How to succeed as a teacher - Part 1

After several years in advertising and technology I decided to go for a ’simpler life’ - teaching. First off, it wasn’t simpler and there were many things I had to pay close attention to now that I was working as a teacher. It’s a different environment. One with no competition really, so how things work are a very distorted. This was in Ontario, so your experience may vary. It may sound cynical, but I think it all rings true!

When it comes to getting your job…
1. Non-teaching experience - irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter if I was the head of a big company and employed lots of people and did tons of corporate training in several countries, made scientific discoveries, wrote magazine articles translated into several languages, and had some teaching experience. My 16 years of experience disappeared to 3 years of actual teaching experience. The school system sees no connection between any connected skills of problem solving, project management, task completion, people skills, etc. As if your skills are not transferable! The school system actually tends to fear this. One administrator told me that they were reluctant to hire, simply because they didn’t think I would stay as a teacher with this background.

Solution - you are a teacher only, and you always wanted to be a teacher, and you only want to be a teacher. If you mention any further ambition, you will only torpedo yourself. If you had other experience, skew it so that it is education or training related and mention how you never enjoyed it because you always wanted to be a teacher.