Rodney

Just finished student-teaching in a five-quarter program in California that gives you a master's degree in education and a teaching credential simultaneously. Rough? You got no idea.

Anyway, as folks have said in most places you must have a four-year degree, then take a (usually) one-year teaching credential program that includes both classes and student teaching. And between the bachelor's and the credential program you have to take and pass one or more tests that prove your knowledge in the subject area you wish to teach in.

I'm going into teaching with a lot of life experience under my belt, and even so I must say that it will be a challenge. I've had some really great days in the classroom, where the kids are excited and learning and everything's ticking along, and some days that were stone bummers. I've seen teachers who are keeping the joy alive 30 years in, and I've seen others burning out before my eyes.

It's a damn hard job. Why do it? Because it's real. It's realer than anything except maybe an operating room. It's a damn sight realer that sitting in a cube massaging numbers or making a marketing plan for another server the world doesn't need, or QAing a hairy piece of logistics software. You see kids come into the classroom and you see them go out at the end of the year, and some of them are doing a hell of a lot better than they were, as people as well as as students, and you know it's because of _you._ I had a mother give me a wallet for helping her daughter get past some behavioral problems and buckle down to work. Best present I ever had.

As for getting summers off, it depends on the cost of living where you are, and how much they pay teachers. It isn't a high pay job. Where I live, the cost of housing is quite high, and a great many teachers teach summer school or other summer programs, or teach in after school programs as well as their regular classes to get by. So a lot of teachers, especially those with families to support, don't get all that much time off.