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Ask Slashdot: What To Do With a Math Degree?
First time accepted submitter badmojo17 writes "After achieving her lifelong dream of becoming a public school math teacher, my wife has found the profession to be much more frustrating than she ever expected. She could deal with having a group of disrespectful criminals as students if she had competent administrators supporting her, but the sad truth is that her administration causes more problems on a daily basis than her students do. Our question is this: what other professions are open to a bright young woman with a bachelor's degree in math and a master's degree in education? Without further education, what types of positions or companies might be interested in her as an employee?"
Worst case scenario she can say she tried.
I've know a couple of devs with math degrees, and they were excellent.
...a quant
I'm sure the NSA would love to have a mathematician.
Why do you want to limit your options? Have her do masters in math finance and then she will be making six digits easily.
Teach... but I see she tried that. Actually I know some programmers with Math degrees. Some other uses would be related to insurance industry and calculating policy premiums. If you don't plan on teaching with a Math degree, you do have to get a bit creative.
C#, Java, C++, Ada, Pascal will do
There are families who value education and aren't satisfied with schools.
If she has additional background in biology, or computing skills, she might find work in a computational biology lab as a staff scientist or assistant ... but the real key is to have a complementary skill, where mathematics helps propel the analysis and work.
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
I work for a major defense contractor and we use math majors for simulations, guidance and other disciplines. We have a developers with math majors as well.
Any creative math major can be a game developer with some CS. Education masters? Serious games: http://www.gameslearningsociety.org/
I come from a family of teachers, so I know all about internal politics. Unless she no longer wants to teach under any circumstances, change schools first before giving up. Try private if you've only done public, etc. If it is truly her passion, she'll find the school for her.
Or, do what my college roommate did and specialize in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Make $120,000 a year and hate yourself.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Actuary, software developer, financial analyst, just off the top of my head.
And she thinks administrators/managers in the private sector are better???
Perhaps a career where she's her own boss may be more fitting for her personality. Tutoring rich kids, maybe.
Table-ized A.I.
Become a professional gambler.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Private school math teacher?
She can still teach. Aren't there schools with less bureaucracy and administrative nonsense; private schools, charter school, etc?
My BS in Math hasn't hurt me, but I can't say it really gives you enough depth in math to do a lot with directly. It is a leg up on engineering or science career paths, but I'd be real surprised if anyone could find a position that relied on an undergrad math degree. Math is a beast, 4 years is barely enough time to learn the basics.
I think she's maybe be best off looking at some area where her education degree could be helpful. Training or some type of course design work or something. I'm sure there's a niche there somewhere for someone that is willing to go out and carve it out for themselves. The other option? Go for the PhD and teach education at a college level, lol (or math for that matter). Heck, I've taught a few college level courses as an adjunct myself, you don't usually need an advanced degree. It isn't the best paying job ever, but she might find that teaching a few courses at college level will tell her if she's at all interested in that. It is a BIT different from teaching K-12 in a public school.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
First, there's always graduate school. Math is a fantastic subject to learn more about, just because (like many other things). After she could probably get into academia or industry (industry at a higher level).
Second, the people I know from undergrad with math degrees, who did not go to graduate school, chose one of three options:
1.) Work for a financial company doing number crunching of some sort
2.) Taking the actuarial exams
3.) Computer companies: but I've heard from them that at job fairs, computer companies that want to hire math majors always want to know the amount of programming experience you have
My two cents
Someone with a BSc. in Math and a MA in Education should be looking into online courseware and educational software.
A good start would be to sample a few of the online coursews in programming and math related subjects from schools like Stanford and MIT. Get a sense of what's available and what improvements are there to be made.
In the Financial industry, "Quants" or Quantitative Analysts use statistics and sophisticated heuristics to feed ideas and information to organizations that deal with trading in the various markets (stocks, options, futures, commodities, forex, etc.), such as hedge funds, statistical arbitrage operations, and private investors. It's a high paying, highly challenging position that deals with all kinds of mathematical functions and techniques, such as optimizing adaptive filters. It's one of the best places for a mathematician to earn a great salary, but your skill and experience needs to be very top level.
Young, shown she can learn and apply reason and logic. Christ, pretty much any career. What does she want to do? She needs to think about what she wants to do, apply for jobs and let them tell her whether she's suitable or what she needs to do to become suitable.
No-one ever said on their death beds that they wanted to spend more time in the office. And your career will never wake up one morning and tell you it doesn't love you any more. Both of these are reasons to do something she actually wants to do.
If she is in the unenviable position of having to trade her time for money in order to live, she should at least do something she has some interest in. Just work out what she wants to do, then get the qualifications or experience to suit. Don't assume her current qualifications should be the starting point for making that decision. She wouldn't necessarily be starting from scratch, having a degree of any kind (especially a Masters degree) gives you a head start in many other areas.
The OP says this person is a "bright young woman", retirement is probably a long way off... hopefully she can find something she likes that makes economic sense also.
Good luck.
See the other Slashdot article today saying 49% of companies are having difficulty hiring for IT jobs?
Learn to write code, even if it takes an additional certificate program to prove. The starting salary for a BS in CS now is as high as $70k/y, and CS used to be a subset of the math department.
- Insurance companies sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of cost/benefits
- Larger hospitals that do research sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of medicines and treatments
- Manufacturing companies sometimes hire them to do statistical analysis of product failures
If she doesn't mind focusing on the statistics branch of math, there are jobs out there.
If she wants out of the education field, and has no interest in learning how to code, her best bet is the business world. Not a guarantee by any means, but she has a better chance than your art history or women's studies major. She'll probably start as an administrative assistant of some kind, for management that would like some number crunchers on their team, and she can make her way from there. It's not quite the mail room, but it won't be a "ready made" position like accounting or HR either. She just has to get her foot in the door somewhere. It'll be for low pay at the start, but that wont last long. I'd try putting in at banks, finance companies, and manufacturers. She'll have less luck at service industries where they either want sales types or admin types with a particular skillset ready to go. Banking is big, profitable, and it's not going away. That's the first place I'd start.Once she has her foot in the door somewhere, the education background might come in handy if an opportunity to be a trainer in the corporation comes up.
BTW, has she checked into being a math instructor at a community college? They'll often take BA's in Math with a Masters in Ed to teach introductory algebra classes, "business math" classes, etc. It's pretty easy for community colleges to find English, History, and Sociology majors. It's a little harder finding Math majors, and they'll pay a little better.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"but the sad truth is that her administration causes more problems on a daily basis than her students do"
By this, you mean that she has a boss or coworkers that dont allow her to fullfil an already hard job? Where have I heard this before...besides... EVERYWHERE!
Every job has this kind of challenges. She has 2 options:
She can fight status quo and think a solution to bypass administration or get some freedom of action, or
She can just do what everybody else does and do what she is asked as far as she can, even if her job is not as efficient as she thinks it could be done.
This answer applies for almost any dependant job. Earning your collegues and boss respect is a hard thing to do, sometimes you get reasonable ppl, sometimes you dont.
And, as a freelance, your client is your boss, and you have the same problems except that if your client doesnt trust you, they just stop calling.
Only half joking, my freshman math professor actually did this. He was finishing up his doctorate at the time he taught the class I was in. Couple years later he was in a CS class with me. He'd decided the pure math jobs out there were crap, but math programming there was a market for.
Do teaching or software development
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
There are plenty of countries where teachers are actually respected, paid decent wages and supported by their schools - my little brother ended up in Australia, and even though he's not currently in a particularly nice school (inner city...) he still says it's a massive leap above most schools in the US/UK...
