Hey all. As I get closer and closer to the end of my seemingly endless college career (note: I was in college when I first registered for Bigsoccer ), I find myself wondering about what I want to do as the long term career. I plan to go on and get my masters and doctorate, but when that happens (hopefully within a 5-10 year span), I find myself unsure of what I should do. There are benefits to teaching at the college level and benefits to teaching at the HS level. College professors don't have to deal with the red tape that HS teachers do, and they also have much more leeway in how they teach the material. The pay is a little better teaching at a University, you can sleep in a little bit later, and while it still isn't kosher, you can admit that some of your students are hot without going to prison. There are downsides, however. It is currently VERY difficult to find a teaching position at the University level. My advisor checked for nationwide openings for a Romanticist (an English prof who specialized on the British Romantic period in grad school) and she only found three openings nationwide. The closest was in Arizona. So, for someone like myself, who is very close with their extended family and would not relish the idea of moving across the country, that could be problematic. I also don't know a whole lot about the benefits package for University professors. Maybe some of the college profs here can help out there. I know that most states have excellent benefits packages for their HS teachers, but I also know that those benefits are beginning to fade fast due to the lack of funds. HS teachers also get plenty of plusses. You get more opportunities to really have an impact on a kids life. You get the opportunity to really become a part of that community. You can coach and get involved in other aspects of the school. You get to teach a wider array of topics (ie: I can teach anything in the realm of English at the HS level, including journalism and creative writing. If I eventually taught at the college level, I would be restricted to intro courses filled with nonmajors and courses in my doctoral field). While many don't want to deal with the headache and avoid it to stay in the classroom, teaching in HS can lead to high paying administrative positions. Both teaching levels seem to have a good degree of job security. What does everyone else think about these two levels of teaching? Anyone done both and prefer one to the other? My tentative plan is to teach at the HS level while I work on grad school. When I'm done with graduate school, if I'm tired of teaching HS or if I just feel like a change, I figure I can be choosy in where I apply and what openings I take, since I'll already have a paying job.
I'm teaching at a small liberal arts college and my wife recently quit teaching high school, so here goes. I think you're pretty accurate about the differences in teaching at the two levels, in regards to dealing with administration. High school teachers have a lot more dictated to them (via testing, etc.) about what they need to teach and being checked up on. The administration at the university level comes from committee work your department asks you to do, and this only gets worse the bigger the university and the more advanced you get. My advisors at UM were all serving on 3-4 committees. The benefits are pretty comparable if you are a fully appointed faculty member. If you're an adjunct professor (and others can probably flesh this out), they suck. Low pay, few benefits, you're basically cheap labor. In this job market (especially for English), adjunct is a real possiblity regardless of where your degree comes from. There is little job security and most of the contracts are one year. I have a friend in English who sent out 100 applications for positions in her field (turn of the century Brit/American lit), and got no interviews. In terms of being able to teach where you want, it depends on what kind of teaching job you want. If you want to teach community college, which is not a bad job, you're more likely to be able to search nearby. If you want to teach at a state-level university or a decent liberal arts college, forget about it. Finally, I'd really dissuade you from the idea of teaching high school while trying to do a doctoral level program for a few reasons. First, I think its unrealistic to think that you could do both well. Both take a substantial amount of time as well as mental and emotional energy. Second, researching and then writing a dissertation is a full time job, especially if you want to finish it. Finally, (and this is unfortunate) teaching in general is looked at by many in academia as secondary to research and scholarship. You shouldn't get into a doctoral program with teaching as your primary love, because it takes up very little of your time until you finish your degree. I think we discussed teaching once or twice in my graduate classes. I had to design one totally unrealistic syllabus (400 pages of reading in an undergrad survey?) for my exams, and during the dissertation, forget it. One thing you might think about is doing a masters at a nearby, inexpensive school while teaching before decided to apply for doctoral programs. This would both strengthen your academic credentials (I think 20 out of 23 people entering UM's history program next year has an MA) and would help you decide about the teaching vs. scholarship balance that you want.
