“I’ve Got my Mind on my $ and $ on my Mind”

After a few years in California, I realized that I was getting paid less than some of my co-workers that didn’t have a Master’s Degree. Upon further research, I discovered that it was because I had fewer credits than everyone else because I earned my teaching credential at the same time that I earned my Bachelor’s Degree. Apparently in CA, you get your Bachelor’s Degree and then you go back to school to get your teaching credential, thus earning more credits. In light of this new information, I began looking into how many credits I would need to put me at the end of the pay scale - 22 credits.

So, there I was, at a point in my career after 8 years of teaching, where I was feeling burned out from all of the work I was doing to teach three different classes - AP Biology alone took up 60% of my work load and I only taught 1 class out of 5 classes daily! It was an insane amount of work for little appreciation or extra pay. So I got the crazy idea that it was time to make a change and earn the money I deserved for the work the district was getting out of me. I decided to go back to school and get a second Master’s Degree.

In the Fall of 2012, I enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona to earn my second Master’s Degree in Educational Multimedia. Crazy, I know, especially since I only needed to complete half of the program to earn the 22 credits. However, this is all happening at a time when technology is infiltrating classrooms. The future of education will embrace digital textbooks, online classes, class sets of laptops or iPads and with a Master’s Degree in Biology Curriculum and Instruction AND in Educational Multimedia, I am setting myself up for, what will be, a much needed career in developing digital curriculum - my escape plan for if and when I get burned out and want to quit teaching.