Lots of companies want employees who think logically and communicate clearly. People who have these skills XOR are common, but AND is unusual.
Rather than ask what kind of job she could do, ask her what kind of organization she wants to work for; i.e., what interests her? High-tech? Non-profit? Biz? Then have find and research specific companies that interest her. Last, direct sales: make direct contact and explain "this is why you want to hire me."
While we're on the subject of giving up your passion, how about accounting? Granted, it's like culinary chef working at McDonald's, but a CPA pays much better than a teacher.
Do what the others have said, go to a different school. And yes, learn to put up with bullshit because it exists in every profession.
----- obSig
"What To Do With a Math Degree?
Would you like your fries Super Sized?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
I've got a Math degree (not Math Education, mind you, just plain Math). I couldn't find a job to save my life for awhile, but sooner or later I took a tech support job and was moved up to Quality Assurance and may one day move into development.
One thing I *want* to do, but just don't have the fortitude to do is take some of the actuary exams. If your wife is a standard math nerd, doing actuarial work should be right up her alley.
I guess she can really do whatever she wants. A lot of place will just take anyone that isn't an idiot that has a degree. I'm sure anything that she wants to do will be rewarding in and of itself.
1. Head to Vegas.
2. Count Cards.
3. Profit.
Fight Spammers!
There isn't much value in the Master's in Education outside the field. She could look into teaching at a private school, or work for a non-profit or governmental institute evaluating teaching, but that's about it. Staying within education broadly construed, she might look into Instructional Design or Corporate (e.g. Continuing Professional) Education.
The B.A. in Math however, says a lot and has a lot more application. Depending on her interests and background it could land her in anything from software development to quantitative finance to a staff support position in the social (or even the 'hard') science.
Frankly, as an owner of small software company, a B.A. or B.S. in Math, is a whole more meaningful to me than the time she spent in Education. The only non-professional majors I like to hire as much as Math are Physics and, oddly, Philosophy. Sure, a computer science best or engineering background piques my interest more, but of all the liberal arts and sciences people with all three of those majors have been among my best hires.
Of course, all of the best candidates learned something and did some software development before applying to our company. But in my opinion, a Math degree is an easy sell.
We should really know what we're getting into, before choosing a career... but when we don't...
at least Math still opens doors, especially if she did well at university.
Did I forget: Relief Teaching?
Teaching ADULTS [Literacy &] Numeracy... in AU, there's $$ in doing that in small grouups with indigenous students, to prepare them for jobs, eg, in Mining. (and...Mining pays -very- well).
Contractors, definitely. The Feds needs math types in multiple agencies. The Census Bureau does a lot of stat work, for example. DoD needs math types at the warfare centers scattered around the country. Does she have any interest in Human-Systems Integration or training systems? There are a lot of people trying to find ways to get all those personnel trained up on new systems.
Alternatively, teach at a private school. They have the advantage of being able to select and expel their students and there will be less bureaucracy.
I am a former math teacher. For me, it was also my colleagues that created more trouble than the students. Now I'm in IT.
How about becoming an administrator and being part of the solution?
Ada in Aerospace (where crashes actually kill humans) and Pascal in the Delphi RAD business, which is still there.
...has positions available.
Banks employ lots of mathematicians nowadays, especially in the insurance field, but most of them require an MS.
Go into a specific business field that uses math in a non-accounting manner: product development and marketing.
"Product development" in the specification sense, not in the implementation sense. The determining of needs and wants of potential customers and coming up with products and product features that meet this need. Believe it or not the way people are taught to do this sort of thing in business school actually involves mathematical modeling, sampling and statistics, etc. I was shocked and thrilled to see how much advanced math is used in graduate level marketing classes.
Tons of analyst jobs.
You could lobby Congress for a grant to tutor them on math! They obviously have issues with negative signs.
Shoot self and respawn. Not a single STEMS degree has any value. Look at the billionaires. Do they code? No. Can they do complex math? No. Do they even have a degree? 80% don't. Face the truth and give up on a career. Go build a robot army in a unsuspecting country and become a despot. That will put you math skills to work.
Yeah, but which infinity? There's a lot of them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Move to a better school district. She won't have "criminals" (not my word!) in her class. She will have brighter, more educated, and well-behaved children. That will probably improve the administration situation as well. I would say just "teach" in a better school district, but the sooner you make the move yourself to a better district, the better... since raising kids in a bad school area gets progressively worse as the kids get older.
And don't give me any crap about how I must be a mean conservative... most of the white liberals who work and live in/near Berkeley, CA refuse to send their kids to the neighborhood government schools...
She could develop and/or present courses for Mathworks or a similar company.
Get back in the kitchen and bring me a beer!!!
She is a happy public school teacher. It took her 6 years to get good enough, and to find a good school, one that is primarily made up of refugees. The kids barely speak English, but they love to learn and realize how good they have it. Her administration supports her, and her fellow teachers are working together to integrate math and science education into something interesting to middle schoolers, while stressing above all the prinicals of logic and reason.
So I guess it happens. Sometimes. To some people. If they are lucky and patient. Not much hope, but some hope...
There are a lot of opportunities in signal processing (wireless, speech, and vision), and the math background would be an excellent differentiator. However she would need to learn digital signal processing, MATLAB for prototyping, and C/C++ for building fast signal processing systems.
The NSA will hire smart math grads for signal processing and train you up to some extent.
Tell her to spend the year getting a master's degree in mathematics. At that point, she is eligible to teach at a two year college. I have a high school teaching license in science but after 1.5 years I gave up for pretty much the same reasons. Because I have a master's degree in physics, I started teaching at a community college. So much better! The students grow up over night, you don't deal with parents regardless of the students age, and you can kick any trouble makers out of the class. I'd never go back to a high school! Lots of jobs for math at two year colleges.
Sign on duck.
Next time, try an internship (substitute teaching) before getting 2 degrees!
If her specialty involves linear math or modeling, ORAs can make a *lot* of money, and most that I know really enjoy their work. Uses both the math side of the house (simplex algorithm, Gauss-Jordan elimination, etc) and the creative side in terms of modeling discrete systems.
Anything - with physics or maths the world is your oyster.
Seriously, if you are qualified in physics or maths (note the plural, maths is a contraction of mathematics, math is not) you can work for anyone.
When I say anyone I mean from defence through to stock market trading (physics degrees being the most common in the stock market).
Stop thinking small scale and assuming the only career is being a teacher. If you are qualified in maths then you are top of the tree numerate candidate.
You can turn you hand to anything (unless you are a clutz in the real world, so don't become a plumber).
I've worked with awesome mathematicians who we awful software engineers. Why were they tolerated? Because they could do the maths. Simple.
Some of them I could lead them to the bug in the debugger and they still couldn't see it. They could not debug themselves out of a wet brown paper bag. I had zero respect for them as software engineers. They were awful. But they were very valuable. In maths terms. And that is why they were hired. And why they never got fired.
Same for non-software professions.
Stop thinking "teaching". Start thinking "what do people need solved?" With a maths degree (or better) you partner has a huge range of jobs available.
I have an M.A. in mathematics, and have had a lot of difficulty finding a non-teaching job, so much so that I'm going back to school to get a Computer Science degree.
