Public school teaching was one of those careers that I have been considering fairly seriously. I was until very recently going to be a grad student attempting to get a PhD in [specific area of] modern US history. Obviously, as a humanities-PhD-groupie it was fairly clear to me that I would be spending a lot of time teaching. However, I was under the impression that humanities teaching jobs were very very difficult to obtain. Is that not the case?
Positions teaching humanities IN COLLEGE are hard to come by. Very, very hard (with a few exceptions, e.g. PhD in Comp-Rhet). But we're talking about positions teaching high school humanities topics. Those are not hard to come by.
I would also be willing to teach other languages, although I would have to learn or relearn them and attain fluency. Spanish would be feasible, and I've been interested in learning Latin and Greek. Given my timeframe, I really could take whatever required courses I needed for a subject. I will have to look into it some more.
You may need a minor. You may want to consider an MA in education or an MA in your favorite subject that also allows you to take the necessary school-of-ed classes to get teacher certification. Whether that would leave you time for a language minor (assuming you don't already have one in your undergrad degree), I don't know. The MA would both boost your credentials and salary as a public school (or private school) teacher, and, if you structured it right, give you the opportunity to take the necessary school of ed classes.
But if you can get certified without an MA, go for it--once you're a teacher, you can likely pick up an MA at the school district's expense instead of paying for it yourself.
At this point, I'm strongly considering public school teaching and law school for my top two contenders. Both are basically related to my interest in becoming a history PhD to begin with, and I think that might be a smarter way to choose a career path than JUST portability.
Words cannot express how different those two careers are. Words cannot express how un-portable a law degree is in the first five years after you get it. But there are words to express the typical cost of a law degree: "as much as a mortgage." There are ways around that cost, but it requires some strategy. Plus, a law degree takes 3 years; in contrast, you could quite possibly be teaching public school by this fall, depending on the certification requirements of the state you're in. In other words, to the cost of the law degree itself, you should add the opportunity cost of not being able to work for three solid years, vs. being able to work quite soon if you pick a different career.
And remember, I'm a lawyer, and I've recommended the career to god knows how many people on this forum. It just doesn't seem like a very good fit for your particular situation, which requires you to be "portable" at a point in time where you simply
will not be portable if you get a law degree. (Don't underestimate what a complete PITA it is, and how expensive it is both directly and in terms of time spent not working, to take one bar exam, let alone an additional one.)
However, if you knew you could get into a really good law school, would you go? I am a bit worried that a few years of teaching high-schoolers US history (for example) would leave me feeling intellectually stunted. I am wondering if law school would be more promising in that regard.
If you have that worry, cross that bridge when you come to it (and by the way, don't make the mistake of thinking that practicing law will make you feel intellectually invigorated--there are an infinite number of ways to be utterly bored in the legal profession). Becoming a high school teacher now doesn't require you to remain one forever, or even for the next 5-10 years. You can change your mind and go back for a law degree, or whatever else strikes your fancy, if indeed you find yourself feeling intellectually stunted--and keep in mind that by that point, your fiance may be your spouse and if hu is working at a university that lets spouses take classes for free, you could get a PhD for free--or a law degree for free, if there's a law school there.
I took the LSAT a while ago; I know I can get into somewhere that would give me options. I could delay school 1 year, finish my 2nd year of law school when my fiancee gets her PhD, and be able to spend my 3rd year focusing on the bar/applying for jobs in whatever state s/he has a job in. We are willing to spend time apart, we are just not willing to do so without a clear end in sight.
If you do want to go to law school, do NOT go to an expensive school unless you plan to go into high-paying corporate law (a.k.a. "BigLaw"), and realize that if you do plan to go into that, you limit your portability extremely (with a minuscule number of exceptions BigLaw jobs do not exist outside large cities, so if your fiance's job takes hu to a college town, oh well for you). If you go into law-school debt the size of a mortgage and then do NOT go into BigLaw, you will be drowning in debt for the next 20 years. So seriously, just cross that "option" off your list--especially because even if you wanted to go that route, it's not entirely under your control: BigLaw recruits based on law school GPA, but law school classes are graded on a curve, so if you don't make the cut you simply are not going to get such a job. You could do phenomenal work, but if the requisite number of people do slightly more phenomenal work than you, welcome to the world of B's.
So, in essence, only even
consider going to a law school that gives you a healthy amount of tuition remission. The way that works is you look at your LSAT score, you look at the median LSAT scores of the law schools listed in US News (that's the easiest place to see all the LSAT medians in one place), and you see what schools have median LSATs at least two points below your LSAT score. Those are the schools that you have a chance of getting funding at. (Your best bet, of course, is the schools whose highest LSAT--the 25th percentile--is at least a point lower than your LSAT score).
