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[Jennifer]

Hey Anon - Chicago is way cooler than Detroit! I lived there for three years and my sis is there. I am seriously considering moving back there if I can't find anything in Michigan when I graduate. I looked on the City Colleges board - there's seven CC's, and there's a ton of Math openings. If I have to move out of state, that's the first place I'd go. But I don't think I want to move out-of-state for teaching high school... I'm very back and forth about this, in case you wondered! But I think in my heart, CC is the place for me!

[Jennifer]

I'm not sure about everywhere - but near me, when I got my teaching job last year, I got around 42K per year for a first year with a Master's. That's fairly equivalent to what I've seen on the boards for CC - they may pay 43 or 44. It may differ elsewhere. But in my county alone, it varies so much. One district is paying 36K for first year with a Masters, whereas another is paying 45K for the same. It's astounding - the difference. I've heard also - maybe this in incorrect - that CC's start higher than Universities, but Universities top out at slightly more - or maybe a lot more. I just need to get by, and with how broke I am now as a full-time student, it all seems like a lot. Although I used to make over 70K in the IT field - so it's all relative!

[Jennifer]

Hey thanks! I assumed that this was the hiring time - since it is with K-12. I'm glad to find out I must have missed the boat and that perhaps there were openings and they were just filled before I started poking around. I would prefer not to have to move out-of-state again - I moved to Chicago for a few years - and I would like to think that some CC's in my state would ever be hiring! I will move out-of-state though if I have to... But I really hope to get in where I'm at now - I just love it there, and it's right next door to the university I did my first Masters at (which I love and would be at again for this degree, but they don't offer a M.A. in applied math). My favorite prof there said he'd support my app as an adjunct there once I get this degree, so that would be great to teach at both schools... A lot of profs teach at both, and a lot of students come to the CC that I'm interested in to get their basic classes out of the way at cheaper prices.

I hope that my experience at another CC would be as great as it is here. I'm sort of worried it won't - I've never had a better experience in any working environment and with any students. The admin is very supportive, they have great support of faculty and students, and I feel very comfortable there. I am praying there's an opening when I'm ready. I'm up for a potential full-time position for the fall - if the Dean can get it approved, she already offered it to me - so I'm holding my breath a bit. This is all very exciting, but nerve-wracking at the same time.

Anyway, thanks for the info!

[anon]

The charter schools I know of in the chicagoland area have much higher standards for existence than the ones you're talking about in Michigan, although there is no tenure.  (But as a math teacher with experience, you don't really *need* tenure-- if the school goes under you can find another job within a 30 min drive right away.)  I volunteered at a really great one in a poor urban suburb of Chicago.  Also if you're thinking of IL, the Illinois Math and Science Academy (a 3 year public boarding school in Aurora, IL) has great students, demographically matched to represent the state of IL in terms of socioeconomic status, urban/rural status, and race.  Unless things have changed in the past 10 years, the salaries are crazy high at that school too-- one of the physics teachers was making over 6 figures and most of the math teachers were making around 80K, and I can't imagine that salaries have gone down much since then.  (They had a scale for teaching and always counted previous college teaching on the scale).

Of course, I also grew up thinking that community colleges were all wonderful and full of smart, hard-working (but poor) students and great dedicated teachers.  Apparently that's true in my area of Northern IL, but definitely not true of all community colleges, as I discovered after leaving corn country.  

So yeah, move to IL!