Required Reading

Planning on being a teacher? Especially a secondary school teacher? Here's a brief reading list:

When Young Teacher Go Wild on the Web
Washington Post article about the impact of social networking sites on the careers of teachers. This poses an interesting question: do teachers (and by extension, other school employees) have to adhere to a higher standard of behavior in their private lives because of the public nature of their jobs? Considering the technological skills of our students, I'd say yes, at least in regards to what is posted on the Internet. Let's face it: 12-18 year-olds will Google their teachers, and share on campus anything "juicy" they find out!

Teacher Under Construction: Things I Wish I'd Known!: A Survival Handbook for New Middle School Teachers
This is an AWESOME overview of teaching in a junior high! Spend 2 days reading this, and you'll save yourself 5 years worth of trial-and-(lots of) error.

EdJoin.org
If you live in California, or want to work in California, this is the first stop: a listing of jobs, by county and school district. You can even apply on-line for many of them. Unfortunately, this is not exactly a great time to be entering the profession here in Sunny CA, unless you are a special education teacher or a speech and language pathologist... those folks are in huge demand!

California Education Code
Particularly section 48900. Here in Cali, this deals with the suspension/expulsion of students. Teachers should be familiar with it, so their expectations of student discipline are reasonable.

Obviously this list could go on and on, but this is all I have for right now. I'll add to it as I come up with more material.