# Education Degree



## Rob777 (Dec 17, 2002)

I got my teaching degree a 4 years ago and have been working as a substitute teacher for a couple of years and now a classroom teacher in an elementary school. I have always wondered what else there is to do with a degree in education. I have heard many people say there are other jobs that the degree would be good for, but nobody has ever given me any examples.

Does anybody out there have any suggestions on what to do with a degree in education other than a classroom teacher?

Thanks.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

what can I do with an education degree? - Google Search

Seriously.


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## Rob777 (Dec 17, 2002)

Yes, I know. I did the search right after I posted here.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

I teach in the Faculty of Education here at Memorial University (I just started my 31st year as a professor here at MUN). At the end of summer session, I had taught just over 7900 undergrad and graduate students. Many of these students went on to teaching and spent their entire careers in teaching. Many of these students are now retiring, but that is another story. Many have left teaching to go into administrative positions within the school system. However, some have left teaching altogether. I know this because I receive emails from these students asking for references. Statistics show that if a teacher is able to get past his/her 5th year in teaching, they are more likely than not to stay in the field of education. Some, however, do not get this far, and leave teaching.

From the requests I have received, many are going tnto managerial and business-related areas. This is understandable in that teachers need to know how to organize and manage a group of people, and adapt to changing personal (i.e., student) and organizational needs.

I always thought that if I could not teach, or be involved in any form with any sort of educational system, I would go in to photography. If you have a skill, ability, or just a strong interest, let that guide you as to where you might want to go with the rest of your life.

Bon chance.


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## Rob777 (Dec 17, 2002)

I don't necessarily dislike teaching, I was just wondering what else was out there. I like to keep my options open and I am always looking for something interesting to do.

Thank you for your input Dr. G.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Rob, you are nearing that magic 5 year mark. It is always wise to keep one's options open. Since I got my education degree back in 1970, I have done nothing but teach, or work of a Masters degree and Ph.D. in literacy education.


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## Bruno_NB (Sep 11, 2006)

Don't discourage me, I'll be getting my B.Ed in Elementary/Special Education in about 1.5 years!


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Bruno, sadly, special ed is a growth area in schools these days. I have had about a dozen students from NB universities take my Ed.3040 web course as an elective. It is not on this Fall, but is on every other semester for the foreseeable future.

Distance Education and Learning Technologies | Welcome to DELT


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## Gamalen (Sep 7, 2007)

Hi there Rob777,

I currently work for the provincial government and occasionally there is jobs looking for people with Education degrees who have teaching experience to help develop provincial education curriculum, legislation in regards to learning policies and mandates. 
I'm currently upgrading my Universtiy to get into education.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

"Those that can, do; those that can really do it well, teach,"


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## Rob777 (Dec 17, 2002)

"Those who can, do; those who can't get the summer off and watch those who do,"

Just kidding, I think Dr. G's statement is more accurate.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

WHAT TEACHERS MAKE

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One
man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued,
"What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in
life was to become a teacher?"

He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers:
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a teacher, Susan.
Be honest. What do you make?"

Susan, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You want
to know what I make?

"I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I make a C+
feel like the winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor. I make kids
sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute silence.

"You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder.
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them show all their work in math and perfect their final drafts
in English.
I make them understand that if you have the brains, and follow your
heart, and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make, you must
pay no attention because they just didn't learn."

Susan paused and then continued. "You want to know what I make? 'I
MAKE A DIFFERENCE.' What do you make?"


"Teachers make every other profession possible"


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

One hundred years from now it will not matter

What kind of car I drove,
What kind of house I lived in,
How much money I had in the bank,
Or what my clothes looked like.

But the world will be a better place because
I was important in the life of a child.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.


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## Rob777 (Dec 17, 2002)

SINC said:


> A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.


I couldn't agree with you more.


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## Gamalen (Sep 7, 2007)

That's a great quote! 

For those of you who are teachers out there, why did you choose the profession? Anyone have any regrets. 
I'm currently trying to get into education and want to know what people's thoughts are. I'm already in a very good career with the civil service and will make more in the long run than what I become a teacher. But being a paper pusher isn't really what I want to do. 
Anyone have any thoughts?


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

I became a teacher because I loved history and wanted to share this love with others. I started teaching in 1970, and I have not been fully out of a classroom since. Of course, for the past three years, I have been a teleprofessor, so I have not been in a classroom. However, I have taught nearly 1000 students in these three years, so I am still actively engaged in teaching.


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## Kazak (Jan 19, 2004)

Gamalen said:


> For those of you who are teachers out there, why did you choose the profession? Anyone have any regrets.


In February, at the mathematical midpoint of my career, I left the security of the district in which I had taught for 15 years to become a teacher-on-call in the district in which I live, partly to get the increasingly-frustrating commute out of my life. I have been enjoying the TOC lifestyle (though we sure are under-employed in September), and am seriously considering not returning to a full-time classroom position, possibly considering work in another field.

