Career Advice - Public High School Math Teacher - Finding a New Career

[AnCap AllCaps]

Hello good people. I have been teaching public high school math for 3 years now. I cannot continue this profession. I am disgusted by every aspect of public school at this point. It is too mentally painful to hold a voluntarist position, and then HAVE TO LIE to everyone when I go to work and say that I love the public education system and that it promotes virtue. That is a very painful daily routine!

I am married. My wife is a teacher as well, and she enjoys it. So she will continue her career as a teacher, and understands my conflict with public education.

Next year I will be looking for some new career path. I am looking to some of you that are reading to give any suggestions for possible career paths that may come to mind, either for ex-teachers, for math degree holders, for careers that lend well to a voluntarist mentality...

Some of my main interests/strengths: Math (of course), Computer programming (not an expert at all), image editing and graphic arts (I am an expert with photoshop), troubleshooting pc problems (I am the person most of my friends go to if their computer is broken), using and learning new computer software, creating educational resources (worksheets and websites for doing math problems), recording and editing music (I have a home recording studio, and can record all instruments, and pitch correct vocals very well)... that's pretty much it.

Any career suggestions, either relevant or not to the list above, would help me to do more research. And I appreciate any input you want to give.

[Alan C.]

Any career in engineering is going to involve heavy math. I worked, for a time, in the IT dept. of a company which designs and manufactures computer components. Because I went everywhere in the company, I became friendly with the guys in the test labs. Their job was to test parts in various environments (eg. heat, cold, moisture, vibration, static discharge, g-forces). They had binders filled with graphs and spreadsheets. All they did all day was deal with physics and math.

[NumberSix]

I recommend looking into web development.  Go to lynda.com, it only costs $30 a month and has tons of great video courses.  Even if you decide you don't want to make a career out of it; being able to build a site for your own projects is a great skill to have in your back pocket.

[Summerstone]

I'm sorry to hear you're in a tough situation. I am also a licensed teacher and hate every aspect of the institutions I've worked for. My plan of getting out of the education profession is coming to sweet, beautiful fruition this year but it took a lot of work and planning. I also do a bunch of DIY recording with all the bells and whistles! It's a rough spot to be in when it feels like the walls, the administrators, the security cameras, the ennui, and the PC language of government/private schooling is out to crush your soul into a fine powder. In my experience, there's going to be no success in self-justifying the profession "because of the kids" since the whole thing is set up at their expense anyway. 

If you're math inclined, I'd recommend getting involved in IT somehow. If coding was your thing, you could look into Ruby on Rails, Python, and Java. You can learn a lot about them through CodeAcademy. From my understanding, to get into IT you usually start by networking with other people in the profession, upskilling like crazy, and taking what's available until you can parlay it into a better job. IT is still the Wild West of the working world and governments are reticent to start taxing it.

If you're a young couple and your wife is willing to move, I'd recommend moving to North Dakota, Montana, Alaska, Texas, New Hampshire, or Wyoming. There are still general jobs in these places and there's not cut-throat competition for them as there is in places like So. Cal., Oregon, Florida, or the Carolinas. If your wife has an ESL endorsement, she could easily get work in Texas. The economy is more of a mild-recession in Texas, as opposed to the full-blown depression in most other places. You could take what work comes in this scenario, your wife can continue her career, and you'll have okay economic prospects until you're done doing the exploration it takes to figure out "what the heck do I do with myself".

The last scenario I'd recommend is going overseas. If your wife is licensed, she can score you guys a gig in the Middle East. I know this is out of left field but it's similar to something I did. She would get a teaching job making between 40k-55k, depending on the country, and generally this salary is tax free. Money is just flowing in Oman, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, and Qatar. Your wife would get a working visa, make uber bank, continue her career, and you would have a good cushion that could support you while you figure out what you want to do. Sorting out what you want to do with your life generally isn't a decision to make in a couple months. ESL teaching in Asia is also a good choice. S. Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and China are all places that offer good wages and plenty of free time to explore your interests. This is more or less what I did: go to China, work and make good money, spend every free moment exploring my interests and journaling. It turned out pretty well for me and now I have a really awesome path in front of me. The dominos are starting to fall and it's all very Self driven. Weeee! I found that that my main professional interest and what gives me a lot of joy is using my body, being outdoors, and moving around a lot. I can't stand being in the same building, same room all day - every day. So I'm taking a job in the great outdoors somewhere really remote!

