I'm ready to get into my own career. We've moved a lot for my husband's work, and I've mainly stayed self-employed the past several years to accommodate that and my children. I'm looking for a career that is flexible or available in many places, because we'll likely move again within the next year or two (hopefully last time), and interests me intellectually. I don't have to make a ton of money, on the other hand I can't waste money, so I'd like to do an affordable program(s) likely to lead to employment. I have an AS in legal studies/paralegal and a BA in psychology. I've held various legal related jobs (paralegal, investigator, process server) now teaching at a career college, was a group leader in a psychosocial program, been self-employed many years as an editor, writer, and transcriptionist. At this point I believe working at the community college level would be a good move because they are all over the U.S. and sometimes even have online teaching options. If we ever settled in a place (hopefully within the next few years that will be the case) then I could consider maybe the secondary level as well. My problem is most of the things I'm interested in, seem hard to find openings in. Thus, not really that flexible or practical. For example, I was looking at the MAIS from WNMU (found out about on this forum, of course) and the concentrations I'm most interested in, like history, when I search seem hard to find positions in. If I choose history, for my personal interest, I'd have to choose a really strong second concentration area, but they all seem like crap shoots in the end. I've started researching a masters in Adult Basic Education which covers a lot of ground, GED, career and votech (like my new part-time gig), corporate training, etc. I've seen several positions across the country teaching developmental reading, writing, and GED classes, but they all seem part-time. But I believe this is going to be a growing area of post-secondary education and one that's been long ignored, especially if programs have to improve their graduation and career placement rates (so maybe the part-time nature will change -- conjecture). As an editor, I have experience working with writers, including ESL writers, so I have some idea what it involves and I'd be okay with this, especially if schools would also allow me to teach subjects I'm interested in if I had the 18 credits. My guess is I'd basically have a part-time job and an adjunct job, if I went this route, even though I'd eventually prefer something more stable Education interests me, because I like the subjects, creative problem solving, analyse, research, and helping others. I'm trying to think of other options for a person that is analytical but drawn to social sciences and humanities. I don't know if I would like something like database management, or if there are other quasi tech fields that might appeal to me, because I don't really have experience in that area. I saw MLS is going this direction, but also read that they are having real difficulties finding jobs. Any other thoughts or ideas? Pretty please. Thank you
Different community colleges have different guidelines. Where I used to live, the community college only required a bachelors for adjunct faculty. Here, a bachelors is the only requirement to get hired full-time, but you need to earn a Masters within two years otherwise they terminate you. Other schools insist on a degree right away. The problem with community colleges, in my opinion, is that it is difficult to prepare for that world directly. If you left high school intent on becoming an English professor, you would presumably go out and get the necessary education. For adult learners, it can be a bit trickier. Unlike a twenty something fresh out of college, most adult learners have geographic constraints. Community colleges also have very different needs from school to school. At my community college, they had a very big need for business, applied technology and healthcare adjuncts. So R.N.s without masters degrees were being scooped up. I, with my NA MSM, was scooped up. But our English department is fully staffed and, one of them recently mentioned to me, they get unsolicited resumes from unemployed PhDs from around the region. Community college teaching, again this is my opinion, is best suited for people who have a primary occupation. For example, I work in HR, so I teach HR. If I ever wanted to teach full-time, I could quit my day job and teach full time. If I ever wanted to go back to industry, it shouldn't be that big of a challenge. There are obviously exceptions to this. And there are obviously people who would disagree with me (probably my school's entire English department). But I say this to anyone who is considering earning a Masters degree just so that they can teach at a community college. It's a bit like when you see someone from a small town who earns a Master of Library Science and refuses to move hoping, one day, a job at the only library in town will open up. Here are a few things you can get into a bit more quickly: 1. Mobile notary - I had a friend who did this. You become a notary, then you sign up with a service online and they dispatch you to real estate closings. Money isn't great. My friend cleaned up during the mortgage bubble but things have changed quite a bit since then. 2. Writing - I love writing (which explains my verbose posts). Sometimes on long weekends I take writing jobs on Amazon's mechanical Turk (mturk.com) or on Text Broker. At $8 per piece (to start) you aren't going to make a fortune. But it's free to start. The most I ever made was $96 in one weekend. If you budgeted your time and didn't procrastinate too much you should be able to make a few hundred bucks a week. 3. Language Coaching Online - Another friend of mine lost her job as an English teacher and was unable to find anything in a three state radius. She started teaching English online. In practice, it was actually more like coaching. You converse with someone in another country via skype and they pay you an hourly rate. She was pretty bad with deadlines and actually sitting down to, well, work (great feature in a teacher, right?). It's the reason she couldn't bring herself to write. The language coaching was a bit easier for her. The money was on-par with a crappy retail job but saved her the indignity of working one (while retaining a flexible schedule and the ability to work from home). As noted, a Masters degree (particularly in subject like History) is a total crap shoot. Will you get a job at a CC? Maybe. In some states you can also pursue alternative pathways to teacher credentials. But then, you might end up with a teaching certificate and no job anyway. And even if you get a CC job it would likely be as an adjunct to start (I made about $6k last year teaching as an adjunct). I'm not trying to discourage you from furthering your education. But a Masters degree is a fairly expensive proposition for a pretty modest return in that area. You can also use the ideas above to establish a baseline income stream (or streams) while branching into new territory like life coaching (creative problem solving) or something like that.
Like I said, Neuhaus, I appreciate all insight, so thank you. I know what I can and have spun around inside my own noggin, so I hope to gather some ideas to look at things differently, or that lead in a different direction. For the record, I already am self-employed and have lined up adjunct classes with only a BA, but I don't think that field will have high demand going forward since there is a high unemployment rate for attorneys.
I've already chimed in on what subjects to choose in the other thread, but I'll add my too cents here. Development/Basic education is a huge part of what CCs do. Many who enter CCs are simply not prepared to attend college in any real way. They simply do not have the critical thinking, writing, and math skills to really succeed, so that is where developmental courses come in to fill the gap. With that being said, a lot of the developmental courses don't require that you have a masters to teach, since for the most part they are not true college courses, per se, at least that is the case here in NC. So, things like GED, ESL, and basic math/writing/reading courses often hire folks with nothing more than a BA. If this is really something you might be interested in, I would simply try to break in with the education that you have, and get some experience to see if you like it, at least before diving into a rigorous MA in Adult Basic Ed.
