Finally, there came an opening at my very favorite high school in the area, but to save money they crammed 40 students (in a lab built for 24) into each of three periods (120 student load, typical of a full-time load) and defined it as a half-time job. Then the district spent two months of the school year (and the prospective teacher’s salary) coming around to making an offer (which hung the poor principal out to dry with teachers, students and parents). I interviewed at the beginning of Sept. and was offered the position on 10/28 to start on Halloween. They offered me $14K, temporary contract until June (which is the only kind of contract the cash-strapped district will allow, which rendered the half-benefits moot — who is going to cancel their health insurance to switch over for a temp. job?).

Even at $14K (did I mention that it was a measly $14K?) I would have even considered accepting, perhaps, except that on 10/27 I had accepted a writing project that is keeping me busy until April. So I had to turn it down.

I was the only chemistry teacher who applied, because there aren’t any others. Almost no one is graduating in chemistry education. You know why? Because people who do chemistry can also do math — as can math teachers — and they can figure out that their skills can make better money for less time elsewhere (myself included). For district legalities, they had the ‘redefine’ the job as a general science job instead of a chemistry job, in order to hire their long-term sub who isn’t a chemistry teacher.

Hence, in the schools you have advanced math and advanced science teachers who don’t really know the subjects but get stuck there by principals because there aren’t enough math and science teachers, so they are limited, confused, swamped and drowning. Or if they are good, they are still swamped and drowning. Plus a very few really good ones who seem to love it and handle it. I’ve only seen a handful.

That, plus we start chemistry and physics and math WAAYYYYY too late. We should be teaching the periodic table to 3rd graders. There’s my two cents, which appears to be my hourly rate as a high school chemistry teacher.

I love science (but I didn’t at first — nearly killed me), but I will confess that after a rigorous science course, a humanities or history or literature course seems quite fun. I think we have lots of people following their “passion” for thought-provoking fun, and opting out of seriously hard work that can be rough going at first.

There are no more job openings this year. My three-year license will expire this summer, and it would cost me $2K to get the CE credit to renew because I am not employed as a teacher. Catch 22. The world will lose another chemistry teacher. It’s all a shame, because I LOVE teaching chemistry to teens, and watching them smile with comprehension.

Mindy is not a fan.

Four years later I took a calculus and statistics class as a sophomore in college. Both prerequisites for the business program (I later got into), and both considered very difficult classes. As I prepared to go to the classes, I was VERY nervous. From my previous high school adventures I KNEW that I hated math. Turned out I got As in both. They each took a lot of work, but I realized pretty quickly in the semester that not only did I LIKE math, but that I was really, really good at it.

I’m not trying to shirk responsibility for my poor performance in my math classes in High School. Clearly I could have worked much harder, but I do think our system is set up to make students feel like humanities classes are fun, and hard sciences are not. It also encourages the idea that math is something that really, really smart people are good at, and that’s not you.

I don’t know exactly what the solution is, but I think it has to start pretty young. Maybe better courses when kids are in grade school and jr. high? Or maybe it’s instilling the idea that math may not be fun now, but having a job, eating food, and driving with insurance WILL be in the future… and you can’t do that without the hard sciences.