I know how difficult it can be to have to switch careers. I'm in the thick of it right now and won't have a lot of certainty about what career I end up in for another year or so, but I'm well on my way. It may, for you, be as simple as making an inventory of your skills and then choosing a career field that demands a combination of those skills. For me, it was a deeply emotional experience that required a lot of growing, making good mistakes, and choosing wisely based on the knowledge I gained. I made a very good choice to do all of this exploration in a better economic climate than the Pacific NW and this choice took me all around the Eastern Hemisphere. I reasoned that if I was really unsure about what I wanted to do, I at least needed to be really sure that I could at least have a decent paying job/economic climate until I figured it out. You may have a kid or pets or a mortgage, so you may not be as flexible in this regard. 

A big question that troubled me was, "Why did I choose to be a teacher?" The answer was that schooling really fucked me up and in a massive variety of ways. I was able to empathize with all of those young parts of me that were tormented by teachers, peers, administrators, security officers, rules, and regulations and fully realize the extent to which I was damaged by modern schooling. I don't think I'm done in this regard, but I've come very far. For me, it took being around all of the pomp and circumstance of empty schooling again for a lot of the historical pain to be triggered. I'd explore the triggering and then gain a lot of good value by understanding my history better. I don't know that I could have done this quite to the same extent that I have if I had, after college, never again stepped foot in a place where lots of young people congregate. Also, I became a teacher because my mother is a teacher and she made a lot of my decisions for me when I was growing up. I internalized this motherly voice and the decisions I made as a younger adult were decisions that would fulfill my mother's moral expectations of me. Training as a teacher was "doing right by my mother". When I didn't fulfill my mother's moral expectations of me this voice in my head would, still does to some extent, shame me for not having adopted her conclusions (smoking weed is bad, you need to work out 3 times a week, teaching is virtuous, family is virtuous, candy is terrible, friends should be a little confident but not too confident, etc.). So, basically, my mother instilled her conclusions in me through shaming. I chose to be a teacher largely because I knew it was something she would never shame me for, or she would be outed as a hypocrite. This decision-making-to-avoid-motherly-shaming has shown up a lot for me as an adult: choosing friends dedicated to "good" conclusions (instead of friends truly dedicated to applying consistent methods), choosing romantic partners in college that shamed me (if they shamed me, mother wouldn't have to), remaining in-state and close to all of my family instead of moving to a city where my music could find fertile soil and I could be independent (family is a virtue), and teaching. I broke the cycle with philosophy, self exploration, and going on two straight years of bi-weekly therapy sessions.

Now I make personally enriching decisions: choosing friends that have consistent methods (it's left me with exactly 3 friends I'm intimate with), choosing a romantic partner that empowers me and enriches my life (she also does cool things like read UPB in a week while stopping after every page to journal about the significance of the methodology to her own life), bouncing all around the world and trying out a bunch of different jobs (restaurant work, gardening, security guarding, web page design, editing, tutoring, barista-ing, etc.), and taking work that gets me about as far from an organized school as one can get.

Perhaps you have made the choice to be a teacher because of some historical forces that are driving your life? I bring all of this up because I wouldn't want to just give you a bunch of good conclusions about what to do without explaining my own decision-making and how it put me into teaching and hauled me out of it later on. It would not be a lot of fun if the historical dynamic that drove you to teaching, drove you into something else where you would again be miserable. That's the value of self knowledge and applying philosophical principles to your life!

My best advice is slow down, explore yourself, and make enough coin to support you until you figure it out. My history is here for you to read and I hope you gain value from it.

Also, welcome to the boards []

[cab21]

 private school math teacher? private music teacher?

[AnCap AllCaps]

I want to thank everyone for their caring comments and taking an interest in my well being. Web developer, private guitar teacher, private school teacher, math tutor, IT field... All of these are up my alley. Keep the suggestions coming.

[TDB]

I have no wise words, just sympathy. Hmm, maybe this will help. I've just begun reading a book title "Mindset" by a psychologist teaching at Columbia, unusual name, Dweck I think?  Her main point seems to be that people who believe they can improve their skills, get smarter, improve their lives, can. Those who don't, can't. It's one of those rare situations where believing something can make it true. (sounds so mystical.) Anyhow, much sympathy, and good luck!

[tasmlab]

What Stone said.

I digress a little, but it seems many people need to feel that they have a 'monolithic' view of what career and work is, esp. as it relates to their identity.

This is terribly reinforced by parents, schools and college where everyone beats on the child to figure out 'who they are going to be', characterized by a job title (accountant, teacher, fireman, etc.), then pushed into a college major and so forth.

Worse, they establish that life is a 'struggle' and prepare people to plan for their struggle, work up the management chain, work to 'make a good living'.

Worse, people in school have visibility to about 1% of career/work options.  Fireman, policeman, store attendent, business man, plumber.. etc., and especially TEACHER!  This is the job they get the overwhelming exposure to.

