Many jurisdictions in the US, including the County in which I live, have official “Adult Education” departments that, in addition to potentially offering adult basic education/GED preparation, offer classes in a variety of academic and practical (non-academic) topics in an informal/less formal arrangement separate from the regular public school system for children as well as the two State-sponsored colleges with campuses in the jurisdiction. Adult Education classes are unlikely to be accepted for credit at colleges and universities.
There was an episode of The Simpsons where Homer becomes an Adult Ed instructor, and it turns out that Springfield’s Adult Ed department offers anyone the chance to teach pretty much anything using their facilities to the point where there is actually a formal class entitled “How to chew tobacco.”
To what extent is this actually true? Can a random citizen just call up their local Adult Education office with their own “curriculum” on their favorite topic (e.g. “Critical Analysis and Appreciation of Toilet Humor in Modern Cartoons, with Emphasis on the Works of Parker and Stone”, translated “We get to use a government office to sit and watch South Park all weekend and then talk about it.”) and be expected to be allotted a classroom, teaching materials, and mention in the Schedule of Classes? What are some real-life criteria or experiences? Do you have to have a Bachelor’s degree, which was, in recent history (and apparently still today), the minimum qualification necessary to teach up to the High School level?
For example, it appears that my local Adult Ed department has a class on how to buy a car and not get ripped off, a topic that I would doubt has any formal qualifications that an instructor could achieve (e.g., suppose that I want to be recognized as qualified generally to teach car purchasing and avoiding common car sales scams. What sort of classes should I take and/or what degree or certificate should I seek so that I can teach generally across the United States? I doubt there is a real answer).
Obviously, a call or email to my local Adult Ed department might help, but I’m interested in the general trends in the US or even elsewhere, if there are corresponding programs there.
Keep in mind that this is NOT the same thing as Community College.
In my experience, this is not the case. I live in Michigan and we have an adult education building in our district. All the teachers are required to be certified, and this is not a new requirement since No Child Left Behind.
To be honest, nearly all of our adult education is people getting their high school diploma or equivalency. They need certified teachers for the courses.
When I still lived in Nashville proper, Metro schools offered continuing education classes for adults during evening hours. They ranged from GED classes, where I would imagine the teachers were certified to classes like woodworking, Spanish, MS Office, introduction to computers, millenery, basic auto repair, drawing, beginning guitar, different craft classes, a number of cooking classes, cake decorating, etc. Some, like the aforementioned GED classes, Spanish and computer classes tended to have certified teachers who were moonlighting. Others had people from local businesses teaching.
I actually took several of these, beginning when my employer found the least expensive Lotus class was at a high school in my neighborhood and paid for me to attend (this was a few years back ). I later brushed up on my Spanish, took MS Office, Photoshop and charcoal sketching. For the money, I feel that I learned quite a bit.
If you have the opportunity, try a class sometime. Even now, they tend to be under $100 for an eight week (1X per week) course. With some of the craft classes, you do have to buy your own materials, but still worth it.
I think often the schools set classes they think there is a demand for. They then hire the most qualified people that can find. I have a BS in Chemistry. With no teaching experience, I was hired to teach remedial arithmetic in a state community college.
I am struggling to remember if some western square dancing classes were classified as adult education.
Those with pull might have a better chance at off the wall teaching positions.
I’m not sure that Adult Education classes ever were restricted to Bachelor’s degree recipients as instructors. Ad Ed, by definition, (kinda) is not for college credit, therefore, there are no pressing needs to have a Ph.D in any discipline teach them.
