At a time when reasonable respectable jobs are just evaporating, a time when the modern American dream is looking more like becoming a steward or waitress at a good restaurant than owning a business and three cars, educated people, successful people in sales, consulting or anything else, are wondering if switching to teaching school might not be a great career move right about now. People come down to considering a teaching job in all kinds of ways. In Norfolk, Virginia, a middle-aged couple, Ray and Wendy Schneider had been growing increasingly anxious about their financial position last year. He was an executive with an advertising agency, and she was a writing instructor at the same company. When the company seemed to be considering its options in downsizing, they decided not to hang around and find out if they were getting the ax. They had heard of the Career Switchers program that helps people switch over to a teaching job or any other, and they decided to sign up.
The service could make it easier for an otherwise well-qualified person to take to teaching. You have to pass an Educational Testing Service quiz in the subject that you wish to teach, and an Internet-based course; a year and a half and $3000 later, you should be ready to get your teaching license, and ready for your classroom debut. The state of Virginia started this program about five years ago to put more science, math and English teachers into classrooms, that suffered from shortages at the time. The program has traditionally been able to place about four out of five of the applicants on its roll, though it has only found success with about half that number this year. When districts have trouble balancing their books as they do now, the teaching job seems to be the first to get dropped.
But math and science are still very active areas for people in search of a teaching job. There may be relative ups and downs every now and then, but seen over the long run, they often estimate that America will need about 1 million teachers over the next five years. Teaching school is a market that only goes up, and gives you dignity, job security and benefits. And people switching over to teaching from elsewhere is quite the done thing too - people like this are likely to make up a large part of the people who get hired for a teaching job now. Why, about half of all Americans who are of employable age in the survey reported that they would consider taking up teaching.
If you want to go the teaching route, almost every state in the country, like Virginia, accepts these alternative teaching credentials. They are tremendously popular because traditional teacher training courses take just too long and just cost too much. Why, about one in five teachers across the country comes from one of these programs. The New Teacher Project is one of the best programs for folks who want to take up the alternative teaching credentials option. What is more, a big part of their enrollment comes from the over-fifty crowd.
There are plenty of applicants all over for these programs, and the programs have very high standards for whom they will accept. You need a college degree, and five years of work experience. And when you do qualify, and land that first teaching gig, it will be quite a pay cut from what you used to expect for your time. You can expect a decent $50,000 annually with benefits, but that's it. But teaching children everyone says, is a reward all its own.
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