With a Masters in Education, my first recommendation would be to look for a college-level teaching job, either at a community college, 4 year school, or tech school. I'm currently a teacher at a private tech school (a la Devry, Univ of Phoenix), and while the students are certainly not the best, I've found that with some patience and creativity you can make it work. I sympathize with having shitty administrators... if it really is intolerable I say just try to find another teaching job with better bosses; math teachers are usually in pretty high demand, and there are bound to be some good administrators out there somewhere.
If you want out of the classroom, I would look into math textbook publishing with Pearson, Wiley, or something similar, they often have editor positions open that require a strong math background, and I'm sure the Education degree will be an asset. There also seem to be a number of online education companies springing up that may be hiring someone to write curriculum guidelines, generate material for online students, do online tutoring, and such -- don't know of any off the top of my head, but they shouldn't be too hard to find.
If you're looking to get out of teaching and education altogether, then, as others have said, with a moderate amount of programming knowledge, it's probably possible to get hired on doing data analysis or technical programming of some sort, but when doing my own job hunts, I often felt that the companies were much more interested in hiring someone with a full CS background.
If CS is not your bag, I would strongly recommend getting into statistics. Most large businesses usually have positions open for statisticians of some sort, usually as data analysts or something similar, and business-types usually seem impressed by strong stats skills.
Hope that helps.
If she is bright and loves mathematics, she should go on to do graduate studies. Undergrad maths is really boring compared to graduate level stuff. Then the world is her oyster. She should find a good school and a good supervisor. The world of professional mathematicians is pretty exciting !
I degree (whether bachelor's or master's) in Education is absolutely useless for anything other than a public school/teacher's union setting. No one else will give any weight to a degree where you know less once you've finished than when you started. Indeed, a Master's in Education is negatively correlated with student success.
However, a private school will value the math degree. Another option is to focus on a Master's or Ph.D. in Mathematics and go after a "Quant"-type job.
I just graduated with a pure math BS from UCSD with a minor in CS. I got hired by Metron (www.metsci.com) as an operations analyst. Which is essentially just answering questions and doing research for the DOD. As someone who is also a tutor, I can also understand your wife's position. A good question to ask is what did she specialize in? I specialized in probability theory and real analysis, this lends it self to multiple careers. If you specialize in math education your options might be more limited since those courses tend to take away from your time attending more applicable courses. That said, private tutoring is lucrative if you know how to do it and know who to look for. People who tutor calculus are sought out pretty often, given that a lot of high school calc courses are less than adequate. Other things to consider, she probably could market her self as someone with high critical thinking skills and thus apply for positions, that while not math oriented, will accept math majors.
Hope she finds something better :)
Eat sleep die
One mistake I think a lot of people make is translating a degree into a career path. True, you can match degrees to jobs but often most employers are looking to see that you have education when they look for a degree. At least in my rather limited perspective.
So she should try to find something she likes, not necessarily directly related to a degree in math.
Go back to school for 4 more years, acquire a Ph.D in mathematics. $300,000 year starting, any job she wants.
I know a math degree doesn't guarantee she can get her head around various products well enough to train folks how to use them, but I'm pretty sure she'll do better than some... and the students are usually a little less riotous.
bank teller? are you kidding? Let's try to aim a little higher than $8/hr
-Tutoring
-Remote Sensing/Geomatics
-Land Surveying
-Hyperspectral Data Processing
-Statistical Data Mining
-Audio/Sonar Signal Processing
-Genomics
-A.I. development using statistical measures
-Chemical Numerical Combinatorics
And, No, I won't explain any of these. I refuse unconditionally.
are you western? considered the military industrial complex? its all the lucrative pay of the private sector and none of the hassle of applying for grants each year to study silly things the government doesnt fund anyway, like climate change research. As an added bonus, the employment is based on unjustified, uncodifiable fears and uncertainties that simply exist without premise, so youre guaranteed a job in perpetuity!
but in all seriousness yeah, I asked myself the same question after i got the Computer Science degree and math minor. the only people willing to hire a mathematician are nasa or raytheon, and nasa ain't payin my student loans down so the devil it is.
Good people go to bed earlier.
(Much of what you see are math equations solidified.) Chief Economist for Google said statistician would be the sexiest occupation for the next ten years. Check out computational engineering too. Most colleges and Universities have life time placement services. They will be helpful. The sky is the limit.
If she's looking for a job where dealing with administrators (the boss, supervisors, whatever) is not far more challenging that actually doing the work, I think she's going to be disappointed. This is not a problem unique to school teachers.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I spent my first ~10 years as an active duty US Army Artillery officer, and my math background helped me not only to get job done, but to understand WHY things worked, and more importantly, why they might NOT be working.
I later transitioned to a Unix sysadmin gig, and then to information security, where I've been happily making a living for ~20 years.
The math helps. Let's you go toe-to-toe with the crypto geeks if nothing else. A BS degree carries a whole different type of cred than a BA as well. The social skills from the service help in understanding the hax0r mentality, and I'm pretty confident your wife's ed background and masters level degree would help in that area as well.
With the education and experience you describe your wife as having, she will not have any trouble stepping outside of the box, the first step is the hardest one. Get the resume in order, and start sending applications out.
Red
Talk to the big defence/aerospace firms. Lockheed, Raytheon, Thales, etc.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
[NT]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Junior college instructor.
I mean, really.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... Teach. If you can't teach, um. Housewife?
You could make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl...
I have a BA in Math and am 2 credits away from an MA in Secondary Education. I've been a web developer for about 10 years now. A math degree is pretty much universally applicable to any profession. Just doing student teaching I found a school district I'll never set for in or have my daughter set foot in. I've had jobs not work out. I live in AZ and currently work for a company in CT and have a handful of other clients. My boss in CT recently mentioned that he may be able to get some work in Data Analysis since I have a math background. There's tons of opportunity out there if you know math. And apparently he's billing his clients at over $200 an hour to do analysis. So it's lucrative as well if you can find work. I'm not sure what entry level pay would be.
It doesn't matter what career you are in, you're going to find places that you just don't fit. You can't change a company. You can't change a district. And you're probably not going to change yourself, so try a different company or district.
One bad experience doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't teach. Take what you learned from that experience and move forward. I switched to a different district for the second half of my student teaching and things worked out very well. I had a student transfer from the first district with a failing grade, she was only at my new school for a couple weeks and got about a 75% on a test she expected to fail. It just re-enforces the idea that the first district can pound sand. I'm very good at what I do and if I end up at a district that won't let me do my job I'll happily work somewhere else.
Work Safe Porn
http://www.mathworks.com/company/jobs/opportunities/
Www.akamai.com
In many states you do. And in this case, the summary notes that she has her master's in education.
In nearly all states, all you need is a generic bachelor's degree to teach in primary or secondary levels as a prerequisite for getting a teaching credential.
Of course, there is an additional requirement of verification of subject matter competence. This might be satisfied with a master's degree in the subject matter specific to their teaching credential, but in nearly all states it can also be satisfied by enrollment in a teacher-subject certificate program at a community college, or by just taking (and passing) a state administered teacher-subject exam. Although many teachers have master's degrees and higher (because of union contracts, higher degrees affords them a higher pay grade), some (like the teacher mentioned in the summary) have that master's degree in education, and not the subject matter of their teaching credential.
Also, for some hard to fill positions like math and science teachers, some districts even can waive the subject matter competence requirement if the bachelor degree happens to be in the subject matter. The teacher can be granted a temporary emergency credential, which allows the teacher to teach and gives the teacher a few years to pass the subject exam (w/o requiring any more courses). Sometime this emergency credential can be extended nearly indefinetly. I'm not saying this is the case with the teacher mentioned in the summary, just that it's quite possible to have a teacher just have a bachelor's degree in math and teach math w/o any other qualifications.