http://www.believermag.com/issues/july_2004/lewiskraus.php Here's a good article about last year's MLA convention, which touches on many issues facing college teaching in a fairly interesting way. And here's one called "reading, writing, and landscaping," which describes what underpaid secondary school teachers have to do sometimes... (by Dave Eggers, incidently) http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/05/teachers.html I worked on a Ph.D. for most of the 90s, but the two people I went to work with both died, and no one was really interested in directing a dissertation in the area I wanted to research, so I basically got hung out to dry. My wife is a tenured professor of English (and for the past 7 years, chair of the department), so I have some idea how it works. Basically, when I was faced with the same decision (high school teaching or college), I picked grad school for a couple of reasons: the courses required for teaching certification struck me as borderline retarded (though they are now better), and I didn't really want to hang out with kids negotiating puberty most of the day, having only recently done so myself. For me, the drawback was that high school teachers were, in my perception at the time, barely-glorified baby sitters, or mis-trained social workers. I've since learned that while that perception is accurate in my home town, it's by no means universal. If you can get a teaching job where the work is respected, it would be great. Now, the behavioral issues that high school teachers have to deal with are increasingly commonplace in college classrooms as well. My wife caught a kid plagiarizing this year, and was threatened by the kid's father with a lawsuit for all the stress he caused his poor little girl. To make a long and disgusting story short, given that many colleges have taken on the "student is a customer" approach, this is increasingly common nation wide. Here, the kid and her PARENTS were able to insist on a meeting with the Dean and my wife, during which my wife was insulted for about one hour while the Dean did very little, except, FINALLY, after about the 10th time the jag-off father of the brat insisted that my wife apologize for catching his daughter cheating (after all, other people do it), the Dean finally stopped the meeting. Not by telling the parents and the kid that they were out of line, but by saying, "look at the time. I have another meeting. Bye. And thank you for your concern over your daughter's education." So, as of right now, I'm a bit bitter about college teaching, too, and will remain so as long as the trend is toward treating colleges as shopping centers and not places for learning and scholarship.
...well, I'm not really bitter, ... and neither is my wife. It sucks for her to have to teaching in deteriorating conditions, but it beats the hell out of a lot of other things, and workplace conditions are deteriorating all over. Should you apply for a Ph.D. in English, here is a big pointer that will make or break your application at a good program: have in mind what you want to research, and whose scholarship at that institution you would want to guide yours. If you really can't stomach reading really good scholarship, don't bother trying to get a Ph.D. (don't worry abou the bad scholarship: if there are some researchers whose essays and books make you say, "wow, I've never thought of that," find out where they teach and go there). If you're limited geographically, it's even more important that you find people to work with, and name names in your cover letter. That will show that you're more serious, which will result in better stipends/TA-ships, etc. Good luck. It's a tough choice to make, but a nice one to have.
This is such good advice on applications. I read applications for my department a few years ago. If people talked about their general love for history, it was almost a guaranteed ticket to the rejection pile. Those people that obviously knew about the field they were applying to and could articulate the ideas they were interested in got further reading. You don't have to explain what your dissertation topic will be, that comes off as presumptuous, but position yourself as someone actively thinking about the field you are entering. Knowing who the people writing interesting stuff are, and your relation to their work, is a big part of that. The other piece of advice I have is to choose a writing sample that demonstrates that you are engaged with these people's scholarship. The writing samples ended up being make or break documents when decisions were close on admissions.
Not to hijack my own thread, but this brought up another area of concern for me. I'm torn between what I would like to study at a higher level. I'd love to do creative writing, because if I had a choice, I'd write fiction over research, but I'd assume that it's much more difficult to get a job with a creative writing track, and there aren't very many programs at the doctoral level out there. If I don't do creative writing, I'd probably choose Chaucer/old English, the British Romantics or the American Realistic period.
