AboutJames J. Kovalcin Expertise I am teaching or have taught AP physics B and C [calculus based mechanics & electricity and magnetism] as well as Lab Physics for college bound students. I have a BS in Physics from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Arts in Teaching from same. I have been teaching physics for 27 years.
Question Hi. In one of your replies to someone else, you mentioned that one 1 in 5 teaching coming in on alternate routes stays a teacher. Do you have any advice for me to help me figure out if I'll be part of the 20% that will stick with it and love it?
I have experience teaching SCUBA, Navigation for NROTC at a university, and medical health physics to young military trainees.
I think I like teaching. I loved teaching SCUBA. I enjoyed teaching at the university. I enjoyed most of my teaching at the military school, though I was blah about some of it where I was teaching to large groups (~100) or in topic areas I wasn't really comfortable with my knowlege. In teaching high school, I think I'm concerned about classroom management issues, my level of expectation of students, and how good of a teacher I would be. In my experience thus far, teaching SCUBA was easy because all the students were volutarily taking the class to learn something they were interested in. My other teaching has been to mostly military people who have no choice but to be there and respect me. I have always been a very self-motivated student, and sometimes struggle with other people's needs for external motivation. In the classroom, I feel that I have had a few moments of brilliance where I was particularly effective at bringing a point across in a fun and innovative way, but those points were few and far between. The rest of the time, I felt rather un-dynamic (ie boring), although very knowledgable and competent. I hope that with time and experience, I can further the former and diminish the latter.
I talked with a friend a bit when she was out here visiting, and she dismissed my concerns about classroom management because by the time kids are taking high school physics, they just want to get what they can from me and graduate, and there aren't many issues. I wonder if it might be a "grass is greener on the other side" thing with her teaching experience with younger kids.
I know nothing about the politics of high school, other than I have heard that it's pretty significant.
I have several years before my intended transition, and I'm trying to find ways to figure out if this is the right decision for me.
Any advice you have for me would be welcome.
Thanks, and I hope I'm not asking too many questions. :)
Answer I the first place your motivations for entering the teaching profession seem quite sound. However, you are correct about being concerned about some issues.
I think that there are several factors that contribute to a successful teaching career.
1. You need to be teaching something that you are passionate about. When my daughter was entering high school a went to the "Back to school Night" where the teachers introduced themselves and their course. When the history teacher said, "We all know that history can be boring"! I knew right there that my daughter was in for a bad year - and it was! How that teacher could enter the teaching profession feeling that way about HIS subject matter?
2. You need to find a teaching situation that fits you! You will get much more out of the teaching position if it makes your life better. One day when I was standing in line in the lunch room the teacher in front of me said, "Oh Hell! Monday again!". I was so upset I turned to him and asked him to NEVER say such a thing again in my presence. I explained to him that I LIKED coming to work and I thought that such an attitude has the tendency to drag everybody down. The lesson here is to find a position where you WANT to come to work on Monday and where every day and every class is too short! You would much rather run out of time instead of watching the clock slow to a relativistic rate!
3. Every teaching job has its own administrative personality. The ideal administration remembers why it even exists. If the administration makes it difficult for you to do your job then it is not doing its job. It is so easy for the pressures inherent in administrative work to overwhelm even the best administrators. Personally, I believe that ALL administrators, guidance counselors, school nurses, etc teach at least one class a day. This would help them to remember why they are really there.
4. The types of students in a school varies tremendously and ideally every school has the right teachers for the right students. This is a pretty tough requirement to fulfill and I feel very sorry for the administrator whose staff is a mismatch for the student body.
5. No matter what anyone tells you, bright students are NOT inherently easier to teach. If you don't know your content, how to get that content across to the students and how to properly manage your classroom you can be in BIG trouble! In my school we have dismissed [not rehired] three physics teachers during my career, all for completely different reasons but all were ultimately tied to classroom management! Now some educator advocate a rules based class room where the students' responsibilities are clearly laid out in advance. But that is not the way that I run my classroom. I have a very busy physics classroom with something always going on. My students are usually working very hard and don't generally have much time to get into trouble.
What do I suggest? How about a permanent or long time substitute position? [Although the pay can be quite bad - in my school district substitute teachers begin at $75 per day! Not much for someone with a required college degree.]
Well, I hope that this picture helps you to decide what you want to do.