Exactly what I encountered. I once substituted for a teacher who had obtained a math-teaching slot at Pomona U.S.D. and left after 1 or 2 months because even her department was a mess (she had 4 Math 1a and 1 Math 1b, all comprised of students who refused to learn their multiplication tables when they were in 5th grade (so they certainly weren't going to learn them in 9th grade.) I asked a friend who taught for Riverside U.S.D. and he said they merely give the kid a calculator and move on.
The goal of all is to become that cranky, incoherent, inattentive administrator. What you could do is stick it out a few years and then write a tell-all.
ACT and LeapFrog are two companies that come to mind. she clearly would be most valuable in a field that caters to the education of minors. Thus a company like ACT who creates and manages standardized testing or LeapFrog a software company for education purposes.
Also smaller private schools are great options with better pay. I know they don't have much turn-over, so getting a position may be tough.
Picked retareded careers.
Try, janitor, meter maid, house keeper, prostitute.
And next time, don't pick something fucking stupid.
I have BA in Math from a top school, started my career as an investment banker and have been a fund manager for the last 8 years.
I had a great math teacher in high school.
15 years later, it was kind of a blast from the past to walk into the employee cafeteria and encounter my high school math teacher, now a software developer for the same corporation.
Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org
Itd be a pretty cool job too!!
Why did your co-dependent become a teacher for?
You can tell her that the first year of teaching will be hell, and that it will get better the following year. No need to lie. She spent a lot of time and money to become a teacher, have her try one more year before she joins up in a JET program.
If her school is a Title 1 school, she may be eligable for a PELL Grant. And she can go an get her Adminstrative Credential.
Companies that make business software tend to need Trainers/Account Executives/Project Managers/whatever to actually implement the software and train the users for the entities that purchase the software. The pay may not be excellent for someone with a masters, but it's pretty solid and there are always managerial opportunities. Companies like ADP, Kronos, SAP, etc hire these types to implement their software for businesses, cities, the military, etc. I can provide some specific postings if interested, just so you can see what I'm talking about.
Keep in mind I'm reading a little between the lines assuming that her two degrees and her experience lead her towards being capable of teaching technical things to complete laymen while also being organized and capable of tailoring what needs to be done for each situation.
Teach at a private school? Surely there's one in which the administrators don't suck.
Anything really,
- If she does not want to study more, many or even most company office jobs just need you to be literate, and being smart can't hurt
- If she wants to use maths professionally, some applied math training might be needed : among my fellow students who are not teaching, some did statistics training and work as statisticians, and some work in finance after specific training in this field
- Not liking to teach is no reason for loss of self esteem !
good luck to her
Agreed. Tutoring will pay better than regular teaching, will generally involve better students and will always have the best administrator you can be.
The reality is that for some high demand subjects like math, tenured teaching pays surprisingly well. Also you have have summers off, and the pension and heathcare benefits. A tutor in those subjects generally doesn't do as well as thier teacher counterparts, end up working irregular hours (weekends/evenings), and lack similar benefits.
For example, in San Jose (a pricy area), you might get $65K as a math tutor if you work for someone and that is probably pretty flat over time (limited pay-bumps for senority), but as a tenured teacher, by the time you get some senority, you can pull in maybe up to $85K or even higher in secondary school (and still have summer's off, pensions and healthcare benefits). I know a couple math teachers that have looked into tutoring or going to private schools, but once you have senority and tenure, they found it's hard to walk away from the money... If you happen to have an ivy league degree, another other option is to go work in one of those SAT tutoring centers that claim they have ivy league tutors (they tend to pay more). On the other hand going out by yourself requires lots of hustle (like any small business). Of course, if find a few insanely rich person willing to pay you a small fortune to privately tutor their kids, maybe it might be worth it, but in this economy, maybe that's not realistic...
However, entry level public school teachers get paid squat (and they are the ones w/o the job security either). That is a topic for another day...
She could teach at a nuclear power plant, the plant where I work hires former teachers frequently. I have no experience in other technical industries but I'd imagine some of them also have large training departments.
Insurance companies do employ math graduates to do statistical studies and rate and pay out forecasts.
The better answer is for her to teach at a better school. These days the public school administrations are crippled by external forces as well as greed and moral issues. They seem to like a no waves type of individual who is willing to be blind as well as be available to take blame that would be better assigned to the administrations involved. For example the local school board often has a real crushing effect upon what a teacher can do simply because taking charge of a class often leads to parental complaints. This includes parents that see little Johny as a potential world class brain surgeon when in fact it is far more likely that little Johny will be a death row inmate.
Seconded. Apparently she's married, so moving abroad may not be quite so easy, but there are international schools in just about every country that will let you teach in English to students who are probably better and with administrators who are at least different from what she's dealt with so far. May be better, may be worse, but at a minimum she'll be experiencing other countries and cultures. That's valuable.
This is not flamebait. I am a private school teacher so I say this with honest clarity. Some public school administrators are largely a joke. I am currently getting my master's degree in education administration and I hear horror stories day in and day out from classmates that work in the public system. Granted, I live in New Orleans so our public system is a dysfunctional mess. However, across the nation the legislative mandates that any public school teacher have to deal with are contradictory at best and truly insane at the worst. So ditch the public system. Private schools tend to be run more like companies and lousy administrators don't last. Firing teachers is a breeze... in fact, you're simply not rehired. To work in a private school you have far less legal protections but you have students and administrators that truly care, supportive parents (not always) and colleagues that are largely pros. (in the case of a good private school, much like in the case of a good company) So instead of bailing on the profession, bail on the bad school. Also, to be fair, there are thousands upon thousands of EXCELLENT public schools out there and perhaps your wife should look at other options in the area. Often times a different district or parish (counties for everyone else) will have a very different system. But really, don't give up on the dream of teaching. Teaching provides far more than can be measured and on my deathbed I will take a massive amount of satisfaction to the grave with me. Difference makers take it with them. Moneymakers may or may not be able to do the same.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
But this way she could retire early.
Seriously - making a lot of money doesn't suck. And she's already used to dealing with assholes. Might as well make it worth your while.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
She should do her part to prevent the coming of the Idiocracy. She should produce as many kids as possible. Before long, she'll have a classroom full of kids. She'll have the right to disipline them and there won't be annoying administrators to play politics. Aim high: ship them off to good schools (MIT, Stanford, Texas A+M, CalTech, etc.) at age 15.
could be outside shot. would need advanced math degree for crypto or other serious geeky stuff.
It's a weird balance with Brits. On one hand you only have one kind of game which is why you all refer to it as "sport" rather than us poor Americans who have baseball and basketball and football and all this other boring ass crap that somehow turns adults into rabid mobs cheering for some idiot man-child who just did something with a ball. On the flip side since you have multiple forms of math you never know what you're going to get in change at the grocer's. The bill might be nine and you gave them a ten which in American with our single math means we get one back, but with your plurality of maths you might get negative eight, fifty-five trillion, chocolate-covered stoat, or be painted blue. Who knows which math the cashier is using at that moment? It's utter chaos and so I'll take sports and math over "sport" and "maths." Never thought I would take the option with more sports. Ugh.
Good.
Funny, tho, after reading through the thread thus far (and expanding most of the comments) no has mentioned working for a bookie. Wouldn't that be a natural application?
