Plotting Your Journey to a PhD by Ben Lathrop

Ben Lathrop is ICTE's Recording Secretary

When I decided to leave the classroom to pursue a PhD in 2021 after 18 years of teaching high school English, my colleagues had many questions for me. Are you sure you can afford it? Does the world really need another PhD? When you’re in your ivory tower, will you forget about the realities of teaching high school? When is your first book coming out?

Perhaps you’re an experienced English teacher toying with the prospect of going back to school to become a teacher educator. Having just finished my PhD in English Education at Purdue University and landed a job teaching MAT students remotely for National Louis University in Chicago, I have a few thoughts for you, which I’ll share under the admittedly dubious headings of motive, means, and opportunity.

Motive

Before leaving the classroom to pursue a PhD in teacher education, reflect critically on your motives. Why are you thinking about making this move? Here’s my advice.

Don’t do it for the money. I know, we’re teachers; we don’t really do anything for the money. But you should be aware that contrary to what many assume, professors in schools of education often make less than K-12 teachers--at least at the beginning. Why? It probably comes down to the law of supply and demand. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who ends up landing a coveted tenure-track position at an R1 (high research activity) university--positions that are becoming rarer and more competitive, often with more than 100 applicants for a single position--you may very well make more now than you will if you get a PhD and land a typical full-time faculty job, especially if you’ve been teaching a while and already have an advanced degree. And if you have to adjunct for a year or two, which many do, you’ll almost certainly make significantly less than you’re making now. I know or have heard of plenty of teachers who get a PhD in education and ultimately return to teaching high school--because it’s really what they love, because they want to apply their new learning, but especially because they can probably make more money. On the other hand, if you can land an assistant professor position, even if it’s not tenure track, there are opportunities for promotion over time that could put you in a higher earning bracket than you could ever reach as a K-12 teacher--not to mention opportunities for consulting and other side gigs.

Some teachers manage to complete a PhD while teaching in a K-12 classroom full-time, and if you can do that--or if that’s the only way you can afford to earn a higher degree--more power to you. Those programs, however, are generally unfunded, meaning you’ll pay tuition and may struggle to find time to do research and get experience teaching in higher education. If you think you’re just as likely to continue teaching in a K-12 setting and you’re in a corporation that will pay you significantly more when you have a PhD, this approach might make sense. The other route, which may cost more in lost earnings in the end but has its own advantages, is to enter a full-time, fully funded PhD program. That’s what I did, and I was fortunate to obtain a research fellowship that paid my tuition plus a half-time salary (granted, less than half of what I was making as a high school teacher with a Master’s degree and 18 years under my belt) to pursue my own research interests. I was also lucky because I happened to be the only grad student in my specific program, so I had no competition for opportunities to supplement that half-time salary with another half-time appointment supervising student teachers and/or teaching preservice teachers--which is what I ultimately wanted to end up doing.

Don’t do it to get out of the classroom. During the first year of my program, I was talking with a preservice teacher about some of the joys of teaching high school English. “But you left the classroom!” she said, pointedly. That was true--but I could honestly say I didn’t leave because I was tired of teaching high school. There were other reasons--family, professional, personal--but apart from those, I would have been content to retire from where I was teaching.. 

Under no circumstances should you leave teaching for a PhD program in teacher education if you’ve been in the classroom less than three years--and more is better. I’ve been on a number of search committees for teacher education, and they all require a minimum of three years of K-12 teaching experience, but we’re always drawn toward applicants with much more experience. If you’re going to be teaching future teachers, you need to know what you’re talking about--and not just theoretically. You need to know it in your bones, the kind of knowledge that comes from experience and struggle. That will give you the kind of credibility you need with your preservice teacher students.

Do it because you love teaching and teachers.  If you’ve served the profession well as a K-12 teacher, both in your classroom and with your colleagues, you might have something more to offer. Tomorrow’s teachers need to learn from people in the field who have faced tremendous challenges and managed to stay in the game and still love it. When you start your program, take advantage of every opportunity you have to teach and supervise preservice teachers, and do whatever you can to keep a foot in the K-12 world--do research with teachers, partner with them on projects, and maybe even sub occasionally.

Means

You’ve weighed your motives and concluded that you’ve decided to pursue a PhD. How do you go about it? There’s no one right way, but here are a few general suggestions.

Consider various factors when deciding on a program. I ended up at Purdue for reasons that are too strange and personal to go into here; suffice it to say that my wife wanted to move from the Twin Cities in Minnesota to the West Lafayette area, and I wasn’t interested in starting over as a high school teacher in Indiana--but I was somewhat interested in getting a PhD. Purdue isn’t widely known for turning out PhDs in English Education; in 2019, when I first started exploring the idea, I think there was one person in the program. Nevertheless, if I was going anywhere, it was there, so I contacted the director of English Education, who was thrilled about the prospect of a new PhD candidate and assured me that she could find funding for me; she eventually became my advisor. I drove out for a two-day campus visit, I took the GRE, I completed the application, and I also applied to Stanford’s program just so I could say I was looking at other options (I didn’t get in). Ultimately I went to Purdue because my wife wanted to move and because I got an offer that made it at least somewhat feasible.

You’ll want to apply to more than two programs, probably, and to do some research to find out about universities known for their English Education programs, like Stanford, Columbia, University of Texas-Austin, and Michigan State. If you know what you want your research focus to be, look for scholars who are well known for doing research in that area, contact them, and apply to their programs. Don’t go with a program that doesn’t offer you a good funding package--but be sure to consider cost of living ($32,000 a year goes a lot farther in Indiana than it does in the Bay Area, for example).