You never hear about the other 99% of jobs.  The logistics coordinator for a port-a-potty company.  The AP expert for the insurance firm who builds panic rooms.  The customer experience director for a mobile phone app company.  The predictive maintance analysis for a propelyne miner.  etc.

Ask - nay force! -  a high school senior to identify their future job and they'll have to pick something they know. Cowboy?  Soldier?  Um, teacher?

Anyways, back to Sumpm1, I would follow Stone's advice and just explore a bit, don't feel like you have to lock on to a target right now, take some jobs to get exposed to what's out there, learn as you go.  If you are young and childless, I wouldn't fuss too much about money. You can afford to be low income and it comes to smart people anyways.

[tasmlab]

On a voluntaryist line of work:

 - Well, perhaps stay away from soldiering and police work

 - Any government job may draw your ire, although I don't personally fuss too much about his.  With the government being half the economy, it is almost impossible to avoid and it's not your fault, etc.  This said, there is quite a difference between having the client-of-a-client be the EPA and being a full time IRS agent or mail carrier.

 - There's nothing anti-voluntarist or anti-laissez faire about selling your time for a wage, but...

 - Starting your own business (can) give you the most freedom over your personal time, give you direct exposure to economic forces (setting prices, paying wages, buying goods, making a profit), and can free you from having one person (your boss, your employer) in charge of your entire financial well being.  And you can earn more.  These are all pretty freedom-loving aspects IMO.

 

[AnCap AllCaps]

Worse, people in school have visibility to about 1% of career/work options.  Fireman, policeman, store attendent, business man, plumber.. etc., and especially TEACHER!  This is the job they get the overwhelming exposure to.

You never hear about the other 99% of jobs.  The logistics coordinator for a port-a-potty company.  The AP expert for the insurance firm who builds panic rooms.  The customer experience director for a mobile phone app company.  The predictive maintance analysis for a propelyne miner.  etc.

Ask - nay force! -  a high school senior to identify their future job and they'll have to pick something they know. Cowboy?  Soldier?  Um, teacher?

 

This is very true; it is depressing and a bit mentally opressive. Becuase the young student only sees a narrow window of possibility.

Aside from possibly writing math resources, or training teachers in using computers and software in the classroom, I would like to DISAPPEAR from the scene of education.

I have so many other skills and interests. My wife makes about $50k, so we are okay on money. I do have a 15 year old son, but he already has academic scholarships to fund his college... So my wife and I are fine letting em do a little "soul searching" and being kinda broke for a while. This career has just depressed me, and realizing non-aggression and anarchy during this carrer MULTIPLIED and focused my negative feelings towards the educational establishment; since it is a govt entity, and brainwashing, and indoctrinating, and limiting, and inefficient, and.......... yuck!

So I have another question, or idea to run past you guys:

What should I do to "get my feet wet" in some other fields?

I am considering graphic arts, family photography, and perhaps web design; but my strengths are in photoshop, I am an expert.

Should I consider inquiring about INTERNSHIPS (working for free or very little pay) for some companies to get my feet wet and get some crucial experience/knowledge?

[tasmlab]

"I am considering graphic arts, family photography, and perhaps web design; but my strengths are in photoshop, I am an expert."

 

These are all perfect jobs for a freelancer.  You can answer Craigslist ads and other creative sites and do little projects.  Set up a paypal account to collect.  You can promise big, charge little, and learn as you go for stuff like web design - although expect to struggle and have some late nights to start.

I expected you to be younger (you said only three years in the work force) but you may also think about how much money you want to make (did I say the opposite before?)  Keep it in your analysis - maybe for phase II after you see what is out there.

[AnCap AllCaps]

I expected you to be younger (you said only three years in the work force)

I am 34 and married a single mother. I worked as a casino dealer from age 22 to 30; didn't really like the hours or the working conditions, and found very little satisfaction in that business.

Still trying to figure out what I want to do at 34... Grrr. I guess that is how life goes. But I haven't met a teacher (especially math) at my high school or district that is JUST THRILLED with the teaching profession. Most of us are disgruntled and disgusted by the entire system, but have too much invested to go elsewhere. But I am literally at whit's end.

[STer]

 

I expected you to be younger (you said only three years in the work force)

I am 34 and married a single mother. I worked as a casino dealer from age 22 to 30; didn't really like the hours or the working conditions, and found very little satisfaction in that business.

Still trying to figure out what I want to do at 34... Grrr. I guess that is how life goes. But I haven't met a teacher (especially math) at my high school or district that is JUST THRILLED with the teaching profession. Most of us are disgruntled and disgusted by the entire system, but have too much invested to go elsewhere. But I am literally at whit's end.

 

What about private math tutoring? Then you can use your skills and help people but do it in a private capacity. At the very least it could be something to do while exploring other things, a sort of transitional step.

