March 23, 1995
Alberto Olivares, career consultant, calls the upcoming Education Job Fair at SF State a "mighty little fair" for future teachers.
Olivares, the SF State Career Center's "guru" on career counseling and trends in education, is currently in charge of managing and promoting the Education Job Fair which will be held Saturday, April 1 between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. in the Cesar Chavez Student Center. Over 40 school districts will be represented and will conduct screening and on-the-spot interviews, according to Olivares.
Olivares calls this job fair the "mighty little fair" because of its small and personal feel compared with other education job fairs. He said that students can meet one-to-one with each school district.
"The responses I received from last year's fair attendees indicated that SF State's fair was considered one of the best among California's many school districts," Olivares said. "Where San Jose State and Stanford were crowded, the visiting schools said they felt relaxed and comfortable here. This almost guarantees the student a crack at a good interview."
According to Olivares, the job fair will be broken into two sessions. In the morning, students can browse and speak to the school districts they are interested in. In the afternoon, the school districts will conduct interviews based on the morning's evaluations and promising resumes they have received.
Some of the districts, such as Douglas County, Fremont, Redwood City and San Ramon have pre-selected candidates for interviews from resumes sent to them before the fair, but are still willing to talk to walk-ups, Olivares said. He added that in order to help students get comfortable with the interview process at the fair, the Career Center is offering three preparation workshops this week. Representatives from the different school districts will be on hand to help students focus on strategies in interviewing, help with resumes and pose potential questions that will be asked of them.
"We usually recruit only at Sonoma State or Dominican College because both those colleges are close to us," said Bobby Hourigan, secretary to the director of personnel of the Novato School District. "This year, we specifically chose SF State because we so desperately need bilingual teachers, and SF State has so many bilingual students."
Mike Watenpawgh, director of personnel for the Novato Unified School District will be talking about this need at one of the preparation workshops to be held on Thursday March 23 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Cesar Chavez Student Center.
Olivares stressed that trends in teaching careers fluctuate wildly and, because of this, college students need to start paying more attention to their market's needs before searching for a job or attending a job fair.
"America is in trouble," Olivares said. "We need information to hit the student population earlier; teachers succeed based on the amount of current information they know about supply and demand in their field."
Although the future is bright for the 3 million prospective elementary and secondary teachers in the United States (over the next decade, demand for teachers will grow 25-35 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor), Olivares said students need to consider many factors when searching for a teaching job, such as geographic location and curriculum. According to Olivares, most new teachers want to teach close to their hometown in a middle-class school, but they need to be more broad-minded in their search because supply and demand rules the job market.
The Association for School, College and University Staffing 1995 annual report states that Alaska has the largest demand for teachers and also pays the most in the United States ($46,373 a year), while Great Plains/Midwest states such as Nebraska and Iowa (who have had slow population growth over the past ten years) report the lowest demand and salaries in the U.S. ($28-30,000 a year). California educators are the seventh highest paid teachers in the nation, earning an average of $41,400 a year.
Curriculum demands vary greatly also, according to the ASCUS report. In California, there is a surplus of art, social science and physical education teachers, while a considerable shortage exists in the areas of special education, bilingual education, mathematics and science.
"Teaching is a tight job market," Olivares said. "But the Career Center offers all kinds of different resources in education that will help students find out more about the market. If a potential teacher can keep abreast of the current trends, network, and have a love for the job... then finding that nitch won't be hard."