For creative writing (hell, for grad school in the humanities in general), lots of programs are setting up internships for their students in fields like publishing, museum administration, etc. So, while the from CW degree or dissertation on the Romantics might not lead directly to a job teaching CW workshops or seminars on Wordsworth, most programs are looking into helping their students find other means of supporting themselves once they get out. So, see if the programs that interest you or which are most readily available have internship options. Oh: and you also enhance your ability to get a teaching job if you know how to teach composition as well as advanced literary studies (this is required for small schools, in fact). It's hard, as there is some serious disconnect between the research/writing you do in grad school, and the level of writing you have to teach, but it's not insurmountable. I mean, I remember people in CW complaining about having to teach Freshman English, but then you remind them that great literature has been written by people in gulags and concentration camps, and that helps put it in perspective. Crap, gotta start work.
I may be completely wrong about this but it was my impression that most people teaching creative writing at the university level have MFA's and not Ph.D's. Well that, and/or are somewhat successful writers or poets.
While the MFA still counts as a terminal degree according to the Association Writing Programs (AWP) (the MLA for creative writers, basically), more and more programs are starting Ph.D.'s in CW, and more and more college administrators are insisting on Ph.D.'s rather than MFA's as a way of indicating some sort of commitment, and broader learning (and thus the presumed ability to teach a wider range of classes). Of course, the cynic in me just sees it as bureaucrats putting up more hoops for people to jump through.
A PhD as evidence of broader learning? What a joke that is. All of my "broad" learning of American history came in classes and in preparing for exams. More intense learning of a single subject and the ability to relate it to broad streams of knowledge, sure. I wonder how much of this also has to do with the "percentage of instructors with PhD" ranking in the US News college surveys. Those things are becoming the standardized testing of higher ed.
Good points, esp. the one in the 2nd paragraph. I'm going by two things. First, my wife's department -- they hired a CW who just finished her first year here (Ph.D.). When they wrote the ad for the Chronicle, MLA Joblist, and AWP Joblist, her dean wanted to specify Ph.D. in creative writing, which, because the MFA still counts as a terminal degree, isn't really kosher, so she worked to change the ad. Second, lots of my CW friends have Ph.D's or are working on them, including people with MFA's from places like Iowa and Brown, mostly for two reasons: 1) they were told that the Ph.D. is necessary if you want to teach, and 2) If you get an assistantship or other stipend, you can be supported for 4-8 years while you work on your first book(s).
What does a dissertation in creative writing look like? Is it a novel or is it akin to a literature dissertation?
Most places, it's a book-length manuscript, either a novel, short story collection, or a volume of poems, essay collection, etc. Bowling Green, IIRC, has a thesis option where you write a book of impressionistic literary criticism, like D.H. Lawrences Studies in Classic American Literature or whatever, which could be cool, or painfully self-indulgent. In the case of one guy I know, it was an already-published novel, but his degree was delayed because it wasn't in proper form... i.e., a cheaply bound typed manuscript. He had to re-format his ms and print it out again (and again, and again, it turned out).
