Pluspunten
You are in schools... that's it.
Minpunten
In the district I was in (in Nothern NJ), the teachers treated you horribly if they knew you had a certification (I had two certifications at the time). All of my experience was in urban schools, so when Mission One called me and told me "If they like you and a position opens during the year, they might hire you as a teacher." It was only after a teacher I worked with resigned (and said "really, try any other district but this one") and I interviewed for her position, did I realize that the district eternally sees you as a para. I was also told, by the other paras, "Whatever you do, do not tell the other teachers you are certified... they will treat you like dirt." I was put with a different teacher each period, having to walk up and down stairs all day. To add to that, the younger teachers had me make all of their photocopies for them so that they could leave at 3 pm. Of course, they would always ask me to use the one downstairs, across the building, as the closest one always jammed. The whole period, the only thing they would have me do was walk up and down the stairs and across the school, making them copies. Students lied a lot as well... When one student who had special needs wrote a paper that his other teacher questioned (it did not sound like his writing), he told her that I wrote it for him. Naturally, I was called into the principal's office and interrogated. I told them, "Gentlemen, you interviewed me for the writing teacher position. You know I am certified to teach English, and graduated as a Sigma Tau Delta. Do you have that much difficulty differentiating what a seventh grader with special needs wrote, from something I may have written? The essay does not even fulfill the requirements of the assignment/rubric!" Naturally, this was not enough, but after that, no matter what I got from the teachers or administrators about anyone else's lies, after I explained the truth to the people in the schools, I would later receive a call from the "agent" who set me up with the position. I would thereafter have to explain the same things to her.