I'm a mathematician from a very modern-algebra-oriented education. WE CAN LEARN ANYTHING. That is what our training as mathematicians gives us: give us the rules and we'll give proof of a certain property... almost everything works like that. We just have to want to learn how to do 'it'. Programming (what I am currently doing) works, but I am looking forward my masters' next year. IT'S NOT THE DEGREE that will help you, it's the TECHNIQUE OF LEARNING what is valuable about being a mathematician!
I know you are trying to help and will frame stuff as ideas or suggestions or whatever, but I have been there with two wives and I can tell you from having done it both ways that what she needs is your confidence, not some clever ideas (especially ideas from some random bozos on teh internet.) She is the one who should me having the ideas and doing the talking, and you are the one who should be doing the listening and smiling. If she freaks out and says she doesn't know what to do, the right answer is "I know you'll figure it out."
If she's still interested in teaching, tell her to try applying at a local Community College. Most 4-year colleges want a Masters in the field of study, but there's no legal requirement for such. Thus, community colleges are generally happy with any sort of Masters, particularly one in Education. The administrators don't play politics nearly as much as their K-12 or 4-yr counterparts and the students generally want to be there and recognize the value of the classes (trust fund kids usually go straight to 4-yr, CC students generally have to work to get grants or pay out-of-pocket). The pay sucks, but it's still a step up from the average K-12 teacher's salary.
Your wife's background is nearly identical to my wife's. BA in Mathematics, nearly done with a Masters in Education. Her first year of teaching was at one of the worst schools in our city - students who didn't want to learn, students who did want to learn but whose parents intentionally sabotaged them because they didn't want their kid to be smarter than them, A-average students pressured by their family to get pregnant and drop out so they could have a bigger welfare check. You name the cliche, that school had it. But none of that was as bad as the jaded, zombie-like mentality of the administrators (and many of the other teachers). After a year of putting up with them, I'm amazed that she wasn't suicidal.
Instead of putting up with it for another year, she did what I recommended above and applied to be adjunct faculty at a local community college, though in her case it was as a remedial math professor (teaching at collegiate level requires a Masters, but teaching 0-level remedial courses at a college just requires a Bachelors). She also does tutoring on the side for supplemental income (check with the college before doing this - hers allows it as long as she's not charging her own students; some don't allow it at all). She's been doing this for three years now, and is nearly finished with her Masters in Education. Once she has that, she'll be able to teach College Algebra and the occasional Calculus class (there are a lot more Math professors willing to teach Cal and up than there are willing to teach Algebra and below, but it's nice to do an upper-level class once in a while as a breather).
Lotsa math. Good money.
Maybe look at teaching in Asia. A qualified teacher can make a decent living out there.
1) The end of the school year is typically when many teachers feel like getting out of the profession. This could be fatigue talking. I'm conducting exam review right now, and after three precalculus classes in a row in the late afternoon, doing limits, regression, trig. substitution, derivatives (not using shortcuts, but using the limit definition), vectors, and parametric functions, I'm exhausted. Maybe she wants to take some time over the summer to reflect about what it is she wants to do, and see how she feels in late July / early August. We don't start school until after September 1st.
2) Actuarial science is a field that might be good, if you are good at self-study (other posters mentioned insurance companies, and this is the path to such positions). The exams and preparation materials are not expensive (meaning, a lot less than taking courses at a university). Once you pass a few exams, many insurance companies will hire you and support you through the rest of them.
I can understand how she feels. It's not easy. That being said, usually by August I'm still excited to go back to work. I'm sorry it hasn't worked out better for her.
Anyone who calls kids criminals should be kept far away from kids.
Excuse me? They assault each other and the teacher. My brother was teaching high school in DC and one day a student grabbed his wallet right in class and tried to run. Fortunately my brother was ex-military and knew what to do, but seriously, WTF??? Yes indeed, they are criminals.
Where do you imagine criminals come from? Do you think people suddenly turn criminal at age 18, and couldn't possibly be evil fuckers prior to adulthood? Heck, some asshole stabbed me in the 3rd or 4th grade and I still have the scar 3 decades later. In case you can't figure it out, that would be an assault with a weapon.
It's mightly sick that during childhood the decent people are forced to be in the presense of rotten people. Criminals don't come from thin air. They are essentially sitting in every classroom, except that they haven't yet been arrested because the authorities ignore criminal behavior in children. Remember, I still have that scar.
My entire family are public school teachers. All of them are paid quite well, have tons of time off and retire at a normal age with good pensions.
I think it must have a lot to do with where you're at.
Actuary. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2009/snapshots/52.html Fold the education degree until it's all corners, and...
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
learn yoga and become a yoga teacher...most peaceful job..and change the life of yourself and people around you.
A math major can almost literally do /anything/. The best second skill for a mathemetician is programming - but any mathemetician worth his salt can do that... But, really...
Product EngineerIng for one requires skills in statistics.
Banking industry, real estate, gambling industry and securities industry (wall street) needs people that understand game theory.
Design engineering and software engineering need mathematicians to help software engineers develop tools.
The government needs mathemeticians for cryptography and for weapons development.
If the mathemetician is a breeze with topology, mechanical, and even the drug industry... They need mathemeticians.
The oil industry needs mathemeticians for creating new techniques in location of oil.
A mathemetician's options are as open as the mathemetician's interests.
Mathematics Is one of the best and most open ended degrees in the world... If the mathemetician has the imagination to take advantage of his degree.
(written by a successful engineer with a math minor - but 1 class away from a math major ;)
She would have to start out on the lower end since she has no experience, but the math degree is a typical qualifying degree in either job.
I don't know how well it pays, however an avenue to investigate is working for a textbook publisher, writing, editing, or error-checking new versions of textbooks. A roommate of mine in college did this to help pay his way through school, and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I'll wager that in this networked age this might even present an opportunity to work from home, which may be important to you if you are thinking of starting a family.
Another line of investigation is to work with local home-schooling cooperatives. They'll often hire teachers to write a math curriculum for them, and conduct weekly classes for the students. In a larger metropolitan area you may even be able to do this with several cooperatives.
Cyrano de Maniac
...and if anyone needs any evidence just look at what was on the front page of my newspaper this morning. If the local schools are going to implement this idiocy then it is going to be exceedingly hard on the students when they get to university and find out that not only do they get a zero if they fail to and in an assignment but they'll get zero if they hand it in late too.
Still he did miss one opportunity: if you cannot award a zero for work that is not handed in you could give them an imaginary grade for their imaginary work - they might even learn something about complex numbers when they ask why they got 100i% for a fully imaginary assignment.
My university's math department maintains a web page listing careers for math majors: http://www.rit.edu/cos/math/Students/careers.html
I've been an unemployed math graduate for 3 years now. Instead of education, I went for an economic's master's after the math degree. I found these comments helpful, thanks.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I teach at a community college, where I tell my students I CAN leave students behind -- their education is in their hands now. There's much less issue in terms of student behavior, you can't legally talk to parents, and I have always had support from administration. Still in education, just a different level.
Same field, but is in some aspects better. Actuaries get high marks in job satasification. Good pay (not as good as quants, but....), easier to get into, good life / work balance, no insane presure, etc. Plus, as an added bonus, you can tell the exact time when somebody will die - but you can only use this power once. On the downside, you make accountants look sexy.
many companies will pay top $$ for someone who not only can do a statistical analysis of their product/market/segment/whatever, but can also explain it to them... like they are children...
....get a MBA so you can actually make some $$$.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Welcome to the world of infinite rights and no responsibilities.
I'm surprised no one has already said this: get a master's in CS, then get a software engineering job.
