So this entry is more of an update of my person life mixed with a moderate amount of societal criticism. Over the last week I really have been pissed about having to get up for my field experience. For those of you who don’t have the pleasure of knowing my personal life in depth, let me expound upon what I’m talking about. My current major and intentions are to graduate Penn State with a Bachelor’s Degree in World Languages Education with a certification to teach grades K-12 and my language will be Spanish. So in a nutshell I want to be a Spanish teacher, mainly shooting for high school work. I was going to eventually take courses slowly for my master’s degree as I worked.

Here’s the deal with my major, it all started with working with children age 3-6 teaching them Spanish. That was not so bad but this semester I have started to realize all that is involved. This semester we are teaching elementary students on Saturday mornings from 8:30 - 11:30. We are in college, this is only going to happen once, and they take away our Friday nights for half of a semester. There are many things due including lesson plans and materials for instruction before we teach. You’d think we would be able to get some of this done during our 4 ours of class a week but it’s mostly useless lecture and misinformation as Mariana, Marisel, Ty, and Dr. Espinosa (my professors) all say different things if you ask them the same question.

We are expected to study abroad, in fact, it is a requirement. I do see the reasoning behind this. I can’t speak Spanish with the incredibly minuscule amount of Spanish I am exposed to. After 12 weeks in Spain I’ll finally get the practice and fluency I’ve been striving for. The problem with that is the cost. Studying in Spain for 9 weeks of class will run around $8,500 if you include tuition, living costs, books, and personal expenses. This is compounded by the U.S. dollar literally getting Cleveland Steamed by the Euro, which is now around $1.40 for a euro.

After studying abroad comes our high school experience for the fall of 2008. During this ordeal we are expected to commute to school districts to student teach in a high school setting. This will be 3 days a week from 8:00 - 12:00. This will be literally semi-student teaching. We could be placed at school districts as far away as a 1 hour commute because it is hard to find enough Spanish classrooms in the center of Pennsylvania. They don’t reimburse you for gas or anything like that, for those of us who didn’t have cars their reply was “that’s not our problem”. I have a car, but others don’t. This is all a precursor to student teaching our final semester of our senior year where we are all placed in a Pittsburgh school district. This means that we need to find our own housing in Pittsburgh, and arrange our own transportation to the school district where we will all pay Penn State $7,000 to have the luxury of working for free for 8 hours a day in a school teaching, and then spending 1-2 hours a day writing lesson plans, grading papers, and meeting with our mentor teacher.

I have not done extensive research, but I’m not seeing this kind of thing asked of any other undergraduate major. Sure maybe there are a few but I’m sure they also will make WAY more money, because that’s what really gets me. Let’s calculate my debt from 4 years of college. I love numbers, so here we go:

$5,800 x 4 semesters = $23,200
$6,900 x 4 semesters = $27,600
$8,500 x 1 summer = $8,500
1 class @ west min. = $1,400
Housing freshman year = $3,750
Housing sophomore year = $4,380
Housing junior year = $3,657.50
Housing senior year = $4,800 (est.)
Commuting freshman year (gas) = $865
Commuting senior year = $500 (est.)

We come to a grand total of roughly $78,652 in the hole. Now, for my 80 grand let’s look at the pay off…

Teacher with <1 year experience will start full time at about $35,000/yr. That is for 184 days of work but obviously that has to last me the entire year including the breaks and summer that I am not working. So the average person works 50 weeks per year. 35,000/50 = $700 per week. That averages to $17.50 per hour. That is my big pay off.

“BUT GEORGE!!! IF U LUV TEACHING IT SHOULDN’T MATTER!*!*@#*!”

Wrong. I will have worked too hard to only make $17.50/hr. spending time outside of the classroom to grade papers, write lesson plans, and deal with other administrative details. Not to mention that teachers gain about zero respect. I don’t like getting shit on by some retarded parent who thinks just because they pay property taxes to the school district that means that they know more about education than me. Teachers are held to such an incredibly high standard yet see no respect or admiration by the public. Parents care about the football team more than the quality of education. Teachers are expected to make zero mistakes while in the classroom. If a fight breaks out I’m supposed to know exactly what to do. If I accidentally say the wrong thing, accidentally brush up against a student, the school district gets sued and I get fired. All of this for $17.50/hr. I will tell you right now there is nothing on this planet I like doing THAT much to take so much shit. Ok, so after 30 years of teaching I can make $65,000/yr. Wow, that’s what a network administrator (my previous major) would make after 5 years.

How I feel….

Let’s face it ladies and gentlemen, you don’t ever think of the teachers that made it possible for you to read this text. You don’t think of all the teachers that influenced who you are, that stayed after school to help you understand something. You will become parents and only come to the school to talk to a teacher if you are pissed your kid has a D in Spanish and thinks that it is my fault. You don’t pat teachers on the back, you don’t say “Thank you for making a difference in our society”. Yes, data and system engineers keep your cell phone working during a phone call and they make so much more money, respect, admiration. If you say “Hello, I’m a nuclear physicist” people instantly think you are a success. If you say you are a school teacher most people go “Oh, I guess you couldn’t do anything else”. Teachers make the most difference in this country but no one gives a shit. Sure, there are some terrible teachers out there *cough* Mr. Janusko *cough*, but most teachers actually want to make a different, want to do something.

So after about 2 years of solid work I will break even on my educational endeavor, but in reality I won’t pay off my debt for 5-10 years. Then I can begin to save for things I want to do in life (I want to go A LOT of places, and experience a lot of things). I don’t want to teach for 40 years. There is not one thing I like enough to do for 40 years. I’m interested in a lot of things, but not too interested. Being a Spanish teacher is the coolest thing I can think of. There is no Ph.D in Lazy, although I’d get it if it were offered. I want to work for 25 years, retire around 50 or 55 and then travel the world, and experience everything that I can. I don’t want to be too old and crippled to have fun when I retire.

So after my whole gigantic spiel about education and my major and future, I came to a conclusion this week that I am going to graduate school right after I get my Bachelor’s. I intend to get certified for administrative offices including Principal, Curriculum Director, and Superintendent. These positions make between $100,000-$200,000 instead of $40,000. Obviously you don’t just walk into a $200k/yr. job as Superintendent, there’s a ladder to climb starting at classroom teacher, but I will get there eventually. As lazy as I am, if I fire up the engine of motivation I often surprise myself at what I can accomplish. I am actually excited for graduate school, I’ll probably apply at Penn State for graduate school if I can get accepted. A few of my friends have just joined or are going to join the Penn State system that eventually all filters to Main Campus, so I won’t be here alone my 5th year. I’ll probably actually have a lot of fun before I catapult into a new life course that I’m sure will be interesting.