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AngieW in Texas

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  1. I am hoping to move from Texas to Washington state (probably Tacoma area) at the end of this school year. I hsed my kids K-12 and then got my alternative teaching certification. In Texas, I am certified in EC-12 SpEd, 7-12 Science, 7-12 Math, and ESL. I don't want to do SpEd again (was last in SpEd 8 years ago). I have been teaching high school science for the past 8 years (chemistry, physics, forensics, IPC). In districts where I live now in Texas, schools want science teachers to have the composite certificate. It would be much more difficult to get a job with just a life science or just a physical science certificate. What do they want in Washington? I would really prefer to stick with physical sciences - really can't stand biology. How difficult is it to get the residency teacher certificate? General Science is one of the special requirement certificates, but if having just chemistry and science certifications won't restrict my ability to get hired, I'd rather NOT end up getting stuck with biology. Anything special I should know about teaching high school in Washington?
  2. All my kids are spectrum-y. One of them does a lot of game modding and is comfortable going into reg edits. That is my kid who is losing their mind right now because the latest Windows update took library folders they access all the time out of "This PC". They have found a way to make the library folders visible again, but it isn't in a workable way. Anybody know how to undo what Microsoft did with the latest Windows update for Windows 11?
  3. https://simplyenof.com/?fbclid=IwAR37YygNqaODIe-EkYpQDn6sVP1fCIfWhEh6kg3VJSTD_7jvnj14yrvwE-Y My 25yo has a lot of issues surrounding food related to being on spectrum and related to having OCD. They found a supplement called enof while searching through ARFID groups but don't know if it is any good. I told them I'd try looking for information about it. I tried asking in my local friends groups and in my local special needs groups and people there said it looked interesting but they didn't know anything about it. This stuff is not cheap. Is it hype or is it real? Has anybody actually tried it and seen any kind of effect from it? I'm also worried about the fact that the supplement industry is not regulated, so you have no idea if it actually contains what it says it contains. Is it any better than just taking a regular multivitamin?
  4. Most of the students at my high school who bring their lunch use some type of insulated lunchbox that is solid-colored.
  5. Everybody in my house needs a different style mask to get proper fitting. I wear BOTN size large KF94 (boat style). My 24yo wears Flax KF94. My 26yo wears Kingfa KN95. My 29yo wears Powecom KN95 child-size. I really like that the BOTN masks have adjustable ear loops. I wear the mask with the ear loops fully extended and loop them over my ponytail instead of my ears. That gives me a very good fit without bothering my ears. I will be masked all the time just as I was last year. I bought some surgical masks (cheap - 100 for $5) for students who want to wear them, but I think that won't be many. We were down to about 15% masking by the end of May. Word got around last year that I had black masks though, so students that never even had me came to see me for masks all year long. I didn't care so long as they were wearing it. I had two air purifiers in my room last year which could change out the air in my room every 12 minutes. I'm moving to a room that is double that size this year because it will have a chemistry lab. I can't afford to get more purifiers, but I will keep running the two I have. They will at least cut down on the particulates in the air and having twice as much air space will lower the density also.
  6. Judges and justices are hard to find information for unless they make a name for themselves like Aaron Persky (judge who gave super lenient sentence to Brock Turner because he was an athlete) or Jean Boyd (judge who gave Ethan Boyd a super light sentence because of "affluenza"). I do my best to get what information I can. I teach forensics, so I do make sure that my students know how important the district attorney and all judge and justice positions are. In my state, the justice of the peace is also in charge of death investigations if there isn't a medical examiner (my county has a JP acting as coroner). The only requirements for this position are that you are at least 18yo, a Texas resident for at least 6 months, a registered voter, and win the election. You don't even have to have a high school diploma or GED.
  7. We use the air fryer every single day. I can't imagine not having it now. When my original air fryer died, I went out immediately to Costco to buy another one. I wasn't willing to wait a few days to do it.
  8. I've been applying for jobs for which I have at least half of the qualifications and I prioritize working on applications where I have at least 75% of the qualifications. As far as trainer, some of the training positions have been for conducting onboarding trainings, compliance trainings, and professional development trainings, while others have also included training customers (often other businesses) on how to use their products. I've also been applying at ed tech companies for anything that looks remotely within my ballpark. The last time I was actively looking, I applied for several positions developing curriculum with major publishers and I got pretty far into the process before they chose the other person for two of those positions. I haven't seen those positions pop up at all this year. I have applied for positions at universities and community colleges on the administrative side. I am not interested in teaching in any K-12 school, whether public or private. I would love to teach at a community college, but those positions are all adjunct where I live. It would have to be a full-time position.
