These days, technology in the schools is a big catch phrase when it comes to education innovation. Technology workers are needed to establish networks in schools and maintain them as well as to train school personnel, and students, in the latest technology. Are you looking for a new career away from the suit-and-tie corporate world? If you decide to look into schools, you may find a rewarding career, but be prepared!
Children today are required to learn PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Excel, and other programs as young as elementary school. That means that reliable and extensive networks must be set up within public and private schools of all sizes. Systems administrators are needed! Also, if you have a good aptitude for teaching, there could be other opportunities for you as well. Technology teachers are needed for teaching everything from simply typing to Auto CAD. The needs of schools are virtually endless when it comes to getting updated and staying on the cutting edge.
If you are interested in applying your knowledge of programming in a school environment, there is a lot to know. This new world of work will be nothing at all like the corporate environment you are used to. The world of children is one in which every item must be durable and technology breakdowns are common. Children are hard on equipment, so if your job is to repair computers and keep a system active, you will be busy all the time!
In addition, education personnel are not known for their computer aptitude. Many teachers and administrators know little about the world of computing and many more are downright luddites. Be prepared, because this attitude is prevalent! Teachers are all overworked and underpaid and simply do not have the time to sit and spend hours figuring out a program just because they are told it will benefit them in the long run. Teachers are mostly putting out daily fires in their jobs, so the long term, for them, seems way too far away.
As an IT worker in the schools, you will need to understand these various attitudes toward computers and simply take them in stride. You’ll need to remember that the combination of active growing children, their worried parents, overworked teachers, and overwhelmed administrators means that if computers don’t function at their best, emotions are liable to get frayed. Or, I should say, more frayed than usual. As a technology worker, it will be important for you to understand that the technological incompetence of many teachers and administrators is nothing less than your job security. Therefore, if you are a patient person who doesn’t mind guiding learners step by step through the process of utilizing various forms of technology, then many schools—both public and private—will be able and willing to hire you.
Schools are unpredictable and emotional places, where a myriad of issues come into play each and every day. If you long for an active, friendly environment like this, you’ll find schools to be basically as different from a corporate cubicle as they could possibly be. As an IT worker in the schools, you will also have the intense satisfaction of knowing that you are helping young people learn and build a better future every day.
If your office has a system, such as ID cards or passkeys, or even, heaven forbid, clock punching, that allows you entry and determines your work hours, it may soon be switching to something fancier: a facial recognition time clock combined with a door lock. These gadgets, which cost under five hundred bucks, do a 3D scan of your face when you arrive at the door and take in all the information. What time you got to work, what time you left work, what mood you were in (probably), how many pimples, new stress lines appearing, and your taste in clothes. Luckily, it doesn’t make comments.
Dharma. Many of us have heard the word in discussions of eastern philosophy, but few understand the importance of its meaning to people of all professions. Dharma is personal responsibility combined with one’s social, familial, or professional duty—all with the concept of equilibrium or balance in mind. In Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart, she describes the inherent importance of dharma to those seeking success in any realm.
Dharma—or duty in the interest of balance—is an interesting subject that brings up a lot of complicated issues. By the way, that definition—“duty in the interest of balance”—is mine, but it’s taken from the ideas put forth in Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart. Chu just defines it as “duty,” but all the examples she gives illustrate how duty, performed rightly, leads to balance.
Job hunters in today’s tough economic climate have to take extra steps to stand out from what is essentially a sea of eager applicants for each and every corporate position. The paper resume is still a helpful tool, of course, and should be composed professionally with the latest resume-writing techniques. The cyber resume, however, is another tool available to intrepid college graduates who seek to stand out.
It has been determined that at least forty percent of successful executives describe themselves as introverts. How can introverts lead some of this nation’s most prosperous companies? How can they head board meetings and gather with top-level managers from various companies to operate all the complex—and often very social—work of a large corporation?
Interoffice politics can be such a bore. If your office is like mine, there are those managers who are so disorganized you spend a great deal of your free time simply wondering how they could have possibly got into such a high level position. Then there are the customer service representatives who have to field calls from irate clients. Because they are under so much stress, they can tend to rub others the wrong way, always insisting that their clients “get what they want.” So how does an honest, hard working technology professional or computer programmer survive in such a climate?
Does your office suffer from organizational woes? I’m not talking about the typical corporate problem of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, of marketing not communicating with sales, and the technology department being at odds with the customer services reps (yet again!). I mean a more physical type of disorganization. The kind of thing that aggravates you just that teeny little bit every day—not enough to both mentioning or to justify action.
Office workers in disproportionate numbers have been meeting lately in an unlikely place: the chiropractor’s office. Are you one of them? Once the docs have diagnosed patients with kyphosis, lordosis, subluxations and a host of other spinal ailments, they will likely ask what the patients do for a living. Invariably they hear, “a desk job.”
Many office workers are as dependent on the coffee pot as a baby is on its bottle. Because coffee drinking is so common, they seldom stop to ask themselves, ‘is this healthful?’ Office workers need energy, after all, and everyone is familiar with that 4:00 slump. A cup or two of coffee can really get you through a tough day. Sometimes it even feels like that cup of coffee can be your only friend in the world!
