Wanting to become a teacher - Planning Time (Part 2 of ?)

So I knew I wanted to be a teacher.  I knew that there were two things to get done, one, find a route to becoming a licensed teacher,  my Mechanical Engineering degree was not going to do it.  And two, plan our family's finances so we could survive the first few years of teaching which were going to be extremely lean pay.  (This comes back to the question of who do we, John Q. Public, really want to teach, the low pay keeps great people away - period.)

I knew that my Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering would not allow me to teach, but I hoped to be just a few courses short - like 36 credits short.  But the first couple of places I check wanted me to finish a Bachelors in Education, well over 75 credits plus a math major degree (another 24).  Darn hard to work and go to school for....  -- well forever.

Then I found St. Mary's second career education program in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it gave credit for my BSME and was a masters program - I simply had to take 36 credits and complete my math minor (5 courses).  It gave some credit for my real life experiences as a manager and had the simple goal to put good people, who would do the work, into the classroom.  The best part is it had night and weekend courses, so I could work and do school.

But to do this the family and I had to live in the Twin Cities.  So I begin to unwind my emotional attachment to the company I was working for, because while I could not see anyway out of their impending bankruptcy, my heart pushed me to hang on.  (The question about I would have ever become a teacher is fair at this point, I think yes - but my kids would not have been toddlers.)  But I started searching for employment in the Minneapolis area with the thought that it had to be perfect,  it had to be win for the employer and myself, that was spring of 2003.

As things became worst at my job, my desire to teach increased and in the summer of 2003 I found a company searching for job shop manager where my engineering background had value.  The plan was to take about 7 years for me to complete the course work and save upto 40% of our salary, we (my wife and I) figured that would make a nest egg so we would be okay the first 5 years of teaching. 

My wife and I then downsized everything.  Any cost was cut, every dollar we saved. We knew we would need for her to be back to work (at this point my 3 children were 5,3, and 2 years old).  We knew we had to not "keep up with the Jones," we bought a cheap house, removed car payments, made vacations no thrills (little kids don't need thrills anyway), etc.  We just made ourselves live on 40% of my salary, period.


 And I signed up for one night course - a Foundations of Education course, the first course of what I thought would be long process.  I attended the first night and was so excited about the passion of the instructors that I immediately marched down and signed up for enough classes to cut my college time from about 7 years to about 3 years.

So instead of two days per week, I went to four -- that is where we will pick up in the next post, working and taking 9 credits per semester.

Wanting to become a teacher - How I changed careers (Part 1 of a few?)

So I have been asked about becoming a teacher from another career (Engineering to math/science), what it takes, why I did it, am I happy, etc.  So this is the first post of a multi-part post in how I moved.  First, if you are moving for the number one joke -- "The 3 best reasons to teach - June, July & August"; DON'T do it.  Teaching takes a desire, it is hard work from September to June, and you spend plenty of time in July and August working on curriculum etc.  My hours per year are most likely surprising.

I worked less total hours in my 12 month, 50 hour per week engineer/manager job then the 9.5 months of teaching and summer curriculum.  But also don't let hours stop you from moving, changing to a teacher has been the single best career move of mine in the 20 years I have worked.  I am more than happy (though like every job there are hard moments).

And if you think you can just get in front of class and do it, and a lot of people think that, you are most likely sorely mistaken.  (I am sure someone can, but I know most cannot).  Though I am not sure education programs really get you 100% ready either -- depends on the program.  It is really a journey you must want to do -- a desire to be beyond mediocrity, when I came into teaching as a second career simply being a teacher for me was not enough.  I wanted to be excellent at the craft.

A little history, I was a young man who believed the cliche "Those that can do, those that can't teach."   So as I went to college at 17  and selected the the most well paid career in my fields of interest, math & science -- Mechanical Engineering.  I liked math and science and thought teaching was interesting but its salary was about 18K starting where engineering was about 42K starting.

So I took the money path, graduated and took a job in engineering within a manufacturing environment.  I liked the problem solving but every time the "new-ness" wore out I found myself looking for another challenge/opportunity.  I move thru 5 engineering/managing jobs in about a decade with 3 different companies -- I always moved up but I was always moving.  The reality of my life for me occurred after 9/11, as the small business I worked for struggled with lagging sales and eventually went into bankruptcy.  I worked my ass off trying to keep the business afloat, but after laying off over 100 people, having an ulcer and really soul searching I knew I wanted a change.

