Hiring questions reE How long did it take you to find a job? Do you think it's harder to get hired as a woman? Thanks!
Although I'm not a physical education teacher, I would like to reply to the question of whether it's harder for women to get hired for that teaching position and to base it on schools in which I have either attended taught at. I think that it's equally hard for male and female PE teachers to get hired. Every coed middle or high school that I am familiar with needs a certain number of male and female PE teachers. A female teacher is needed to supervise the girls' locker room, just like a male teacher must supervise the boys' room. There are exceptions in which a school has a larger male student population and thus needs more male than female PE teachers.
I should have specified elementary--where the kids don't have to change. At my first pd meeting I swear there were 50 men and maybe 5 women.
That's odd, since 80-85% of the elementary PE teachers I have had contact with are women. The men tend to become more prevalent when the students are in MS, since it means more coaching for baseball, basketball, etc. Once the sports or teams are gender specific, I believe schools try to go with same gender for teacher when there are enough candidates to choose. Just an observation.
I'm guessing it depends on the market. I've had my teaching lic in PE for 5 years. First 2.5 I jumped around from subbing, long term subbing, and a brief stint with a union job. Funding has been an issue in my state along with applicant saturation. One of my first interviews was at my former high school. Small school of 350 students, there were more than 350 applicants from the NE area. I had to take a year off and fall back on my finance/marketing minor and sell-out to pay bills. Then I took a bad position out of desperation, stuck out one year, and finally found what seems to be a perfect job. Sorry for a downer story but what I learned in those 5 years is that while hard work is more important luck and politics are factors. I saw a few members of my graduating class get positions they didn't deserve right away for various reasons. Big mistake I made was letting this bother me as you cant control luck/timing. Regarding gender. It comes into play strongly at MS-HS level with locker rooms depending on staff make-up and teacher assistants. For example one school I subbed at basically had to hire a male teacher the year before I got my lic. The all female PE staff didnt have a male teacher to monitor the locker room and an incident occurred which resulted in a lawsuit.