[Mike Larson]

Have you ever considered the actuarial profession? It is very "math oriented". It pays very well. It is typically a low stress job. Having great computer skills is a big advantage for actuaries. I've been an associate actuary for several years now and quite enjoy my work. The down-side is that it requires a fairly significant investment in time and energy to progress through all of the exams and modules. Many would-be actuaries get burnt out with all of the time required to prepare for the exams. But you would certainly have an advantage with your degree in math.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me

[smanhattan]

Hi Sum

Have you considered teaching out of your home?  We just got home from a great day at a private homeschool.  The woman who runs the homeschool has a fun curriculum.

You have a lot to offer as a private teacher with your skills.  There is an active unschool / homeschool Yahoo group system where you can find eager learners.

Good luck!

[AnCap AllCaps]

Have you ever considered the actuarial profession?

 

Yes I have considered it for sure, I love difficult math, quite studying alone, and chewing on some long and difficult math topics. And I have complete A COUPLE of 400 level math courses, but that was pushing it. The actuarial profession always seemed so lofty to me; perhaps like passing the bar exam or finishing med school!

I have looked at some of the practice exams, and even the beginner questions looked damn hard.

I would consider more research in actuarial work if you could convince me there is a "down to earth" actuarial path, if you know what I mean.

[AnCap AllCaps]

Have you considered teaching out of your home?

I hadn't really because I have such a bad taste in my mouth from teaching right now and am looking away from it. But homeschool community teaching may put me in touch with some families that are more like-minded to me. Thanks for the suggestion.

[LovePrevails]

wow I really feel for you in your situation sumpm1!!! what a bind

 

If there any way you can go into education reform? sorry if that's a crap suggestion

I just mean there are people who go around schools teaching progressive methodology like Alfie Kohn, can you get involved as a certified trainer with such an institution and maybe they;d find the work for you?

I don't know if I'm just projecting what I'd like to do in your position.

[tasmlab]

I've worked in just about every industry to some degree (I'm a business writer, so I get to hop around from biotech to IT to entertainment to governement to financial services to oil drilling to consumer products and so forth), and I've personally found the Insurance industry to be loaded with negative people.  While I haven't worked with any actuarials, the insurance management always seems glum and disheartened.  It's a very 'rule' oriented business.  Perhaps the business of calculating when people are going to die...

Life sciences or consumer technology, by comparison, are filled with happy people.  Scientist in particular.

The absolute boom industry for math-skilled people is analytics ie., querying databases and using software tools to discover consumer trends/sentiment, predict financial performance, predict maintenance history on equipment, customer segmentation, campaign performance,  improve acturarial performance (!), etc.

 

The industry is deparately bringing in math majors from overseas.  There's not enough people to do the work which is driving up demand and wages.  One VP I was talking to doesn't even care about degrees for people he hires, just wants to see the math/queries.

[tasmlab]

One vital point that I"ve struggled with greatly and have a big POV on:

Be cautious to not conflate your personal identity with the method by which you pay bills.  Your job != you.  

It is perfectly healthy to plan your job around relative free time, confort and income and not worry that it reflects your interests.

In the same breath, if you pursue something you love as a job, don't be frustrated if it isn't very good at bill paying.  

Doing what you like and the task of paying bills are very different from each other and people try to do both at the same time to often with huge frustration.

I recommend that you do some analysis on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper.  Just begin writing down what's important to you: personal comfort, money, time off, activities you like, traveling, time with kids, and so forth and begin cataloging thoughts about what you want to do.  It's helpful to get it down on paper instead of juggling it in your head. Then mull. 

[tasmlab]

I digress, but since we're talking about jobs, does Stef ever make it?

I'm on podcast 370 or so and doing them in order with plans on listening to them all (provided they stay interesting) and as of summer 2006 he's hoping to get 1/3 of his current income so he can do philosophy full time.

Does it happen?  It's a wonderful career story if it does.

[Brandon Buck _BB_]

I have no idea what the numbers are but he is now a full time parent/philosopher and has become a high demand speaker at libertarian conferences. So yeah... I think he made it.

[AnCap AllCaps]

 

One vital point that I"ve struggled with greatly and have a big POV on:

Be cautious to not conflate your personal identity with the method by which you pay bills.  Your job != you.  

In the same breath, if you pursue something you love as a job, don't be frustrated if it isn't very good at bill paying.  

Doing what you like and the task of paying bills are very different from each other and people try to do both at the same time to often with huge frustration.

Good point, and I agree. And I may just have to live with being miserable while paying bills and call it a day. It's just that the MISERY is overbearing.

My wife and I are moving back to our home state soon. So maybe I'll just try another year of teaching, but in a different state. Perhaps education in Indiana will be better than in Texas.