  9. I have been trying to escape teaching since 2019. After being out of the workforce for 18 years to hs my three kids K-12, it seemed like a logical career field. I'm certified in EC-12 Special Education, 7-12 Math, 7-12 Science, and have the ESL supplemental certification too. For the past 7 years I've been teaching IPC, chemistry, physics, forensics, and algebra 1 intervention (STAAR test prep for kids who failed it already). Fortunately I haven't taught all of those at the same time, but I did have 4 of them one year. Two of them is manageable, three is really tough, four nearly killed me (that was 2018-2019 schoolyear and was when I started trying to get out of teaching). It is a completely untenable profession now and was getting that way long before Covid. I bought the Teacher Career Coach program to work on my resume and cover letter and that program definitely made them a lot better. But it's May and I still don't have a job offer. I've only had three interviews. I thought the interview I had on Monday for Training Specialist went really well, but I haven't heard anything yet and they said they'd let me know by Friday. I did send a followup email asking if they needed any more information just so they'd know that I'm definitely still interested in the job. One super frustrating thing about the interview was that both of the interviewers said they would feel bad about taking somebody like me from the classroom at a time when there is such a shortage of teachers. Of course there's a shortage of teachers! We're DONE! I still felt like the interview went really well because they were asking me about the deadline for resigning my contract with the school and that doesn't seem like it would be something they'd ask unless they were seriously considering me. I can't afford to not have a job, but that means that I have to have a confirmed job offer by July 1st because that's the last day to resign my contract for next year without penalty. I haven't had any other interview offers yet. I've been mostly apply for Training Specialist, Training Coordinator, Instructional Designer, and Curriculum Developer positions. One issue with all of those positions is they would like applicants to have experience with e-learning software, but they are very expensive to purchase and even trying to pay to get trained in them hasn't worked well because I haven't been able to find training that happens in the summer. My laptop isn't quite good enough to run it either. I also don't have an education degree. I have a BS and MS in Physics instead and got my teaching certificate through alternative certification. One positive from Covid is that I can definitely say that I have experience with teaching virtually. And my district bought Canvas, so I can say that I have experience with an LMS also. I'm just getting really frustrated. There is such a short job-hunting season when you're a teacher. I started applying back in January and started really searching and applying widely at spring break back in mid-March.
  10. Being a PE teacher is NOT a safe bet, however, being a teacher who is also a coach is a really strong bet. Teacher-coach positions are among the last to be cut in my district. The safest teacher-coach positions in my district are Math or Science paired with any sport.
  11. This is something that I really worry about. I basically have no social security at all. I haven't contributed much into social security and I will be able to collect very little of anything I do put in because of the federal windfall provision. My district (like most in Texas) does NOT pay into social security. It only pays into the Teacher Retirement System and that is heavily loaded towards the back end so I would lose substantially by not being in the system for at least 20 years. I was hsing for 18 years and only worked part-time for a few of those years. I just started teaching 7 years ago, so that would mean that I would need to stay in the TRS system for another 13 years (to age 66) and I really don't want to be in Texas that long. The Texas legislature is actively trying to kill people by cutting unemployment benefits, cutting health care, cutting education, and allowing anybody over 21yo to open-carry guns without even requiring any kind of permit (and businesses can't just post a sign prohibiting guns, they have to actually confront the gun-wielder directly and verbally to be able to make them leave). Now they've made it illegal for teachers to talk about racism and they've made it illegal for schools or any state or local government to require masks. I know that I have to be here for the next 2-3 years at least to let the housing and job markets settle down, but then I need to get my family out of here to some place that is safer.
  12. The instant pot didn't last at all for me. I used it a lot that first month I had it, but after that I rarely used it. I have only used a few times per year since I got it. The air fryer is different. We use the air fryer every day, multiple times per day. It is worth getting even just for toast. I got the air fryer last year and have easily used it several hundred times. I've only used my instant pot maybe 20 times and I've had it much longer. It doesn't just cook food, it is amazing at reheating food too. I just went back and re-read the original post. I don't know how it is with boneless skinless chicken breasts because I never buy chicken breasts. I use it with bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, although I do usually cut the bone out before cooking in the air fryer because it is less messy to eat without the bone. I sometimes have to eat my lunch in my car at school since I won't remove my mask inside in the building and the picnic tables outside have no cover so they are in full sun with no protection from rain either.