At this point, at about 33 years of age, I sat back and said what do I really want to do....  At any point in my career I felt I had been successful, I am a problem solver by training (and nature).  But when I thought about my accomplishments they were all general.  I knew that in any given year, month or day I was part of a team that fixed this widget or that widget. But when I tried to remember the actual widget - rarely could I describe it with any detail.  I was missing the human touch.  I was missing the feeling of having a truly lasting impact on the world.

So once I admitted that money was only as important as the need to be "comfortable" - I saw myself working with young adults.  But a family of five with three kids under 5 cannot live on a starting teacher's salary...  Anywhere...  So there would need to be planning.  So how do I get there from here. 

I had to get my teaching certificate in Wisconsin which required college courses, plan on how to student teach, and all the while support my family during the college portion but also save for the truly lean years of pay during the first few years of teaching.

My next post will weave how I looked at colleges, and what my thoughts were on student teaching.  It will be on my first steps of action.

How I started a big STEM project.

Here is a clip (made by one of my students) of me addressing a question on how I started our large Green Initiative STEM project. 

Just in the past week a group of students worked on mapping our school for energy saving opportunities beyond lighting.  Now they are working on gantt charts to define their deliverables.  It really is exciting to watch them take charge. 

Balancing Act - Time reviewing, collecting Homework

So one of my goals is to balance the homework time in class, collecting, dealing with it --- all the time homework takes from doing math in class, and all the time it takes from me planning math (cause it takes time to assign, handle & record) and weighing that time against homework's value. 

And the more I work with the ROI on homework the more I find its value is minimal.  But as I approach the lower limit (no homework time in class) I am finding that some homework has returns with certain students.

It really can be a reflection on extremes - one endpoint, is a class is all about homework: Students come in ask questions, grade, record grades, a quick lecture and then homework (on an unending loop).  The other end is a class with no assigned homework thus no time spent on homework, all the work is done in class and any work done outside of class is students studying math. 

Now after a semester of "finding a lower limit," I believe, for high school,  that no homework is not going to work.  And though I have gotten very low on the amount assigned, there must be an assigned amount of practice.  And that means there must be class time dealing with it.  [Because if you assign it and don't "handle" it - most students will not do it.] 

One note of bias here, when I started working towards the lower limit of homework and finding ways to use other things to replace homework, I must admit that I had/have believed that some homework is needed for the typical math course.

So the new semester is about to begin and I have come to the conclusion that somehow we must spend time working on homework, but different than before.  I want to avoid the age old question/answer & grade/lecture/assign new work thing.  I want to continue to give flexibility for students to take the time to really practice - meaning soft deadlines (which is hard to manage).  I can picture what it looks like - yet I don't know what it looks like.  It means collecting all work, making sure everyone does the work - taking the time to track.  It means tracking and helping students who are missing work - not accepting zeros.   

And we will see if this can be balanced.  Because demanding the work would be easier.  But I also believe that learning happens on independent timelines - and I plan to try to allow it. 

How we teach matters

So I am still on my thought that my job is teach them all, versus just the students who play school.  But I had a couple comments about how hard those students are -- and I agree.  It can be a frustrating bunch of students (and all we can do is be optimistic and make each day new).  But I will tell you they don't want to fail, they want to succeed if there were a way in their mind, so my job is to make a path for their acquisition of problem solving abilities so they can become part of our world. 

That last part is important - does a student going to tech school, the armed forces, or the workplace really need matrices and complex numbers -- no.  Does a student not studying STEM even need that?  Again I think - no.  They need  the ability to pass basic algebra and math - that is why in my district I still split Algebra 1 into two years (1A and 1B) - while many of my comrades have removed 1A and 1B and try to get all students thru Algebra 2 in High School.  I simply try and make sure they can handle the math of the world and can think about math.   Many schools not only require Algebra 2 but they load Algebra 2 with high level math, does a student at technical school need to graph hyperbolas or be able to multiple large matrices -- again my answer is no.

They need to be able to graph lines, understand how to solve linear relationships, how to understand interest (the exponential nature) and they need to have practiced persistence.  I was engineer and never did hyperbolas -- did I use idea of symmetry, the idea of input/output - you bet, but that would be pre-calculus (again pre meaning needed for calculus so for STEMs).

So I approach every student with the decision that they must get knowledge.  My job is to find a way -- if grades don't matter, find a relationship and let them know they need to work for me.  And that is the key make a relationship, commit to them and then get them to commit to you.