him up about 10 years ago and thanked him, told him how much I used what he taught us. He was pretty happy to hear it.
I read this the other day and it got me to thinking. For me it was "Miss V", I had her first for English composition as a sophomore in high school and she was the proverbial "force of nature". Stylish, brilliant, a mature and very attractive woman (I'm guessing she was in her early 30's at the time), an unstoppable bundle of energy that managed to get a classroom full of 16 year old's to focus and teach us all how to write coherently. There were several other courses I had with her as a junior and a senior; honestly she could have been a department head at any college or university but high school was her passion. She absolutely made my freshman year in college a lot easier because of the skills she had taught us. After I graduated she became the head of the English department and after she retired she continued teaching at a local community college, she was always dedicated to her students.
About an hour ago a did a quick search and learned that she passed "suddenly" in November of 2023. God bless you Miss V, the world is poorer without you in it and thanks for teaching this dork how to write a proper essay.
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