Many of these classes are for community service, i.e., they fill a small niche, kind of make the college more accessible to the public, more friendly to the taxpayers that fund them. In the mid 80s, my friend, who had a Masters degree in Journalism/Broadcast, something like that, taught a 1-3 hour seminar on “How to operate a vCR” for older adults. He wasn’t teaching anything on Broadcast, or on Journalism, just how to use a VCR, and what got him the gig was his job as Video Production Supervisor at the Community College. The VCR stuff was a monster social/community transformative event, and everybody was so intimidated by the technology, that the college felt that a class was needed for the community. Naturally, the youth of the time, as now, all had a ready grasp of the tech stuff, which they were too busy using to share with adults. Regular tuition wasn’t charged, if any. All he did was show them how to operate a VCR, which anybody that read the manual could teach. The classes that one will find are usually small, short seminars, that meet a temporary need by the local community.
Why should one need a degree to teach “How to buy a used Car” or “How to maximize the use of a FlowBee”? As pointed out above, it is by local experts, professionals, or people with a good grasp of the subject matter of something that is needed in the AD ED community. The colleges have stuck it in the Ad Ed category because they are not intended as an exercise in academia, not treated as such, and with less rigors than a degree program.
IN short, if you want to teach one, you have to be an expert of sorts in something that has a small, temporary vacuum in knowledge, and an audience.
It all boils down to who is running the adult education center and for what purpose. If it’s a local public school district, an extension of a college, etc., for actual credit then there’s going to be some requirements for the teachers.
But our local high school has night classes like yoga, guitar, foreign languages, word processing, etc. I doubt that there’s a degree requirement for yoga instructors. You also don’t get any sort of credit. I know they do background checks and such.
Our local park system also has similar types of classes.
Then there’s the places like The Learning Annex and it’s lesser brethren. Who knows what you’re getting at one of those places.
So, yeah, Lenny can give a class at some local school at night on how to chew tobacco. But he probably can’t teach a GED class.
Sometimes the deal on enrichment classes is that the instructor and the host venue split the class fees, with a minimum enrollment (enough to cover the venue’s expenses) required actually to run the course.
In my area, anybody with a skill or some specialized “knowledge” can teach a Community Education course, provided they can convince the school district people will pay to take the course. No license or special training is required. Part of the fees students pay goes to the teacher and part goes to the school district hosting the class. These are usually recreational courses (oil painting, cooking, conversational Chinese, speaking to the dead), fitness/sports courses, consumer information seminars, or short trips to regional attractions. These classes are offered for a fee.
This is entirely different from the adult education courses for people who are working toward a GED or learning English as a second language. Those courses are taught by certified educators employed by the school districts just for that purpose. They used to be offered free to the public (supported by tax dollars), but I’m sure that’s changed in recent years.
I taught Creative Writing (or, as I called it “Writing Memoirs of Little Old Ladies”) at the local middle school in the adult ed program. I’d heard an advanced degree wasn’t required, went to the adult ed. program people, pitched a class proposal and I was in! I made up the “curriculum” (which was based on CW classes I took in college) and would have had to provide my own materials had I required anything like a textbook. My students brought their own pens and paper and we mostly spent the time doing little writing workshops and sharing with each other. I thought it was great fun and hilarious that I could teach it for twice the salary for which I could do it (I was working at a magazine at the time). I had to be fingerprinted by the cops, which is on file with that particular school board. (Also think it’s funny: I could have been a pedophile, but as long as I hadn’t gotten caught at anything, I was totally qualified to teach. I could have been high on drugs the entire time I was teaching – no drug test, but had to pass criminal background check. Go figure.) Aside from ensuring that I wasn’t a convicted felon, AFAIK, nobody checked any credentials or even verified that I actually have a degree in something (just not in creative writing). Oh yeah, there was no credit and I didn’t have to give any grades.
I teach adult ed classes and substitute at the local public high school, and I do not have a college degree. I did have a special teaching credential in computer science when I lived in California, which allowed me to teach at junior colleges. It was granted based on the number of years of experience I had in the field. I believe their equivalency formula was 10 years = BS, 20 years = MS.
). I later brushed up on my Spanish, took MS Office, Photoshop and charcoal sketching. For the money, I feel that I learned quite a bit.