Why?

The good news is that the classroom has been, and probably always would be, a wonderful place for me, and, I think, my students. I have a deep and abiding affection for teenagers, whose shortcomings are far outweighed by their strengths, especially their massive potential. In the classroom, we are able to focus on what matters (learning) and downplay that which matters less (everything else).

The bad news is that the classroom is only a portion of a teacher's work. In recent years, I have found that almost everything outside the classroom has soured for me. Philosophically, I find that society's education priorities are rapidly moving away from mine: it is my perception that students, parents, administrators, trustees, district administrators, and post-secondary institutions (sorry, Dr. G) are all increasingly focused on marks as opposed to learning (in fact, I would say that, the way we use them now, marks themselves are opposed to learning). Districts in my province are introducing software that enables parents to continuously monitor the progress of their children, which in turn requires teachers to continuously post said progress, though only in numeric form.

I am saddened when students will not sign up for a course that is likely to have a negative impact on their GPA.

As an English teacher, I have grown weary of being buried in marking, regardless of how much integrity my assignments have, and no matter how few writing assignments I assign in each course. (Before you all offer helpful advice, I am already very good at not marking everything they write.)

High school administrators are kept so busy with non-educational tasks that they have little or no time for what they no doubt considered their mandate to be (facilitating better teaching and learning) when they entered that profession.

Meetings continue to be held too often and for too long, with no improvement in the massive amount of time we spend being talked to, or the brief moments of legitimate educational dialogue. Unlike my first few years, I am now able to see how even those decisions that teachers are invited to take part in are carefully structured so that some options are never discussed, and the desired option will become the choice that is made.

Report cards remain the time-consuming, woefully inadequate communications they have always been.

Most recently, the proliferation of small electronic devices has led to the necessity of energy-consuming policing on the part of the high school teacher. These days, if a student's hands are not visible above his desk, the teacher knows there is a cellphone, PSP, DS, or (sorry, Steve) iPod under there, and that learning is being impaired.

My own children have paid a price in my attention for the years I have spent as an English teacher. They learned that at least four weekends a year, Daddy is completely unavailable to them, and there are many Sundays during which he spends the entire day marking. I have helped them with their own homework with one eye on the clock, hoping there will be time for my homework when theirs is done.

If it were possible to work in a classroom without the marking, the meetings, the report cards, and the bureaucracy, I am confident I could complete the rest of my teaching career with the enthusiasm I had in my 20s. As a TOC, this is actually close to my current experience, but I now lack the ability to build relationships with individual students and groups of students.

Despite the negativity of this rant, I hope that someone will post a rebuttal that is as glowing as mine is dark. If there is one lesson to be learned from the history of education, it is that things are cyclical. With declining enrolment in many places, post-secondary access should become easier, which in turn could create a high school environment in which the importance of marks may diminish. 

I can't imagine a profession more charged with both rewards and responsibilities than teaching, and all those who are drawn to teaching as a career should explore it. My comments are a specific response to Gamalen's question about regrets.

Last night, at the Vancouver Art Gallery, I ran into a former student of mine who graduated, I think, six years ago. She is finishing her first degree this year, and plan to become a teacher. I congratulated her on her intention, and wished her luck without a hint of negativity or cynicism. I believe she will be a fine teacher.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Kazak, a fine posting. I sadly agree with your comments about grading. My grading is very time consuming (on my part) but very rewarding for the students I teach online. With 50% of the course grade coming from discussion postings, and the other 50% coming from a reflective final, I force my students to think, share their thoughts, comment upon the thoughts of others and to self-reflect. I am not an easy grader, but students say that a 75% with me is far more meaningful than a 95% from a course with only objective multiple choice evaluations. 

While my university will not accept the ratemyprofessors.com ratings as valid, be they high or low, I use them as a guide. While I am not the highest rated prof at MUN, I have been assessed on this site more than any other prof. I am also the "hottest" prof, with 60 "chili peppers", but I think that this is more of a joke.

Marc Glassman - Memorial University of Newfoundland - RateMyProfessors.com


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

How hotly have you rated, Dr.G., since becoming a full-time teleprofessor?


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

HowEver, I went from being the third "hottest" prof at MUN to #1 in the past 3 years of being a teleprofessor. All my students see of me is a short intro video of me talking about my expectations of them and what the should expect of me. I have 60 chili peppers out of 340 students expressing their views, while Steve Tomblin has 47 peppers out of 57 student ratings. 

Still, I pride myself in the quality of my online instruction and not my looks.


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## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

Kazak said:


> I am saddened when students will not sign up for a course that is likely to have a negative impact on their GPA.


Yah, I remember hearing that a lot from profs when I was at university. However, in real life, all goodies come to those with high grades, including career paths leading to lucrative professorships. Maybe these oh-so-valuable but unpopular courses should be simply pass/fail so that they don't affect the GPA - then everyone could have the benefit of them without penalty.


