To Teach or Not To Teach

A few months ago I posted about a possible career change but didn't know what I wanted to do. For those interested in an update . . .

I took a day off work to job shadow an occupational therapist at Phoenix Children's Hospital who worked in Outpatient. She showed me around and I got to meet some of the other therapists both inpatient and outpatient. Then I sat in on her appointments for the afternoon. She had a grad student handling some of her cases so that was neat to watch. And I walked away with this bottom line impression: Interesting . . . but not for me. Just not my thing. But it was really neat to see them at work and how they interacted with their patients who were all so vastly different from each other and how their treatments were so individualized.

A few weeks later I took another day off to job shadow a 4th grade teacher down at a Chandler elementary school. I went in to it with the attitude "I'm just doing this to say I did it." If I did teaching I was sure it would most definitely be middle or high school. But I had to at least say I tried the younger ages. And guess what? I thought it was so fun! How unexpected! Kids that age are so anxious to learn and they're so funny. And they don't have that whole attitude thing developed just yet. I never considered teaching as a career partially because of the pay and partially because of the stereotypes and I just didn't want to do something that was so overrun by females. But I may have to reconsider. And I may stand out like a sore thumb but you know what? Whatever, I could handle it. Over the next month or so I plan to job shadow a middle school and then high school teacher and compare experiences.

One of the afternoons I also went to the local community college and took a math placement test to see what courses I would need to go back and review or take if I decided to become a secondary math teacher. The test was pretty funny. I tested through to the highest Calculus course, and they were impressed at the front when they gave me my score. The funny thing is, I totally cheated my way through the test. I mean, not really cheated, but I didn't understand how to do many of the problems so I just did little tricks like where you substitute in all the answers until you get one that looks the best, etc. If it hadn't been multiple choice I would have been in trouble! I had no idea or couldn't remember how I was supposed to solve many of the problems. I did this all through my math classes when I didn't understand things and it really set me back. Which is why the thought of going back and actually learning HOW to do higher level math sounds intriguing to me, and possibly teaching students the right way from the start and helping them understand when it seems so overwhelming. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been looking into certification requirements to get a better idea of what a career change into teaching would entail. Or possible Masters programs. School administration also sounds intriguing to me but that career path would start with teaching in the classroom anyway.

I am really excited at the thought that I may have found what it is I want to do. At least for now. Perhaps another ten years down the road and I'll go through another career change, but that seems to be not so unusual nowadays. I must have Career ADD. Is there medication for that?

So . . . did this suprise many of you? I went back and looked at the comments on my original post and I think only one person even mentioned teaching as something they thought I would like. Too funny! Or perhaps people just thought I wouldn't be any good at it? That may be true but only time will tell ;)