Pros and Cons to Education

Hi Marissa,
As someone who has struggled with what I want to do as a career, and still fine tuning it now, I have an activity for your that I came across. It is a self-ranking system to find out what is your primary choice out of those three. I am currently back in school to get my Masters degree in School Counseling, and we are going over career planning with high school students. The activity comes from an article, and the reference will be below.

"The workshop begins with an introduction to work-related values. A list of these values that includes power, security, status, money, creativity, interesting work, freedom, challenge, achievement, and autonomy is presented, and each listed value is briefly discussed. Then the students are asked to rank the five values from the list that most immediately appeal to them. They are also asked whether the list includes all the work-related values that matter most to them at this point in their lives. If any respond negatively, then their additional values are added to the master list for this session.
The counselor describes a tool for decision making, the Desired Outcome Exercise of Yost & Corbishley (1987). The students are asked to list their five top values down the left-hand side of a page, and three occupations they are considering across the top. For each value under each occupation, they are asked to predict the probability of their obtaining this value within the specific occupation by using the following scale: 3 = very likely, 2 = somewhat likely, and 1 = unlikely. After these probabilities are assigned, the students are instructed to add the columns to obtain totals for each occupation. The occupation with the highest total is considered to be the one the student believes would be most likely to meet his or her needs. "

Hope this helps!
-Chelsea

Taylor, S. C. (1997). Workshop to orient students to career planning services. The Career Development Quarterly, 45(3), 293-296. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/219398647?accountid=27965

Regarding your question on selecting a major, I would suggest you start be speaking with people who are currently in the teaching profession. Informational interviews are the best way to 'try on' potential jobs. Good career choices are those the make the best use of your skills, interests and values.

This is a tricky question. I think it comes down to what kind of kids you want to work with. I would recommend that you get involved in a local tutoring program, so you can get a feel for what it's like to work with kids of different ages and with different needs. Maybe you can volunteer in a 2nd grade? Schools often need volunteers to help teachers. Or maybe get involved in an after school program for middle schoolers? A ton of these kinds of programs exist, so I would look around and contact organizations or schools to see if you can volunteer. While you are figuring out which age and need level you'd like to teach, I'd urge you to focus on math and English courses rather than education courses. Strong teachers know their content area deeply, and you can always add the education courses later, once you have a clear vision of what age and need-level you want to teach.

Good luck!