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Comment by munin | Hacker News Reader

> Teaching high school

I looked into this in my state. Getting your foot in the door as a teacher in a public school would require someone with a PhD in say, mathematics, physics or computer science, to go back to grad school for a masters in education. Not sure that's an option, and is also ridiculous considering I just spent six years in grad school. You could do TFA as a backdoor, in many states, but that is probably an even worse deal for you physically and emotionally than being an adjunct.

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I’m not saying it’s a good deal for anyone capable of getting a doctorate. It’s clearly superior to being an adjunct though. They’re low paid, insecure, highly qualified labour. Once you have a doctorate and you have two years on the job market without a tenure track job you’re done. You’re never getting a tenure track job and you’re better off getting the he’ll out. There are some exceptions but assuming you’ll beat the odds is a losing bet. Even those two years of adjuncting, doing teaching and research and hoping is a losing bet but it’s not an insane, fallacious waste. Sometimes people make it out. For all practical purposes no one makes it to tenured Professor, of whatever rank, after two years adjuncting.

Many states have backdoors that are regularly used to hire exceptional non-traditional candidates such as practicing Lawyers, experienced Engineers, and science/engineering PhDs (even PhDs in the humanities if the PhD is from a prestigious name).

But you need to get your resume in front of the right people -- namely, folks in the central office (or maybe principals) who view your area as a strategic/difficult hiring area. Easy peasy in CS these days...

Also check out private schools.

>Also check out private schools.

My understanding is that private (k-12) schools pay dramatically less than (unionized) public schools. I've had family and friends who taught even at very expensive secular private schools, who then moved over to public school because the pay, pension and benefits were dramatically better.

I don't have hard numbers, but my impression from talking with family and friends is that you are much better off as an adjunct at a public college than as a k-12 teacher at even a prestigious private school or non-union charter school, though a union teaching job at a public k-12 school pays better and is much more stable than both.

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