Start acting like a scholar. Join professional organizations like ICTE and our umbrella organization, the National Council of teachers of English (NCTE). Subscribe to their academic journals and read them. Get involved with an affiliate of the National Writing Project near you. Consider doing an action research project in your classroom--trying out a new strategy or addressing a problem and collecting and analyzing data on it. Start presenting about your teaching and research at conferences--the ICTE conference is a great way to get your feet wet; sister organizations like the Indiana Literacy Association and Indiana Teachers of Writing also have conferences to which you can submit proposals. Turn those conference presentations into proposals for national conferences, and turn those into submissions to journal publications. I submitted my first journal article to English Journal in May 2020, and it helped me land my research fellowship. Before that, I had no idea I could publish an article in a journal.

Talk to other people who have made the journey. I knew exactly one person who had left an English classroom to get a PhD in English education; he was my student teaching University Supervisor when I got my M.Ed. and teaching license at the University of Minnesota, and I’d reconnected with him through some consulting work he was doing in my school. He gave me lots of excellent advice, some of which I actually took. Maybe you don’t know anybody. Getting involved in ICTE and coming to the annual conference is a great way to start to make some of those connections--and you’ll make even more if you join NCTE, and go to the national conference.

Opportunity.  Finally, the move from the classroom to graduate school will present all kinds of opportunities, but they may not always be obvious. Here are a few ways you can take advantage of opportunities that come your way.

Choose a research area you really care about, and make everything about that.  The first two or three years of your program will be focused on completing coursework in curriculum studies, literacy foundations, etc. But if you’re smart, you’ll find ways to connect the reading and writing required for your coursework to your research focus--and even to turn some of that writing into conference presentations and publications. I turned an action research project I’d done during my last year of high school teaching into an essay reflecting on the move from teacher to teacher educator. My first published empirical research article in grad school came about because I shared my research interests during the first meeting of my Foundations of Literacy class and the professor was interested enough to email me with an idea of how we could collaborate. Search committees looking for assistant professors in literacy or English Education won’t just want to see K-12 and higher ed teaching experience; they’ll also want to see what kind of scholar you are, which means it will be important to have a bunch of presentations and a few peer-reviewed publications on your CV. That’s both easier and harder than you might think. It’s easier because if you do what I’ve suggested above, using your coursework as a basis for conference proposals and articles, and if you apply for every funding opportunity that will pay for conference travel,  take advantage of opportunities to collaborate when they’re offered, and hold yourself to a disciplined reading and writing schedule, it really doesn’t take that long for the list of presentations and publications to grow. It’s harder because funding doesn’t always materialize, because collaborators can be hard to find and unreliable, because journals take frustratingly long to review submissions and you may very well have a submission rejected three or four times before you get a coveted “revise and resubmit”, and because life is hard and will continually throw things at you that make it difficult to focus.

Get involved in teaching and service. Research is just one of the three pillars of academic life; the others are teaching and service. You’ll want to establish a record of all three when you’re in grad school, so in addition to finding presentation and publication opportunities, be sure to take advantage of opportunities to teach and serve. Even if you’re fortunate enough to have a four-year research assistantship, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t teach. During the first four semesters of my program, I co-taught undergraduate courses in English Education--not for money, but for independent study credit and experience, and my experience teaching one of those classes led to a journal publication. Eventually, I took over a couple of those courses for extra money. I also supervised about 50 student teachers over the course of seven semesters--an opportunity you should absolutely take advantage of if you can; it’ll keep you connected with the K-12 world, including teachers who are still in the classroom. Two of the five teachers involved in my dissertation study were classroom teachers I met through supervision; two were student teachers, and the fifth was a teacher in my kids’ new school.

Service opportunities abound in grad school and around schools, and they can lead to other opportunities. The fifth teacher I mentioned above? I first worked with her and others in the community to develop a local writing contest about rural life. That led to a blog post and an online journal publication. Then we did a two-week study in her classroom; that led to multiple conference presentations, another English Journal publication, and one in Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and it ultimately paved the way for my dissertation. I joined an ELATE commission (English Language Arts Teacher Educators, a branch of NCTE) and volunteered to be the social media guy even though I don’t really do social media. I joined the Purdue College of Education’s Graduate Student Education Council and signed up for a committee that planned our annual graduate student conference; I eventually became vice-president of the organization and met some of my closest grad student friends that way. I served on several search committees. Some of this took some initiative, but some just involved saying yes. Which brings me to my final piece of advice:

Don’t sacrifice your personal life. I’ve heard plenty of stories--and know several personally--of grad students whose marriages have fallen apart during grad school. As with teaching, grad school could be a 24-hour job if you let it be. Don’t. Prioritize what’s important--partners, children, friends. If you have a partner and they’re not completely on board with your decision, it’s probably not worth it. If you have older kids and they aren’t on board (especially if it means moving), they may come around, but be sure to consider their concerns and perspectives. Keep in mind that you might have to move again after you finish if you want to have the best job options--faculty job searches are usually national, and you have the best chance of landing a good job if you’re open to moving anywhere--so make sure your family understands and is okay with that. When you’re in the thick of it, set boundaries and stick to them. Don’t work around the clock; take time for your family and for yourself. Attend your kids’ sports events and go on dates with your partner. Don’t stop reading for pleasure. Get exercise in a way that’s fun for you.

If all this hasn’t scared you off, maybe a PhD in teacher education is for you. If you decide to take the plunge--or if you’re thinking about it but still aren’t sure--I’d be happy to talk it over with you. You can contact me at blathrop@purdue.edu.

Do you want to contribute to the ICTE Blog? Contact Publication Director Blake Mellencamp at blakemellencamp@gmail.com!