Where Are the Jobs?

I have a question: Where are the jobs?

I mean those high-tech college-only jobs that we're supposed to be training every student who graduates high school for. I mean those jobs that can only be gotten through the efforts of students who are college ready? You know, the jobs that Common Core was created to help prepare our students to compete for? Yeah. Those jobs. So where are they, exactly?

I've been looking around, on the Labor Department website for highly skilled job sector growth and I can't seem to find any.

I've been looking in the newspaper and on Monster.com and they don't seem to be visible.

We are seven years into a recession (and don't give me any of that crap about the recession starting in '07. Bush sent me MY first stimulus check back in 2006, so let's just all be real and start there, shall we) and it has been darn near impossible to find a good paying job since then.

A former student, with a college degree and 3.8 gpa is selling stuff door to door. For him, there was no college job. He's not the only one who my best efforts went toward experiencing that. Not by a long shot.

And yet, we're being told that we have to prepare every high school student for college (and not spend time preparing them for plumbing, our auto mechanics or electritical work) so that they can be ready for " tomorrow's high paying, high skilled jobs".

Ok, so where are these jobs I keep hearing about?

(You know, the ones that my job is going to be glued to if my kids from Title I and blue collar homes don't suddenly develop an interest and proficiency in advanced readings of complicated informational texts. Yeah. Those jobs).

Something has been sticking with me for a few weeks now. I saw Lois Weiner speak at a MORE conference and she asked 'why aren't experienced teachers being valued and why is teaching being dumbed down? Because the menial jobs that our society is offering require only menial teachers to prepare our students -teachers who will leave the profession in a few years and who need a rubric like Danielson's in order to function."

Or something like that. I mean, I was really taken back so much by the thought that I didn't take much time to detail the quote.

Because the very thought is bone chilling: The only jobs out there are   retail jobs (you know, Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot. Jobs like that). Besides those, the thought goes, there are no jobs.

I'd like to prove her wrong. But, for the last few weeks, I really haven't been able to because, like I said, I can't seem to notice any college-required jobs.
I mean, it's nice to go to college. It's great to have a degree. It's wonderful to be educated. But where are the jobs that all of our students are supposed to be college educated in order to compete for?

I don't see THOSE jobs. Do you?

Look, I broke my brand new Google Nexus 7 this past weekend. I loved that tablet. I loved it with all of my heart. I called Asus (the company who manufactures the device) to ask how much it would cost to repair. The highly trained customer service rep I spoke with was in India. I called my mortgage servicing company to ask about refinancing last week. That rep? Was from India as well. Oh, and the very highly trained Norton expert who cleaned my computer's registry right in from of me and cured it from its virus? Yeah. India, too.

Funny that India doesn't have Common Core, isn't it? Or Danielson performance reviews?

And not ha ha funny either.