If the problem is the administration, look at teaching in private schools or Catholic School Systems.
Please note how your wife is approaching her job, her students are "a group of disrespectful criminals". After teaching math both in junior and senior high both inner city and suburban districts for 36 years, I can say the problem lay with your wife and not with her students, the administration or with teaching. I would not work with her as a fellow math teacher and would ask to have her removed from the district and note added to her jacket that she should not be offered a teaching job again.
With her attitude she won't make it in the corporate world, nor in a junior college either . She surely cann't motivate people
She became a Physician Assistant. Read about her and her decision her http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/19/masters-degrees-jobs-education-leadership-howard.html
The gaming industry ( slot machines) usually have decent size math department.
Seriously insurance companies are where the big money is at in mathematics. Actuaries make huge amounts of money by finding excuses to charge people more.
Most Large companies have education departments that develop courses and teach their staff that might be an option.
Type math or teaching or both, see what careers appear. why ask here.
Also accountant or auditor can't be a big jump.
All I had was a math degree (plus a 1-year Masters in Math), and what I found was a position as an Actuarial Analyst. Granted I use more programming skills than actual mathematics, but the logical thinking goes a long way. I also find that reading relevant "legislation/regulations" in a literal, and as logical as possible, manner is a valuable asset.
My former supervisor whom I considered as a mentor, who also had a math degree, had spent time teaching ESL in Africa and was probably one of the best "teachers" I have ever had. So the ability to teach well is always an asset.
In short, your skills are very applicable to many fields. Finding a reasonable employer is probably the bigger goal.
I was at a talk by a game developer, where someone asked what is the most important skill to be involved in game design? He said to study math.
There is a lot of math involved in game programming, and most of the other stuff is easy to learn. But the math stuff is hard.
Your wife is combating the moonbating that is occurring in schools. Tell her to teach in a Conservative private school and see the difference principles make.
Why did your co-dependent become a teacher for?
She should have been an English teacher.
Find a new teaching job in another district. Undoubtedly, somewhere within 30 miles or so of where you live there exists another school that she could apply to. There's no concrete reason why she must find a new career.
I currently work at Manwin and we are looking for mathematicians to help optimise ad revenue. http://manwinjobs.com/ for more, it would probably be in the Montreal office.
Considering there are a lot of vacancies for teachers with Math backgrounds in Australian schools it may be an option for his missus and himself to consider. The administration BS is still fairly high in any teaching system as parents believe that if their little darlings are not the top of the class it must be the parents fault and you get all the PC garbage everywhere now. I hate the fact that if little johnny breaks his arm in the playgrounds it's almost as if the world has stopped turning. So many games and activities have been banned due to fear of lawyers.
Math as such is an abstract science. Rarely you can find someone who is willing to pay you to prove a theorem.
However math is a necessary foundation in many very useful jobs. Computer science had been mentioned, but it's not that math-heavy. Rarely a common coder has to come up with a novel solution of a complex math problem. There are companies who do FEA, those are actually trying to find those novel solutions, but most coders are just making dumb GUIs and a fairly trivial business logic for them. Most problems in the world (like the payroll) are not scientifically complicated, but they are very common.
Analog RF and microwave design, however, is built on math, and some of that math is not obvious. Analog RF designers are a dying breed in the USA because of exactly that reason - it is hard. But for a well prepared student it's not hard at all. Get a diploma in electrical engineering and a big stick to chase employers away. Every CEO and his dog want to have "wireless something" - but at frequencies above 2 GHz (where most of the good stuff currently is) you cannot wind a coil on a pencil. You have to design a PCB structure that makes no sense whatsoever to unitiated. With frequencies going higher and higher every year, as more bandwidth is demanded by gluttonous public, RF design is an art where you have to balance semiconductors, laminates, mechanics, and the laws of free space. Power needs and the BOM cost are just icing on that cake.
There are other applications of math - like in financial business, for example. But I'm not familiar with them and cannot advise either way.
I'm pretty happy teaching college math classes, usually part-time -- not perfect, but far more hands-off by administration than in primary school. (Got this idea called "academic freedom" that helps some.) Most college courses nowadays are taught by part-time adjuncts -- at much lower pay than full-time, usually no benefits, but it's an option. The education degree won't be relevant -- depending on where you are, possibly a B.A. is enough for adjunct work, or you might need to get an M.A. (which is what I have).
Other option I hear a lot is private tutoring. Good luck.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"Yeah, but which infinity? There's a lot of them."
Please be more specific -- exactly how many?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
She might apply for middle management position in educational departments or companies working in the field. Tedious likely, but it would bring the bread on the table.
Go home and cry? Pun not intended.
I have one too... and today I am doing very well in the CS field out here in Silicon Valley ... ...
First, let us not forget that Mathematicians invented computers.
When I was at school - CS was what you got bumped down to you weren't good enough to do Math, Physics, Chemistry etc...
As a Math grad - you will never be blinded by any of the Math behind most of the 'super complex algorithms' used day to day in CS
You will in fact probably be able to grasp them faster and deeper than your CS colleagues.
You have a natural aptitude for abstraction.
You will be frustrated by your CS colleagues inability to think abstractly - they will always get bogged down in the details.
Saying all that - it will take you at least five years to become useful as a programmer.
Five years after that and you will be in a great place in Life.
Good Luck!
See if she can get a job in a big company. The initial position is not that important but the eventual goal would be to learn the various software packages that the company uses. Then, with her teaching background, she could go into corporate training. Say goodbye to those snot-nosed smart asses in public school and say hello to teaching adults. Adults that are in your class because a) their boss told them to be there, and they damn well better pay attention or b) they signed up for the course themselves and have a genuine interest in attending. Either way it's a win for you. Plus the odds of one of your adult students packing heat is next to none :-)
Teach at a junior college.
Maybe after that, despite the lobotomy, decide maybe fuck society after all and become a quant after all. If the ship's going to go down anyway, may as well have a nice car while it does.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If a BA in math, and MA in teaching, sounds like she has been teaching a few years. Most likely she has already had that "pay your dues" year of really horrible classes of students that earns her some "street cred" amongst her colleges and admin. There is no doubt, if your in a minority school, like I am, you will be dealing with some tough clientele. I had to wrap my head around that the administration has a different view than teachers and they have their own agendas to satisfy which may be in direct conflict with student learning. Switching schools or districts will only produce different, but just as difficult, problems as before. Teaching is an act of passion striving towards social justice. You teach because there are lousy schools, administrators, parents, politicians, and yes, lousy students. You revel in the ones you can save and move forward in spite of all the roadblocks in front of you and them. When you have to slog your way, daily, through all that mess, and you feel like your not gaining any ground, it is hard to keep in mind the reasons for teaching in the first place. Sounds to me like she is burnt and needs to take some time out to re-figure out her reasons for doing this.
I consider myself an industrial mathematician (BA and MS) who has spent a career pretending to be many other things. Currently I am a data scientist at a major search firm. Here I work on frequentist statistics, a bit of optimization and machine learning. Previously I have worked in finance and other parts of technology, always considering myself a mathematician who gets jobs called something else. It is fun, usually rewarding. I have considered teaching, and teaching is always part of what I am, regardless of what my job is.
I understand the frustration with education. This is a shitty time to be in education in most of the world. Most of the balanced budgets have meant firing teachers and I sympathise with how tough it must be.
W\The good news is with Udacity, Coursera, MIT open courseware and github, in about a year someone with your background should be is a great position to go into tech in the six figure range. But it means seriously kicking butt as hard as you did to get you MA. You can make even more in finance. Beware the siren call of lucre.
