So tell me about being a teacher and alternative certification

In My Humble Opinion
1

I re-upped by subscription just to start this thread :smiley:

My current career, while financially rewarding, is becoming, well, a bit of a bore . I think I have become just a little too comfortable, and paradoxically, I feel a bit restless. Time to move on to greener pastures, and perhaps, a new career.

So I’m thinking about teaching. Specifically, upper grade science. Here in Texas that apparently means becoming certified as a general science teacher in grades 8-12. I already have a bachelor’s, albeit a B.A. in English, so at this point alternative certification would be the quickest option for becoming certified. I took quite a bit of science as electives, so it’s just a matter of 3 or 4 more courses in bio and chem. That’ll take a couple of years, since I only get to take one class for free each semseter at my University–no problem, as teaching will be a pay cut so I need to wait until the kiddos are out of daycare.

Here are my questions (finally, right??): if you are a teacher, specifically, a high school teacher, what’s your most favorite and least favorite thing about your job? If you had it to do all over again, would you still be a teacher? What do you think is the leading cause of burn-out in your profession? Conversely, what is it about veteran, happy teachers that keeps them on the job?

And if anyone has any experience with alternative certification, either having gone through it or having fellow teachers who went through it, what’s your take on it? Do alt cert teachers get treated any differently by their colleagues (i.e., is it seen as a “second-rate” way of getting certified, and if so, do you think that viewpoint is justified?) Alt cert is quite popular here in Texas but I really don’t know how it is received by the districts, so I don’t know if it would make it harder to find a teaching position.

2

Hmmmm. Your timing is not great. Normally, I would advise you to contact a local high school and ask to observe for two or three days, but you’re at the end of the school year, so you’re not going to see anything like a normal classroom situation. You could observe during summer school, but that’s either remedial - the students flunked it the first time - or it’s enrichment - for the brainy kids. Not a normal crowd one way or the other. You may need to wait until August when schools start up again, and observing from Day 1 would be a great way to get a feel for teaching.

That being said, science is a perennially understaffed area in public school teaching. About the only other areas more likely to snap you up are mathematics, special ed, and bilingual ed. If you decide to teach, look at a full range of choices. Most standard credential programs will take you two full-time semesters with student teaching built in. That’s how I did it, but I had the support of my parents and didn’t have to worry about holding down a job. If your current job really is financially rewarding, you might think about saving enough to pay the bills while you go to school.

The downside of an alternative credential program is that you are thrown immediately into the classroom with only the tiniest bit of training to prepare you. It can be very much a sink or swim situation. Once in the school, I’ve never noticed anyone on an alternative cred program being treated as anything less than a teacher - albeit a brand new, scared silly teacher. If anything, they were treated more kindly by the rest of the faculty because we knew how tough their situation was. Expect to spend fifty to sixty hours a week teaching, and another ten or twelve going to classes. Throw in to that preparing lesson plans, grading, and doing your own schoolwork. It’s a tough row to how. However, it does get you in there faster. When I was student teaching at a large high school, I knew several student teachers in alternative cred programs. The main complaints were the cost (most were attending private univs), the crowded schedule, and that they felt all alone in a big scary world.

Alternative cred programs exist with private universities as well as specific school districts, like Dallas ISD, that are having a hard time filling the classrooms with regular teachers. I know Region 10 has its own cred program that they work in conjunction with Texas A&M. I don’t know if it’s alternative.

I am a teacher with three years experience teaching English in the middle school and Art in middle and high school. I love teaching. I’ve been looking for a job in Texas for nearly a year, and it’s driving me nuts. I hate not having my own classroom and my own students.

Things I love about teaching: the rhythm of the school year with its beginnings and endings, the students and watching them grown through the course of a year, my subject matter and how I can, on occasion, make it matter to kids, being their for the kids as a mentor, advisor, and grown up friend, working with fantastic adults who are smart, quirky, and fun.

Things that drive me nuts about teaching: the endless paperwork, if it’s not grading, it’s recording grades, paperwork for the school, paperwork for the district, paperwork for the state. You can drown in paper if you’re not careful. Other things: not being able to fix my students’ problems. I can’t make them care about school, I can’t smack their parents for being idiots, I can’t duct tape them to the wall of my classroom to keep them out of trouble. It bugs me that the standards and respect for teaching are so low; I believe they’re connected. It bugs me that it’s so difficult to get truly bad teachers out of the system before they do real harm.

Bottom line is: if you love and know your subject matter, you like kids, and you can manage kids, you’ll be a good teacher.

3

Well, how about you start out small. Personally, I joined Teach Baltimore for two summers. (It wasn’t for me) You can see if AmeriCorps has any simular programs where you are “Smack dab in the middle.”

4

I teach in Dallas, and I can’t imagine loving a job more.

Alt cert programs do not prepare you really at all, but neither to traditional programs, and they cost a lot more over time, so I’d go for the alt-cert. It makes for a rough, rough year, but you’ll get through it. Any stigma–and there isn’t much of one–is gone after the first year.

Teaching is hard work. But the perks are unbelievable: in what other job does someone stand up in front of thousands of people and thank you, personally, for changing their life? Plus, you get to use every scrap of creative energy you have, every single day.

The down side is that you use every single scrap of creative energy you have, every single day. And falling for teenagers means major losses–it seems like there is a car accident or a drug overdose of a suicide or a murder every year, and they aren’t always your kids, but sometimes they will be. And I worry about my kids.

5

This is a good thread about this very topic .
I said many things there that I still agree woth: however, the difference between September and May is that I haven’t the will to type that much now.

6

Thank you so much for your replies. I think phouka’s suggestion to observe in a classroom is an excellent idea–I’ll call the district next fall to see about arranging a couple of days if possible (sidenote: I was homeschooled, so walking into a public high school will be like exploring a new universe!). Unfortunately, since I have a family and financial obligations, I can’t just up and go to Boston for the summer, as Scott Plaid suggested, as tempting as that might be some days :smiley:

I’ll have to give this some more thought–I hadn’t even considered the long hours that come with teaching high school, what with being involved in extracurriculur stuff and sponsoring and such. Frankly, my husband is not thrilled about the prospect of my teaching in a high school; he would prefer I get certified to teach kindergarten! But I think I could handle it, and your responses have been very helpful. Thank you for the link, Manda JO ! I knew there was a thread about this somewhere, but I couldn’t find it.