When I grow up

Thank goodness for three day weekends! Tomorrow is "Sports Day", a national holiday. After over a month of considering how to spend this weekend (Taipei, Hakuba hiking, 3 day running trip with 120 others... and so on), I'm spending it doing virtually nothing. And it feels ex-cell-ent. Truly nice to not have to go anywhere for once. Hiking would have been great except the weather is total crap, so no regrets. Yesterday was nice and quiet, Tom and I did another training run around the palace, up to 9 miles this time! We spent the afternoon feeding our "24" addiction (we're zooming through season 3 on dvd but season 4 is already out here!). Then we watched the movies "Secret Window" and "Supersize Me". Both were pretty good. We laughed at "Supersize Me" and I was pretty nauseated... lots of information there (for those who have somehow missed it the the guy goes on a 30 day 3xday McDonalds diet with unpredictably horrendous results. Documentary).

Then I read this... on a different blog: Teachers-preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary:

"Currently, many school districts have difficulty hiring qualified teachers in some subject areas: mathematics, science (especially chemistry and physics), bilingual education, and foreign languages. Qualified vocational teachers, at both the middle school and secondary school levels, also are currently in demand in a variety of fields. Specialties that have an adequate number of qualified teachers include general elementary education, physical education, and social studies. Teachers who are geographically mobile and who obtain licensure in more than one subject should have a distinct advantage in finding a job. Increasing enrollments of minorities, coupled with a shortage of minority teachers, should cause efforts to recruit minority teachers to intensify. Also, the number of non-English-speaking students has grown dramatically, creating demand for bilingual teachers and for those who teach English as a second language. "

I kind of imagined that this was probably the way it is, but it was eye-opening to see it in print from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Guess I need to seriously considering either continuing to teach English or perhaps teaching Japanese because it becomes more and more obvious that teaching elementary or my original goal of middle school social studies is looking a bit bleak. We shall see, I guess. I hope to be back in the states getting my certification next year and probably need to make my mind up before that!!.