Job Discussion Forums

[dog@kew]

I was trying to find out what I might do, probably in terms of education, to make myself eligible for a job (if there is such a job) that wouldn't go against the grain of my personality. If you've got to be a certain "type," I figured I should find this out now; and this necessitated describing myself.
I understand that I can't get a decent job with the degree I've got. That's why I'm here asking about what I might do.

How would I get to the point where I could be "choosy"? I mentioned liking school in case anyone had any suggestions in that area. I was never trying to argue that there was nothing I needed to work on.

In the only job I've had experience in, I've been teaching regular high school curriculum material to international students, some of whom should probably be taught ESL instead. Many of them like doing the exercises that are more or less busy-work, like scanning some canned paragraph for a given bit of information. I'd thought, "this isn't going to do a bit of good, I'll give them more demanding exercises; they'll like it less initially, but eventually they'll get comfortable with it, get engaged, and I won't be ripping them off." A few times of that and I'd never see them again. Also, you're supposed to focus on what they're bad at; but it's part of the service that they can ask for another tutor if they don't like the one they've got, or what they're working on. Being inexperienced, my instinct was to stick to what my boss wanted done, but I think that might have just about lost me the job.

Anyway, I wanted to explain that I might not have been put in an environment where I was likely to thrive. But I don't know; I don't know if ESL training, or an education degree, would be wasted on me. I don't know how much the nature of the job changes when you go through one or more of the seeming multitude of educational certificates, degrees, etc. I don't have a clue what you'd do in an education or applied linguistics BA, or whether it would make someone a significantly better teacher than a certificate would. What I've got's not enough; I know. I'm not unwilling to change. What do I do now?