  13. I know I'll have to recertify anywhere I move to. Recertifying in science and math shouldn't be a problem (although I will have to study statistics, biology, and astronomy again) and I don't want to recertify in SpEd. My 23yo is wanting us to move to Washington state north of Seattle, but I don't think we can afford the area. All of the kids will move with me. The medical issues that my 23yo and 25yo have necessitate being in or near a major city to have access to more doctors. Ehlers Danlos and MOG antibody disorder are not common and we'd have to be able to find doctors that have done more than just read a paragraph about them in a textbook.
  14. I was the only one in my family to get Moderna. Everybody else got Pfizer. I had no problems at all with the 1st shot, not even injection site soreness. I had minimal issues with the 2nd shot. I couldn't sleep on the arm the injection was in that first night, but was fine aside from minor soreness for 2 days after that. I got the shot at 10am and ran a low-grade fever (99 degrees, usually 97.9) around 6pm that day. After I sat down and drank some water, it went away. It came back again about 2 hours later so I sat to drink water and it went away again. The second day I was very thirsty all day long and drank a ton of water. I was also physically exhausted. I was completely back to normal the 3rd day. The shot that was available for all of my kids was Pfizer (they're all adults). They would have taken any of them. This is just what was available for the appointment slots I was able to get for them. After my thirst issues, I pushed my kids to drink lots of water for the two days after the 2nd shot. My oldest who has no medical issues didn't have any issues at all with either shot aside from minor soreness at the injection site for about 2 days. My middle who has an autoimmune disorder that causes her immune system to attack her spinal cord had no issues with the 1st shot. With the 2nd shot, she started having numbness in her arms. She talked to her neurologist who said that is a common issue with patients who had transverse myelitis and/or MOG antibody disorder (her MOG presented as TM with numbness in her arms and torso) and didn't signal a relapse. It was just the immune system jangling a bit. He did have her take her emergency steroid prescription to calm it down. She was completely exhausted on day 2, but after that was fine. My youngest who has Ehlers Danlos and is deathly allergic to steroids had a sore arm with the first dose and couldn't sleep on that arm for the 1st three nights. They had no problem at all with the 2nd dose and could sleep on that arm the very first night. They did have one oddity that we figured out in retrospect. Both doses caused their period to come back again. They'd just had an endometrial ablation a few weeks before the 1st dose, so we weren't sure if the period weirdness was related to that or to the vaccine, but their period started up again on the 1st night of each dose.
  15. I really need to get out of Texas. It will be at least 2 years before I can go because of the crazy housing market. When I move, it will need to be to a 4-bedroom house with a yard for the dogs (and hopefully chickens) and at least 2 bedrooms need to be on 1st floor (preferably 1-story) because one of my kids has physical disabilities and often needs a cane and I'm not that great with stairs either because of my knees. My teaching salary needs to be enough to be able to swing a realistic mortgage. I think I should be able to swing at least a $50k downpayment after selling my house here. I'm 53, so the mortgage would need to be reasonable for a 15-year fixed term loan. I know that a lot of y'all are also teachers. I need to find a place to move to where teacher salaries aren't horrifically bad compared to the housing market and local cost of living and it has to be LGBT friendly and not super hot. One of my kids has medical issues that cause major problems with the heat and they pass out when it gets too hot. Texas gets way too hot and they are trapped in the house from June through August. My Texas certifications are 7-12 science, 7-12 math, EC-12 special education, and ESL. I don't want to go back into Special Education again. In the past 6 years I have taught IPC, chemistry, physics, forensics, and Algebra I intervention. I am a GSA sponsor and I have coached the science team for the past three years and we made it to state my first year and regionals this year. The competition was cancelled last year. I teach at a Title I school and while my district is awful, my campus is awesome. I have an MS in Physics and I have taught at a community college before (dream job for me, really), but I know that full-time teaching positions at community colleges are few and far between, in Texas at least. There is usually only one full-time teacher in each department and everybody else is part-time. I left that job because it was part-time with no benefits and you usually had to work there as a part-time teacher for at least 10 years before being under consideration for the full-time position. My kids also need to be able to get jobs that have benefits. My oldest has to buy her insurance on the exchange because Office Max doesn't offer insurance or full-time hours to anybody except managers. My middle will be able to get insurance through HEB when she ages off my ex-husband's insurance later this year because HEB treats their people right. My youngest is on my ex-husband's insurance because teacher insurance is abysmal. They are looking for an office or data entry job, something that isn't physically demanding because of their physical limitations. Where is a good place to look for a new job that is LGBT friendly, not horribly hot (pretty much all of the south is knocked out by this), and isn't as horrible to teachers as Texas (low bar since Texas government absolutely hates and despises teachers)? I would love to also have it be a racially and culturally diverse area or at least near to a racially and culturally diverse area, but I know that is much harder to find.
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