Thank you all for the input, even if it seems universally negative regarding the current state of education.   

I did a little research, and it looks as though in Colorado I can apply for an Alternative Teaching License and begin teaching science right away, becoming licensed while teaching.  I suppose that's an option for myself; I could try teaching for one year through the alternative licensure program and see how it goes.

Oh I completely agree about the kids, but personally I have met very few teachers, particularly at the elementary level whete my wife taught, who weren't dedicated to the kids. 

The bottom line though is that we can't expect people to teach, which is a hard job, out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. We have to give them the facilities, support, respect and pay that they and the children to be educated deserve. And we should have the good sense to trust their judgment about how to teach, and stop forcing them into this test-teaching nonsense, which makes a mockery of education. We also need to recognize that not even the best teaching can remedy the educational consequences of so much poverty and social dysfunction in this country. But I've said enough, so I don't think I'll rejoin even if someone posts in disagreement.

ErictheRed wrote on 02/23/12 at 21:21:51:


I'm not a teacher mysekf, but my wife just retired from 31 years of teaching, and a great many of our friends and acqaintances are teachers. My wife very much enjoyed the teaching, but as time passed, less and less of her time could be devoted to real teaching and more and more was taken up by test-teaching, test-preparing and test-administering. There was no curriculum in the best sense, just a set of standards listing what students would be expected to know ontests. This was concomitant with parents and students less and less respectful of teachers, even reaching the point of open contempt - which is something rather shocking to encounter in another adult.

It is all the fruit of the war on public education that has been in progress in this country for many years. When the public schools are condemned by the country's leaders every day in the press and the teachers are blamed for the ecucational consequences of social injustice and rampant poverty, why should it surprise that so many parents have contempt for teachers?

My wife was an excellent teacher, with a Master's degree and a National Board Certification - this latter placing her among the educational elite - and she repeatedly received bonuses for the performace of her students on tests. She worked inthe urban public schools out of a frankly political dedication to the public education and a belief that the urban kids are the ones most in need of help. But she ended up wishing that she had gone into something besides education, not because she lost her love of children or of teaching, but because teaching has become more or less impossible in this country. She advises the young people she meets to be very careful about going into education.

The very latest thing has been the attack on teachers'      pensions, which has deprived many currently employed teachers of their promised retirement benefits and left them with the need to work many more years than the expected. Fortunately my eife retired just soon enough to escape that.

Many people in this country imagine that teachers as a group are lazy and have easy jobs. The political enemies of the public education exploit this.

Personally in light of all of this, I would be very careful before I signed up to be a teacher.

Teaching 12 year old children already is very different from teaching 16 year old teenagers. It took me some years to master the first.
I recognize Antillian's remarks about indiscipline and deviance of today's youth. I'd like to add indifferent and sometimes simply hostile parents. It's very important that school has a policy on discipline. Mine has. Guess what? Our children love the strictest teachers most.

ErictheRed wrote on 02/23/12 at 21:21:51:

I take the liberty to understand "American" as living in one of the two America's. I'm a teacher physics and mathematics in Suriname. Your salary here will be cut in less than half though.
OK, this was tongue in cheek. Good luck. I love my job. What was important for me was to find a school were I actually felt useful, not a learning/teaching factory. It took me some years to find one, but I have succeeded.