But teaching is a calling. Why did you go into it? Was it passion or inertia?
Have you found the right school? Have you looked into public, private and religious? Have you tried gifted students? Special ed? Are you at the right grade level. Maybe your true calling is in 1st grade or in Junior College?
I strongly recommend INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEWS. People love to talk about themselves to someone who thinks they might want to be like them. You would be amazed at who would take 20 minutes to speak to you.
Think about what drove you to teaching. Try some serious soul searching. Try the Seven Stories Exercise with an insightful friend or a career coach.
Remember that where ever you go -there you are, so time spent figuring yourself out is time well spent.
Good luck.
start a private math school for the children of the parents who while not rich enough to splurge a private college still do not want that the only options left for their children will be "blue collar" which in practice means:
- criminal
- prison guard
- hamburger flipper
It makes one realize how Hypatia must have felt. History has a way of repeating itself until the slowest either catch on or go extinct.
I would probably frame it. --Steven Wright
constitute a "bright person". PhD does, but anyone with some time on their hand and money can get a bachelors in anything.
And no, you can do nothing with a bachelors in mathematics, because any real world applications and research requires a PhD or at least an MS degree.
If she wants to stay in the educational field she could do a bit of research around specialist librarian/documentalist, embedded librarian, science librarian etc. She will have to do the MLIS tho (master in library and information science).
are a terrible idea since punishing the weakest schools only creates more disparity that leads to a too poorly educated electorate that leads to more money in the pockets of a few as most students and future citizens fall into functional scientific illiteracy, which as their proportion to total number of citizens increases civilization will be unable to cope with the increasing chaos, thereby threatening the environmental support necessary for human existence.
The top rated private schools are often top rated because they drill for standardized exams. :(
I know a huge number of people who went to private schools not because mom and dad were motivated but because it was fashionable. It can easily go both ways.
That said... if you find a private school who boots kids out who don't meet certain academic requirements... even if the kids parents are rich an powerful, this is a great option. That way, if your students are hurting the rest of the class, you can call the parents and they'll quickly sort out the problems.
I actually really like middle class private schools as opposed to upper class ones since middle class ones generally have students whose parents sent them there because of academic reasoning as opposed to fashion.
I have a maths degree, and I did software for 6 months, I couldn't hack it, it was to teedious/maticulous in nature, and to far from the conceptual aspects of mathematics which I enjoyed. I then did a PhD in theorteical and computational Physics, by the end of that the thing I enjoyed most was tutoring school kids at the weeked, developing and fixing software for Physics at the end of the became very frustrating for me. There was a period of 6mnths when 'it' didn't work.
I then did the 1 year teacher training ( PGCE, I live in the UK) and became a teacher. If your wife cherishes the people aspect of work, and is bored infront of a screen for most of the day, she may find being a software developer is not to her taste.
Thinking of what I could do now, that I'd enjoy doing:
-Accountancy
-Actuarial work (I know people have stated these)
-Research assistant on university educational psychology projects, or educational projects where the knowledge of schools is invaluable.
-Systems engineer where IT is blended with people and project management
-Managerial posts even for supermarkets
-Careers advisor
P.S. the first year of teaching is hard, it takes about 3 years in the UK to have fully found your feet, and everytime you change school you have a busier, more stressful year getting to know new kids and school systems. This is my second year teaching.
I'm a math major with some computer science background and I've found that System Administrator is well-suited for a Math major. IT is problem solving at it's core, which should be second-nature to a math major.
http://www.nsa.gov/careers/career_fields/mathematics.shtml
Sorry for the cheap shot, but in a way it is true. Education is useless without skill, ambition and desire, too many people confuse education with knowledge and ability. I've known very successful high school drop-outs. I've known MBA's working part-time jobs. By asking *us* what she can do with her degree, she's admitted she has no clue. What the hell? You put the time and money into getting a degree and you have no idea what you would do with it? You have one life. Time if of the essence, why would you invest that much time if you didn't have a clue what to do with it when you were done? (Can you tell I have a child in college?)
The answer has always been and always will be, what can you, you bright and shiny special and unique snowflake, do that is mostly better than most other people? That's the question. Answer that question and you have your answer. If the answer is not economically viable, learn to say "Do you want fries with that?" If you are really lucky, you get to like what you do for a living. Even then, you'll hate it a lot of the time.
That applies to EVERYONE, myself included. OK, career forum over, get back to work.
Technical writer is a possibility, as well as similar fields such as technical trainer, etc.
Salaries and sought-out qualifications vary widely. However, in some areas, it may be possible to get a decent paying tech writer with her qualifications.
If necessary, she can also look at extra IT, Comp.Sci., or technical writing/communication courses. Some of those are available part-time or through distance education, even from reputable schools, not just the flaky for-profit ones. But I'm not sure those courses would be necessary, except maybe something with focus on technical communication.
Having said that, if I were a teacher and unhappy at my current school, I'd look at other schools before I'd look at other careers. And as another poster suggested, if she finds it meaningful to engage young minds, she may find that lacking. There are two kinds of teachers: people who are teachers, and people who only work as teachers. If she's the former, she will definitely miss something in her life. How much she misses it will depend on how badly she was beaten by administration and parents at her school.
Africa for the Africans. Asia for the Asians. White countries - For everybody.
We are told there is this RACE problem, We are told this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realise I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
First you said she had a degree in math. Then you said she was a teacher. That's an impossible combination. To be a teacher your bachelor's degree isn't allowed to be in anything except Education. To be a math teacher, for example, you major in "math education" -- which is fundamentally an education degree, not a math degree. (Yes, I suppose, theoretically, someone could double-major in math and education; but education is a very "heavy" major, class-schedule-wise, so said someone would pretty much have to be independently wealthy in order to pay for three or four extra semesters of undergraduate classes, which would not be eligible for any significant financial aid...)
If you're asking what she can do with a math _education_ degree, besides teach, the answer is "anything that requires a bachelor's degree and doesn't care what your major was". HTH.HAND. (There are more such positions than you might think. Statistically, about a third or so of the people whose highest degree is a bachelor's are working outside their major. I am one of them. When applying for such a position, you can legitimately leave irrelevant Masters degrees off your resume, on the grounds that they do not pertain in any way to the work you'll be doing.)
However, based on the rest of your post, it sounds like the real problem isn't teaching per se but the deplorable state of the public schools in your specific geographical location, which from the way you describe it must be a big city. Big cities are unpleasant places to live and work, everyone knows that. What she needs to do is not so much get out of teaching as get out of the city. Tell her to polish up her resume and send it round to some less urban school districts -- you know, school districts in cities with a population of ten thousand or so, separated from the next town over by some intervening countryside -- the kind of place where even the really bad kids are at least a little bit intimidated by the vice principal's scowl. The commute shouldn't be any worse than what the people who live in those places do when they drive into the city to work, which is quite commonly done -- up to 20% of the population in many small towns commutes to work in the city.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
FBI draws many agents from the teaching community. Not sure why.
Since she is a teacher her nose is probably clean. NSA.
..
