Teaching couple and increasing our marketability

Post Reply
TeacherGal
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat May 14, 2016 8:51 am

Teaching couple and increasing our marketability

Post by TeacherGal »

My boyfriend and I want to go recruiting as a couple for the first time one year from now but we both teach elementary school. I am also qualified to teach social studies at the high school level but have no experience and would prefer to remain in elementary school.
1. Would we still be marketable to both teach elementary?
2. Would I be considered for a high school position at a good school with no experience?
3. Are there any elementary school teaching specialties my boyfriend and/or I could pick up next year to increase our marketability before we go recruiting?
reisgio
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:17 am

Re: Teaching couple and increasing our marketability

Post by reisgio »

1. Yes, you would still be marketable to schools that regularly have a good amount of attrition in their elementary school
2. No, good schools want people with experience in the subjects that they are hiring them to teach
3. Nothing you can do in the time you have indicated you have before recruiting

One more note: if you are just dating your partner, you are really not a teaching couple. You are two people who want to end up in the same place together. You are more valuable to schools married, but you may want to target schools in the same city as long as you are not married. Good luck.
PsyGuy
Posts: 10789
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Response

Post by PsyGuy »

I concur with @reisgio You are not a teaching couple, your two people that are dating that want to stay together. Many ISs would not be able to classify you as a teaching coupe, and many more wouldnt want to.

Primary is a very saturated field, and many ISs with low levels of turnover save their primary vacancies for teaching couples when there is a need for a higher demand IT such as science, math, etc. Marketing yourselves as a couple is likely going to limit your options.

A lower tier IS may be interested in you, but without experience an upper tier IS is going to have plenty of applicants with stronger resumes and more to offer. The issue is that if you persist to approach IE as a couple with any significant probability of dual primary positions you are going to be looking at lower tier ISs or hardship locations that have significant number of primary vacancies.

I would first recommend if there was any opportunity to gain some experience in an IB DS/IS in the PYP that would be the best thing you could do with the time you have available. Researching the PYP and IB so that you can talk intelligently about IB and PYP would be a strong interview and recruiting strategy. If you cant get into IB, I would look at ways over the summer you could implement an IB/PYP classroom within your own positions. If you can show you understand the IB and PYP and can show/demonstrate that youve implemented PYP practices in your classroom it may be convincing enough for an appointment.

In Primary ISs you typically find PHE, ICT FL and some amount of fine arts as primary specialists. If one of you had a background and could market yourself in one of those specialties you would distinguish yourselves from being two HRTs.

You should strongly consider marriage or absent that consider that you would have better marketability and potentially more options as individuals. You could find individual appointments in the same city with full OSH packages.

Some other options you could consider:
1) Applying for QTS, this would make you available and marketable to BSs, assuming you researched the UKNC and its system and like PYP could talk intelligently about it.

2) No amount of training equals any amount of experience, but if your current DSs provided you with a PD allowance or would pay for it a PYP workshop wouldnt hurt.

3) Depending what your background is you may be able to add a leadership certificate, but depending on your state adding ESOL or SPED may be very easy to do and could further differentiate yourselves from HRTs.
Post Reply