Graduate School

[CountrySinger]

I’ve been thinking of going back to school to get my masters. My bachelors is in Elementary Education. I taught third grade for a couple years in a very poor school (on my first day, the prinicipal said that I had the worst class). That first year was a blur, but I managed to bring them all to grade level. But the next year, the same students (now 4th graders), all fell acdemically. I was crushed. I spent a year not just teaching them academics, but also trying to provide them a safe place for them (some of the kids were neglected, so I would bring them food for lunches, etc.). So I quit after my second year, I was burned out. It was like that year was a waste.

Anyway, flash forward to now. I’m looking at graduate programs, and I keep coming back to the education programs. My friends say I would be an awesome teacher (I wonder what they are on!). I know I should look at something like business that would be less stressful. I started to volunteer in a special education classroom for children with autism, in hopes that it would kill any desire to be around children. It didn’t work. There is something about them that I love. They are who they are, there is no facade. I understand if they act out. I prefer them over the kids in the regular classrooms.

So of course, I can’t say anything to my friends or anyone I know, they would laugh at me. How dare I assume that I could work in special education, since I have no children, and no desire to have children of my own? So it’s easier to shut up, act like I don’t like children, and apply to business schools. That pay is better anyway, I guess. As you can all tell, I’m very confused right now. And I need to make a decision which field pretty shortly (tests to take, essays to write, etc).

 

[lovemyboys]

I think teaching is a calling, and it sounds like you have it. If you become a teacher and then later become burnt out, you can always move on to something else. Good luck!

 

[Rascalking]

I’ve been struggiling alot lately with graduate school plans as well. I have a MA in English, but I’ve been thinking of Law School, an MSW (Master’s in Social Work) and so forth. So much I want to do!

Your in a better place than me, I think, because you have drive and passion, and you love what your doing too.

Go for it!

 

[JustinR]

You should not be crushed just because the teacher who had your kids the next year did not do well by them. I used to teach school for a few years, even did special ed, so I have seen the “inside” of the school system , While there are some great teachers, there are also bad ones (that is why I homeschool my son). So if your kids had a bad teacher the year previous or the next year, its just part of the imperfect system . The year you had them you did your job and made a difference to those kids. I look at the direction of the school systems, most are putting liberal agenda into the classroom ( see a good book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America) , the schools taking over the role of parents ( see this week’s story about Phildelphia schools plan forcing ‘free’ breakfast on every kid and making the principals make all kids eat, taking away from family time), and more classroom time spent of things other than acedemics.
The good part of special ed is that is is more immune from those 'changes', once you get pass all the extra paperwork and IEPs for special ed kids , you are doing real teaching for kids. Special ed is teaching to that one specific child, not teaching to the middle or teaching to the slowest of the class. So get the Masters and enjoy what you do. Just treat the kid's parents as experts in knowledge of their own child, that is another pet peeve of mine-- all the 'experts' in this world (social workers, teachers, etc) that talk down to parents since they often do not have degrees, and hold themselves up as experts and not listen and value the supreme role of being the parent to that unique child, who knows that child better than anyone else ever will.

 

[camerong]

I’m just finishing law school (which I would highly, highly NOT recommend in the current climate for most people, btw), and I think grad school is fantastic. There is a level of intelligence and discourse at grad school that is so much fun. I remember going to college and thinking about how people who go to college looked at the world so much differently than those who just had a high school diploma; I think the same is true (to a lesser extent) in grad school. My wife is getting her masters in speech pathology, and its amazing the methods you can learn about how to develop and help children. My experience is that education in particular is a field which has greatly underutilized evidence-based methods, and there are many ways in which being versed in the higher sciences of the field can utterly transform the way you teach (or the way others teach, if you wind up teaching others how to teach better).

I would recommend against doing some business, however, as a way of escaping stress. While business may be less stressful–but very well may not be–its also harder to find meaning doing it (the same situation applies to most types of law practice). Your job in business, in some way or another, is to make money or facilitate in the making of money; if you are able to help people and do good deeds along the way, great, but for the vast majority of those involved in the private sector, making money is the goal. Its not like at a school, where your goal is to actually help people. One can undoubtedly have a fulfilling life in the private sector (I hope to), but its includes its own set of difficulties. Plus, frankly, the business sector is vastly oversaturated with MBA grads. Don’t count on making money as an MBA anytime soon (as with JDs).

 

[Cat]

Why not continue to teach, but in a different setting?

It sounds like you were teaching in an area that had problems, and the kids reflected these problems, and it was really hard emotionally to deal with this.

My kids attended school at a college prep school (ages 3-12th grade).

There were problems in the school, but not the kind you encountered. Money, for the most part, was never a problem. When my husband taught at the school for a year, he received $50 gift certificates from his high school students, and so did all their other teachers! Many of the kids in that school are children of millionaires. And many of them are very generous with their money.

The problems that I see in the prep school are

1. Lack of any kind of religion or religious faith in the homes, with the result that many of the children and teens are quite cynical and confused about the meaning of life
2. Over-achieving–many of the students lose too much sleep and drive themselves to excel in everything, and they are devastated and even despondent when they aren’t perfect.
3. Personal problems in the families, especially ugly affairs (which often become public since the parents are community and society leaders) and divorces–many of the kids came from split families. Also, there are problems when one or both of the parents are caught in some illegal activity e.g., embezzling, sexual harrassment, etc.

These problems are tough for teachers, too. But they’re different kinds of problems that perhaps you can deal with without burning out.

And these “rich” kids need good teachers, too, just like the “problem” kids in society! Think of it this way–70% of the CEOs in our city are graduates of this school. Heavens above, community leaders desperately need a good, moral, ethical education!

The salary at the school isn’t as high as the public school salaries, but the teachers are given the freedom to select their own curricula and teach with their own methods.

Look into it.