Another career on the Best Careers List that has the happy and satisfied workers. I believe the list, but everything I read about this particular job made me feel vicarious stress. Maybe some people like having several concerned groups of interested parties looking over their shoulders and watching what they do every step of the way and then holding them accountable for all results. That might not bother some people. I would loathe the being watched part as well as the being questioned by several groups who historically go against each other (students, teachers, school administration, government, and parents). No thank you. There is no way anyone could find a happy path between all of those parties. And yet, people in this field are satisfied and happy.

What do they do? Um, they coordinate instruction. Why is that confusing? What’s not to understand about that? Okay. They figure out what students need to learn and how to get the info into their noggins via teaching techniques, equipment, books, materials, etc. They work year-round and can end up working some long hours. After the planning and the implementation of getting the learnin’ into the students’ heads, the instructional coordinator and the job they did is then put to the test. Their job performance is measured by how well the students in their district do on the always popular standardized tests the government is so fond of. If the kids don’t exhibit proper levels of information absorption, then the coordinator isn’t doing his or her job.

If someone wanted to go into this field, they’d probably start out as an educator. That makes sense: understanding how the teaching and the learning work would be key to planning and coordinating curriculum and methods and materials and equipment. The minimum education requirement is a bachelor’s degree, preferably in education. Having a master’s degree would be better. Definitely having a few years teaching would serve a curriculum coordinator well. Even better: having a few years in an administrative position under your belt. The more you know about how the whole education system works (student angle, teacher angle, principal angle, etc.) the better chance you have of making sound decisions and planning out all of that curriculum. Also, you’ll have a much better chance of making everyone happy. As far as I can tell, the perfect instructional coordinator would have first-hand knowledge of being a student, a teacher, a parent, an administrator and a red-tape professional (standardized test-writing government monkey). It would have to be someone who loves the entire educational picture, from start to finish. Someone who understands what needs to be learned, what needs to be taught, and how those two processes are going to occur.

Job outlook for instructional coordinators looks swell. We can thank the No Child Left Behind Act and all the standardized standard-issue standardization for that. Standard annual salary for an instructional coordinator is $48,790.

Information makes you stronger:

www.bls.gov

Posted by Alexa Harrington
jobs, work, careers | school, college, greek

TWM discussed the recent decision of Carnegie Mellon University introducing gender-neutral housing this Fall. The University will offer the option in a pilot program in 25 of its apartments.

The Post-Gazette ran a lengthy article on this, citing that CMU will be joining the company of about 30 other schools that offer gender-neutral housing.

I’m not sure what University was first in offering this, but I do recall reading that University of Pennsylvania was one of the first. It appears that Penn still allows it. Meanwhile, the top conservative colleges in the country don’t even allow men and women to reside in the same building. Rather than tout their gender-neutral living spaces they pride themselves in their “gender-specific” ones.

By Sindya Bhanoo

College, and graduate school, are great opportunties to learn a language. Languages require at least a little bit of dedicated study time every day, and since you’re already in study mode this isn’t as hard to do. And in an increasingly globalized society, language skills are some of the best skills you can acquire.

There is quite a bit of funding for students who are interested in learning languages. Here are a few scholarships and grants that are out there:

1) Foreign Language And Area Studies (FLAS) - This scholarship covers tuition and provides a generous stipend. Contact your university’s scholarship office to find out more. They also offer $4000 scholarships for summer study.

2) NSEP Boren Programs - These scholarships fund students to study foreign languages in the United States and Abroad. There is, however, a service component that you must satisfy aftwards - this may involve working for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, or the Intelligence Community.

3) Corinne Jeannine Schillings Foundation scholarship - Scholarships for Girl Scouts who are pursuing a college major or minor in a foreign language.

4) Foreign Language Enhancement Program - The Committee of Institutional Cooperation is a consortium of 12 universities that sponsor students to study languages at other universities over the summer.

