Teachers Have It Easy by Daniel Moulthrop

Author:Daniel Moulthrop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2011-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

Todd Werner, 26, Math Assessment Development Specialist at Data Recognition Corporation, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Former Math Teacher—North Kansas City High School, Kansas City, Missouri)

I never did any student teaching. I did some substitute teaching while I was going to college, and I was getting my certificate during my first year teaching. So, the first day I started teaching in Kansas City, I was the full-time teacher of record, and when I walked into my first hour of class, I had never been entirely responsible for a group of high school students until that very moment. I never got that student-teacher experience where you observe your mentor teacher and then slowly take over duties. It was “Here you go, it’s all you.” It was really hard.

I taught there for a year. I knew I wanted to move back to Minnesota, where I grew up, but it was hard for me to even get interviews in Minnesota. I was teaching under a provisional teaching certificate and finishing up my master’s in education. I didn’t have a Minnesota teaching license and couldn’t apply for one until I finished my master’s.

I moved to Minneapolis, but I didn’t get a teaching job. The school year started, and at that point I decided I didn’t want to be a long-term substitute. I never really liked substitute teaching. So I stopped looking for teaching jobs once the school year started, and I started doing temp work for American Express. It was just data-entry work. I worked there forty hours a week, and with my first paycheck, I realized that while I wasn’t getting benefits with the temp job, I was going to make the same amount of money that I would have made teaching if I worked full-time for a year.

A lot of teachers don’t go into it for the money; they go into it for the reward they get back from the students and seeing students grow—that satisfaction, rather than the monetary compensation. I never got that feeling when I was teaching. So I said, if the money’s not doing that for me, and that wasn’t happening either, there’s really no point in going back. I knew I didn’t want to stay at this temp job, but I said, There has to be something else out there.

Now, I write and edit math questions to go on assessments. With No Child Left Behind, every state has to test their students every year from grades three to eight. I am making 50 percent more than I was making in Kansas City, and I’ve been with the company a year and a half. Careerwise, this job is a great thing. It’s a good résumé builder for me.

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