One way of deciding btw College or HS is to do a terminal MA at a 2nd tier school, kick major ass (mainly get prepared b4 hand, such as preparing about 1/2 of the MA reading list b4 you start the program), get your profs behind you, and w/ those shiny, intimate letters of rec take it to the Big Guns for your PhD. If you graduate from a top U w/ a PhD, it is always a lot easier to find a job. Oh, and make sure your coursework and dissertation show a variety of interests (think joint appointments) in areas that tenured faculty hate to teach. In literature, that's critical theory, pedagogy, film (sometimes), poetry (most profs canNOT teach poetry and they hate doing so; this is rarely mentioned, btw, but it's one of those factors that puts you above the dozens of modern novel scholars). In poli sci, you've got to teach American Gov, so you've got to sound enthusiastic about the prospects of teaching 1+ courses per year/semester on the subject for 35 straight years. In history, it's American History 101. One prof of mine stated it this way: a school is making a multi-million dollar investment in you. Once you get tenure, they're in a major position of liability. Deans like to see that you might be able to step in and teach subjects outside your primary area of expertise. So if you have an MA in a related field, or if your research is such that you could branch out, you're in a better spot. While doing your MA, substitute teach at the HS school level. Both my girlfriend and I did this (teaching in Watts, South Central and the East LA areas). Try to choose a district w/ schools in all social classes, as that will give you a great feel for the age group that extends beyond social class. My best, most triumphant and most frustrating experiences were w/ the lower economic class students. I couldn't stand teaching upper and upper middle class kids. Their sense of entitlement and superiority was suffocating. We both chose the university path. And let me tell you what: the experience motivated my girlfriend like nobody's business. Whenever she is doubtful of her choice, all I have to do is mention certain high schools and she smiles and keeps going towards her goal. I aim on finishing my dissertation in late winter and will be going on the job market this fall. For state schools, I will absolutely mention my hs teaching experience, as it relates directly to the challenges facing modern state schools, their mission and the financial constraints brought about by the failings of our country's secondary institutions. When I apply for research 1 institutions, I won't, unless the job description entails networking w/ local inner-city schools. For anybody getting into academia, I would suggest taking graduate school as a time to become familiar w/ the logistics/funding of departments and programs. You would be surprised at how clueless the average grad is on something that will affect them their entire careers. And you'd be saddened by the number of stellar departments that suffer b/c key faculty that are capable of administrating end up sick, die, change schools or leave academia, only to see that nobody can adequately pick up the slack. One should always be prepared to jump in the hotseat in case of an emergency. A strong department is one that has strong faculty that can fight for their programs and students. Benefits Research 1: top notch liberal arts: decent, above hs state schools: too busy w/ their overload to fight for wages and benefits community colleges: a step below research 1; excellent pay, low stress vacations
I can't help with the college side of this discussion, but I wanted to throw out a possibility that no one has raised. Why not look into teaching at a good private school. The pay at a good private school is comparable to public school and you deal with less red tape and the certification is very different. While teaching certificates are accepted, the top schools generally only hire folks with a masters in there field or work experience at a less prestigious prep school. Depending on where you want to live, you might be able to find a job that combines the aspects of the teaching jobs that appeal to you.
If you've got patience I'd say do high school, I'm in high school now and I feel bad for some of my teachers. One time last year in spanish we just decided we wanted to have a party instead of class so we got to class 10 minutes early before the teacher got there and started playing music and eating and stuff and when he walked in he just let us keep going, it was a really bad idea though cause we all had lunch right after spanish so we were really hungry around 2:30. Of course that teacher we had wrapped, we'd always move the clock ahead 10 minutes and he didn't even realize it until the last week of school, we got out of class half an hour early one time and told him that he was late and we decided not to use the 10 minute rule. Of course for the teachers that we were scared of we'd never try anything like that.
Your teacher frankly sounds like an idiot. If he actually beleived that he was late because you all had moved the clock, then the guy has issues. How old is this teacher? Based on the clock thing and the party story, he may just not care anymore.
Well he was an idiot, we really didn't learn anything so everyone in his class last year had a really hard time in the beginning of the year this year because we didn't know everything we were supposed to know becaues he let us get away with everything. He only works there part time he's like mid 30's I guess. This year though we actually stayed in class the whole 40 mintues and deffinately learned stuff but all my teachers this year weren't that stupid and didn't let us get away with anything, occasionally they did but usually they didn't.
More people who don't want to be their learning ruins HS. Your stuck with these knuckleheads for a whole 9 months no matter what because its mandatory.
High School: Sleep with a student, you go to jail. College: Sleep with a student, you get a paid sabbatical.