5) Rotary Cultural Ambassadorial Scholarship - The Rotary Club offers scholarships in the amounts of $10,000-$15,000 to study a foreign language for three or six months abroad.

Posted By Sindya Bhanoo

College | Foreign Languages

Scandals of Higher Education

An article in the New York Review of Books and the book list that goes with it made me want to erase the admissions policies, guidelines, etc. at every institution of higher learning I could find so we can all just start over. If college applicants did not have to submit to standardized testing and were faceless, nameless, raceless, colorless, classless, and genderless, then the admissions process would be closer to fair.

Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education

The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality

Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education

Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More

Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America

Inaccuracy of Standardized Testing
Standardized tests would be abolished because those suck on the fairness scale. Also on the accuracy scale, but who’s counting. It took me about ten seconds to realize that for the admissions process to be truly equal and fair, all applicants would need to be reduced to a colorless blob of plasma.

Standardized tests are ridiculous, and I’m my own best example of their utter crap factor: I’m a middle-class white girl whose family is educated and because of that I rock at standardized tests. I worked less hard than my classmates in high school—I studied only rarely. Even I could see they deserved a college education more than I did as they had done the work in high school and would continue to do so if they were able to go to college.
I skipped out on the two SAT prep courses my parents paid good money for. And still I did fine and dandy on the SAT and the ACT. I’m smart, but I’m not that smart. Standardized tests are a crock.

Equalizing the College Applicant Pool to Grey Blobs of Plasma
So, yes, I pretty much thought myself into a corner within 30 seconds of trying to mentally re-vamp the admissions situation. Here’s what I ended up with: the aforementioned colorless blobs of plasma who would all have to be interviewed one by one in lieu of the easily padded high school transcripts and college application essay (“Yes, my work as the president of the Lint-Weaving Club changed my life and the lives of lint-weavers everywhere. I also volunteered at Lint Weavers of America every Wednesday afternoon. Those grubby little lint-weaving faces were so inspiring, you know? There is just so much lint in the world, and it should all be woven! I feel very passionate about lint and the need to weave it. And that is why I belong at your college,”). And since there is no way every college and university in America will be hiring extra staff so as be sure to interview every applicant individually, that is not a possibility.

I can also see that equalizing the college applicant pool to grey blobs of plasma is not doable. And, sadly, most red-blooded Americans won’t want to see the Holy Trinity of the college application process (standardized tests, high school transcripts, essay) eliminated. Everyone loves vicarious, nostalgic suffering and there is nothing better than watching the next generation of college applicants have to run the same gauntlet you did. If we got rid of all the fake-able paperwork, the romance would be gone.

College Admissions Process is a Preview of the Real World
Here’s all I’ve got left (and this won’t work until technology catches the hell up): colleges scan all applicants with a special full-body scanner (like an airport metal detector, only different). Then the colleges could check out the applicant’s actual intelligence, their true potential, their work ethic, etc.

And since that clearly won’t work either, I give up. Maybe the only thing to do is to look at the college application and admissions process as a preview of the real world (a place you’ll hopefully be able to put off entering for at least four more years—ironically, only if you get into college). The real world is full of standardization, padding of transcripts and resumes, ass-kissing, hoop-jumping, numbers that mean nothing, people who excel at something unpopular so their talent goes unnoticed, and people who excel at the right thing and are rewarded extensively for it. In the real world some people look better on paper, and some know it will be mayday on the written, but they’ll pull it off if they can get an interview with a live human. Life is unfair, but everyone is good at something. Figure out what you’re good at, work your ass off, and eventually you’ll get where you want to be. Or you’ll be crushed by someone with better connections and more financial backing.

Posted by Alexa Harrington
College | University

Harvard Medical School, in the hopes of attracting teachers, is offering doctors salaries that are double what they would otherwise earn as primary care practioners, according to a CNN story. Sixteen million dollars are going into the effort.