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## Kazak (Jan 19, 2004)

Gerbill, I know that this phenomenon has existed at the post-secondary level for a long time, but I was talking about high school courses such as Literature 12. You can call it a course on "dead white guys" if you like, but I still feel that it, along with Comp. Civ., and History 12, is the best preparation for what society used to value as a liberal arts education.

There have always been students who avoid Lit. because of the workload. It is the more recent trend of avoiding it because it's hard to get an "A" in class, and even harder to get an "A" on the provincial exam that I find discouraging.

Your pass/fail solution is intriguing, but it would never see the light of day in today's education climate. I found myself more tempted to take the Margaret Mead approach, and give everyone "A"s, then just focus on the material without the distraction of marks. I chickened out, of course.

Both my teaching practica were graded on a pass/fail basis, and I felt a tangible difference between that approach and the letter grades we received in our other courses. Most of us knew we were passing, and were free to focus on our teaching. The pass/fail approach also reduced whatever competition may have existed among students.


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## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

Kazak said:


> Gerbill, I know that this phenomenon has existed at the post-secondary level for a long time, but I was talking about high school courses such as Literature 12. You can call it a course on "dead white guys" if you like, but I still feel that it, along with Comp. Civ., and History 12, is the best preparation for what society used to value as a liberal arts education.
> 
> There have always been students who avoid Lit. because of the workload. It is the more recent trend of avoiding it because it's hard to get an "A" in class, and even harder to get an "A" on the provincial exam that I find discouraging.


When I was in high school (Manitoba in the '60's) English was compulsory for graduation in the University Entrance stream, so if it were indeed a detriment to the GPA, the bad effect was at least fairly distributed. My combined grade in the various Grade 12 English courses was 66 - seemingly pretty lame, but actually quite respectable. Nobody I knew got high grades in English.


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## Gamalen (Sep 7, 2007)

*Thanks Kazak*

Hey Kaza,

Thank you for the honest post. Much appreciated. I will definetely take your view into consideration. I really want to get a full version of what it's like to teach. This is a big career move for me and I want to think it through. My wife is currently a teacher in Winnipeg and she is enjoying. I'm thinking of going into the elementary stream instead of the high school stream, do you think it's different? Anyone want to comment on it?


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## Rob777 (Dec 17, 2002)

I would appreciate the elementary vs. secondary comparison as well. I am currently in the elementary panel, but may be interested in going the secondary route someday.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

I have taught in a pre-school, a multi-graded 2 and 3 classroom, grade 6, and every grade from 7-12 for either English or Social Studies. Personally, I would need a loaded gun to my head before I ever taught K or pre-K kids, as well as grade 7 and 8 students. I am not cut out for these ages. I would teach grade 3, 11 and 12 again if I could not teach at university. Or, I would like to win the lottery and set up my own school and have students who are being failed by the public school system due to literacy problems attend this school.

One of the reasons most of my students choose not to remain in teaching is because they have selected the wrong grade to teach. You have to like the age child you are to teach or you are doomed.


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## Kazak (Jan 19, 2004)

Gamalen and Rob777,

Dr. G is dead on when he says you have to find he grades that match your inclination/strengths. For me, the older the student, the happier I am. My teaching preferences are very predictable: 1st choice - Grade 12, 2nd choice - Grade 11, and so on.

In terms of the elementary vs. secondary question, they are very different careers. I have always known that I could not teach younger kids, because I require intellectual stimulation myself in the classroom. The best questions I ever get asked are the ones I don't know the answers to, and I get more of those from older kids. As another example, in addition to teaching English, I also taught Guitar classes for ten years. I finally stopped because, while my own playing continued to improve, the kids kept coming in as beginners, and the gap between my skills and theirs got bigger and bigger (the first year was VERY exciting, because the gap was tiny).

At what levels do you wish to interact with children? This is a simplification, but elementary teachers, especially in the grades before platooning starts, get to spend all day with a small number of children. They get to know the kids very well, their families, their social/emotional needs, etc. How do you feel about wiping noses? getting hugged? getting puked on? taking on the moral and practical development of children whose parents are unwilling or unable to meet their obligations?

Primary teachers work the same long hours as secondary teachers, but they need to do most of their work at school. Preparing the classroom and materials for the next day's activities is a daily task, and can take as long as a high school teacher spends marking at home. Intermediate teachers have a mix of classroom preparation and marking, but a lot of their marking is what I call "TV marking": objective assignments that can be assessed while doing something else.

It has been my experience that most people "know" intuitively which grade levels they should be teaching. If you have that intuition, you should follow it. If you don't, there is a lot to be said for trying all the levels, as Dr. G has done. Teaching skills are incredibly transferable, and each year makes you better, regardless of how often you change grade levels (assuming you're a reflective professional with a clear philosophy of education, yada yada).


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Excellent points, Kazak.


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