Originally posted by: HumblePie
When it comes to teaching and pay, it depends on WHAT you want to teach and what you are qualified for really.
If you are looking to go into public school teaching, elem through high school ,and want to make decent money you need to be a teacher of subjects that matter.
Actually, just stay away from elementary schools, since that is general education teaching and is usually quite low paying.
Get a high school job and either teach one of these subjects: upper math courses such as calculus or trig, upper science courses such as physics, upper computer courses such as junior or senior level computer science, or a sports coach for a prominent sports school.
Why only those? Well statistically, the majority of people who want to teach are female. It's just mainly a female dominated vocation. As such, the majority of females by nature of the female brain typically are not good with math, science, or computer course. Nor are they usually cut out to be big football coaches. I am NOT saying all females, because my high school computer science teacher who was brilliant was a female. I'm just saying that the VAST majority of female teachers are not good at that subject.
This means if you want to teach English, Art, Music, History, a foreign language, or some other such subject which females typically excel at, then you are going to be on a LONG waiting list for a crappy job with little pay.
It's all supply and demand.
I remember right before I got my current job a long while back, I was looking for work to do and almost went into teaching. All the schools around Texas were basically looking for teachers in the aforementioned subjects that are typically math heavy, and not for other subjects. Many schools post on their websites starting wages based on subjects. The math ones typically started 50% to 200% more in base pay. If the school was a good one and actually payed decent money for all subjects, such as 40K+ starting for English for example, the waiting list to be an English teacher was typically FIVE YEARS. I'm serious. However, if you were qualified to teach mechanical physics, you could start between 60K and 80K, depending on other factors and qualifications, and start within weeks. No teacher degree or certification needed.
However, if you didn't have a teachers degree or state certification, then your first year of teaching was to "earn" your certification by being "mentored" for it. In reality this means that you are a teacher, but you have to be mentored into it and pay a mentoring fee which comes out of your paycheck. It's not much, but this way you can start teaching immediately usually.
Actually, if you were looking to teach for a highly critical subject for a highly dangerous school.. you could even earn more. Teaching for the "big" and "nice" and "rich" schools typically means LESS pay for a teacher. Teaching for a school known to put many kids into JV or eventually jail can double or triple your salary base. Assuming the risk is worth it to you, then you could make a lot of money for a couple years there, earn your certificate, and move on to somewhere else you liked better if you wanted too.
All that info above was info I gathered when I was looking into teaching for a public school. My original conclusion was if I really wanted to teach, just get a real 40 hour a week job and teach college courses on nights or weekends. Make more money that way and still get the "satisfaction" of being a teacher if that is what you are aiming for.