When users opt in, anonymous data can be sent for analysis to software vendors. Often this data needs extra analysis from its raw form. This is called telemetry analysis and would be perfect for someone with a math degree. Here's an example: http://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2012/05/24/5358/
Maybe your wife would want to try private school first, before ditching the entire profession? Although public schools pay quite a bit better, the working environment is often quite a bit worse than private schools (my wife is a teacher).
n/t
Try corporate training(e.g. Oracle classes. Trainers work with development teams and graphic artists, develop goals, objectives and materials; they may support test efforts; they trial systems and classroom/web-based training delivery; sometimes translate; then polish and deliver to interested professionals. Helps if you look cute in a grey suit. It can be bliss for a math teacher. But there can be crushing deadlines due to late changes and bugs.
I have a math degree, I became a medical doctor (family practice). The amount of knowledge that is gone is scary. I really loved math in undergrad though. Good luck in whatever you do. I strongly advise against becoming an M.D. if you are in the U.S.
I haven't seen anything mentioned here in this discussion that isn't mentioned in the career pages of SIAM or the MAA.
A second option is to teach online. Again, there are few behaviour problems online (although flame wars are possible,) and I suspect your wife would find this satisfying. A bonus is that you can usually work from home when you teach online.
If you are thinking of teaching online, I recommend Palloff's and Pratt's book (see below) as a good starting point: Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2001). Lessons from the Cyberspace Classroom. The realities of online teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
With an MS, you can teach at a community college. A lot of the students there are really trying to learn. A lot of them are among the smartest you could hope for (my roommate 23 years ago was a computer engineer who graduated near the top of his class at VPI... who did 2 years at a community college, and then 2 years at VPI. Now he has a PhD.)
Arguably the job teaching at a community college is better than that at a 4 year institution, especially if you use your time for such things as textbook / study guide creation.
You write the handwritten pages and sketches, and let the publishing company pay for a person to do the compositing / typing / proofing / photoready copy, and you can do quite well.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Analytics is the new buzzword in corporate circles. Maybe she can get into a consulting company that provides analytics services - there's a lot of these popping up these days. A lot of this is just statistical analysis; it's just that the business types are just now starting to figure out that there's some value in using data to analyze decisions rather than just gut-feel.
It seems like everyone's now out there, "gotta get me some analytics".
Consider becoming an actuary for an insurance company, especially one that sells commercial insurance. While homeowners and car policies are somewhat standardized, companies tend to have unique aspects that make pricing insurance difficult. Hence, the need for actuaries to calculate the risk of policies. It's rather demanding in the math area but pays well as only a few people can cut it.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
I've heard many of the problems with the public school administration aren't problems at private schools. The claim is that "at will employment" makes for a better relationship with the administration. I don't know how true that is, and I wish I could think of where I saw the original discussion I would ask some private school teachers their feelings on the matter and see what kinds of response you're able to get.
Alternatively, you could always look for work in Finland :-p
I know... an AC comment that will likely never be seen, but... Have you considered teaching inside the correctional program?
My personal frustration with trying to educate individuals that do not want to learn boils down to it all being a requirement without the student realizing you are trying to help them. If you get a group of "students" willing to learn and to the point where they know they should learn, then it becomes easier.
Having the Warden as an administrator is a bit of a shift, but ironically the have leverage to make classroom issues "just go away". Two days "in school suspension" if you are following me.
I used to work for a gaming company that hired mathematicians to figure out the math behind the payout percentages of their slot machines (they have to pay out a certain percentage by law). They seemed to enjoy their jobs and were paid quite nicely, as there's a metric shit ton of money in the gaming industry. If any mathematicians are interested, this is the company I used to work for: http://www.multimediagames.com/
I spent the last half of my career with the Feds as a statistician after working as an engineer for the first 15 years (MS degree in Physics). It pays a lot better than teaching and the retirement benefits are pretty good, especially the health care. You don't make all that much to start, but, if you have something on the ball, you can move up easily. The only disadvantage is you have to work where the job is.
How about earning enough money to actually fund some of the stuff you care about? Or just fund your doing unpaid fun/worthwhile stuff for several years afterwards? Way, way better motivation for me than 'designing software used by thousands of people' (yes I am in finance, and already am donating nontrivial sums to some little-known bands I'm a fan of).
Find a better school.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
CNET has repeatedly stated that if you need a job, learn Drupal http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20027411-62.html
Web Development is 95% logic, with a little bit of aesthetics.
I am steadily employed at a salary above that of the average teacher, with interesting projects.
Good luck!
1. Become an actuary, or
2. Work for the NSA.
(The master's in Education is worthless.)
Try http://www.usajobs.gov/ . There are lots of jobs there in every geographic area. Even a few math courses will open up lots of these jobs. A complete major will open up even more.
They always told me when I was getting my math degree I could go on to do almost anything. Which wasn't helpful since I had no idea what I wanted to do (hence the math degree). I tried grad school but was fully uninterested. Many lifetimes later I am happily a developer.
Burn it in a garbage can to stay warm.
You can then try to calculate how many kCals it's giving off if you happened to also take a chemistry class.
There reportedly are over a million kids who are home schooled in the US. And a whole bunch of sites that cater to parents who give it a shot.
Not all of these parents are good at math, physics, and so on. Maybe she could locate enough of them in your area to make a living, or work for (or create) a site in that field.
I have an undergrad in Mathematics, and planetarium, museum, and other informal education opportunities are great. I've been teaching in planetariums for 7yrs, and I absolutely love the lack of bureaucracy compared to K-12. Community college teaching is also a viable option.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
But only one you can count.
I used to work at a wholesaler that sold interactive whiteboards. We hired a bunch of former teachers so we could offer schools who bought them free training in the lesson creation software. They seemed to prefer working with teachers instead of kids. It was a lot of travelling though.
See here: http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/early-careers/early-careers
For example, stockbroker, research scientist, urban designer, public utilities analyst, animator, foreign exchange trader, population ecologist, estimator, epidemiologist, statistician, technical writer, market research analyst, cryptoanalyst, quantitative analyst, commodities trader, air traffic controller, climate analyst, financial aid director, pollster, forensic analyst appraiser, banker underwriter actuary, computer programmer, production manager, professor, claims adjuster, benefits administrator.
All they do is write code as if it's math like so:
Q = R + N + P * T / D + R
if AA = BB then CE = DD
And so forth, they never think about giving variables decent names.
Go study computer sciences first ! ;)
You don't mention which grades she is teaching. Is it possible that she is teaching the wrong age group for her style of teaching? You mention "disrespectful criminals" which makes me think of inner city middle school. Perhaps a change of venue would be more satisfying than abandoning her dream. Our schools *need* teachers with a love of math. Please don't give up.
At least you didn't get a nearly commercially worthless degree like a BA in history or psychology. My niece paid $30K/yr for a political science degree and was recently fired from her job working as a line cook in a prison.
An ex-girlfriend got a BA in psychology from a top 20 public university and found a job as a "greeter" at an office. Hated it and the pay, so ...
* She went back to school for legal secretaries and found herself working in a basement of a huge law firm summarizing cases all day - never saw any lawyers. Couldn't find a husband.
* She hated that job, so she went back to school again for speech therapy. Ended up working in a huge public school system where she had 100 students across 20 schools to help weekly. It was very frustrating and she left - moved to Hawaii for a year doing a similar job. The pay sucked even more and she had trouble breathing due to volcano air quality issues.
Finally, she got pregnant around age 32 and stopped working. Now has 5 kids with some poor sap. That could have been me! It was close.
Math is not one of those nearly worthless degrees. Anything in the sciences or insurance or just where logical thought could be used.
Obviously, programming is an option, but only if you love it.
Wear a condom. The captcha was "extort"
Go write those algorithms that figure out the stock price of chicken wings blips $0.02/share whenever it rains +2 inches in Nebraska.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!