Hello,What made you decide to change careers? Was being a special education teacher draining? I currently work as a programmer/IT Support and I’ve been contemplating on making a move to teaching. Was finding a teaching position difficult with a WGU degree?
-Tony
Below is the response I sent to him:
I am still figuring out why I decided to change careers. I know some of the reasons, though. I don't know if they will apply to your situation.
Being a teacher is very stressful. (It is also possible that being a programmer will be stressful.) I have taught in an urban school district. Maybe some of my challenges as a teacher would not have been so bad in a different setting. One of my main struggles as a teacher has been classroom management (getting the kids to do what they are supposed to do). There are people out there that say that anyone can become good at classroom management with the right techniques. That could be true but personality seems to play a big role. I feel my personality makes things more challenging in this area. It is easier for me to understand how to become a better programmer than how to become a better teacher.
Also, while it is nice to get summers off as a teacher, there is very little flexibility in a teacher's schedule. We get two personal days per year. So while we do get more time off than other jobs, we do not get to choose when the time off is. Also, I will never be able to have 'flex time' as a teacher. And as far as getting summers off, most teachers I know, including me, work during the summer as well. Teachers often work well over 40 hours per week during the school year so that kind of makes up for some of the extra time off.
I became a teacher because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of others. I now realize that I can still make a difference as a programmer. I still enjoy working with kids and I plan to teach students programming in the urban area that I live in. The students in this demographic have almost no exposure to computer programming and it will be good to give them this opportunity. Also, I think I can have more of an impact on youth in a non-school setting. I have found that it is easier for me to form meaningful relationships with kids if I am not forcing them to do something they don't want to do (like math). My wife and I actually specifically moved to our inner-city neighborhood to try to show God's love to people in the neighborhood. We have tried to get involved with the great things that were already happening in the neighborhood. It is actually my hope that becoming a computer programmer will open up more opportunities to serve people in our neighborhood and city. My current dream is to get a remote software job that allows me to work a little less than 40 hours per week (it's not possible to get a job like this as a teacher). This will open up more time for mentoring youth and serving in other areas.
Besides the above reasons, another key reason that I want to switch to computer programming is that I am very interested in computer programming! I wrote my first computer program when I was in middle school and have been interested in it ever since. I actually took some programming classes in college (that I enjoyed) before eventually deciding I wanted to become a teacher. I think it is fun to try to solve programming problems. Hopefully it will still seem fun after it is a job.
You asked about how difficult it was to get a teaching position with a WGU degree. I got a position one month after a graduated. However, I probably just got lucky. My host teacher from student teaching got another job and I was hired for the exact same position where I was student teaching just one month previous.
-Beau Carnes
No comments:
Post a Comment