I knew that a shortage of teachers was a major problem in nursing all through America. (From Massachusetts to California) but I didn’t realize that it was in issue at medical schools as well. Apparently, it’s a national problem…”the single biggest problem facing virtually every course director,” said David Cardozo, a neurobiology professor who led the effort to bring more money in for teaching doctors.

Teachers are the lifeblood of a well-functioning society, as are doctors. This is one problem we certainly don’t need.

Posted By Sindya Bhanoo
college | medical school

It may not be the best time of year to bring this up. It’s conceivable that it’s the worst time: any and all students (college or otherwise) are completely burnt out; winter is cold and therefore miserable and expensive; the school year started way back in the fall and summer vacation is still so very far away; everyone is exhausted and cranky and has too much work to do in too little time and there is no end in sight. If you’re heading for a breakdown or a moment of clarity, this is the time of year when it will come.

So pointing out an excellent blog post about college and whether or not it really matters could certainly upend a few apple carts. Whatever. I upended my own apple cart (at this exact time of year, oddly enough) during a particularly intense discussion with a good friend of mine about the meaning of life (duh, what else would it have been about?). I suddenly saw with perfect clarity (I’d just had a double espresso) that life is short and it was imperative that I postpone my studies for spring and summer quarters while I worked, saved money, traveled around Europe, and then moved to Seattle. It was entirely necessary, I’m telling you.

Of Course College Matters
I started right back up with my formal education in the fall. I’m a school junkie, and it never once occurred to me that college might not be a necessary part of my life. I come from a pretty educated family, and I crave learning on a cellular level. I never considered NOT attending college. Which made reading that blog even more mind-blowing for a girl like me. What do you mean?! College might not matter? Of course college matters! Choosing to opt out of higher education would be like deciding to not breathe. Who would choose the no-oxygen way of life? Not me, pal.

And yet, the author’s daughter makes an excellent argument for not running right out and going to college. I adore school, I would be a student in a professional capacity if I could find someone schmucky enough to pay me for it. But I have no snappy comeback (let alone a well-stated argument) for this woman’s daughter. She makes a solid case for college not being necessary for everyone. Yes, future doctors should go. There are several careers that require degrees, certification, a large amount of information, etc.

Dorm Life - Only the Real Thing Will Do
And if you really want to have the full-on college experience, then only the real thing will do. I have fond memories of the vomit and urine-stained industrial carpeting that covered the floors of my dorm building; dorm life is dorm life, you cannot replicate it. Nor can you skip a few years and then decide to try dorm living. There is a miniscule window of time, between ages 17 and 19, when you’ll find it marginally acceptable to reside in a foul-smelling hall surrounded by constant noise and obnoxious people with entirely too much time on their hands who are away from home and parental supervision for the first time and feel an intense need to be always inebriated and to come up with newer and much improved ways of destroying each other and said dorm. It is conducive neither to sleep nor to the absorption of academic material. But it’s fun and, as I said, impossible to duplicate.

Self-Taught Renaissance Types
There are a lot of careers that people find themselves in which are in no way related to what they thought they wanted to be when they grew up. They may have needed a degree when first starting out as fresh college grads with minimal experience; sometimes having a degree, even if it’s in underwater basket-weaving, can get you in the door. It’s a good first step, but not always necessary. College might not be necessary for those renaissance-types. My dad is one of those bastards; he can teach himself anything so thoroughly that he can apply it practically (building stuff, fixing stuff, designing stuff) AND can recall ridiculously detailed tidbits from the random mechanical engineering text he read (and apparently memorized) 15 years ago because he found it compelling. Almost as interesting as the history of maritime law and the chemical properties of metals. He’s amazing. Anyone who feels comfortable teaching themselves what they need to know or is good at learning as they go would be an excellent college-skipping candidate. I am not one of those people. Someday I’ll be more with the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants and less with the craving-an OCD-set-of-instructions. I want to get the answer right, and because of that, not being thoroughly trained and educated scares the crap out of me. I’m working on it.

Posted by Alexa Harrington
College | University | Life