Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hello,
I'm a US Marine stationed in North Carolina who will be retiring next year to Kentucky. Was hoping there'd be some educators here who could help me with a question. My wife has her bachelors in Psychology and her Masters in Communications. She taught as an adjunct at U of MD and a couple of junior colleges, but she's been raising the kids for a while now. As we prepare to retire, she's considering getting back to work. My question is, how hard would it be for her to get her certification as a public school teacher in Kentucky? In this day and age with good teachers becoming harder and harder to come by, especially in Appalachia, one would think it shouldn't be too hard. Could she simply pass the Praxis II and then get certified, or would she have to have a major in one of the major areas of study?
She would need to have college credits in various education classes if she wants to be certified to teach in public schools in Kentucky. She could teach in private schools without the certification required for public school teachers, and it's likely she could substitute teach with fewer education hours.
In addition, public school teachers in Kentucky are required to attend continuing education classes and workshops, and to attain a master's degree in their subject within a set number of years after starting to teach, if they do not already have this degree when they begin their teaching careers.
The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of about twenty years ago changed a LOT when it came into being. Your wife might want to get in touch with the Kentucky State Department of Education in Frankfort to see what she would need to do in order to teach in a Kentucky public school.
I don't mean to hijack this thread... but it's been an interesting read. I'm forwarding this to my argentine wife to read.
How's the need for a teacher with bilingual ( spanish/english ) speaking skills in Kentucky? Especially in the Louisville area? According to our research, seems to be in demand, teachers with these skills.
Response from my Argentine wife: "She's been studying for these exams called "PRAXIS" they are published free online and she's been studying them and practicing. She says Kentucky seems to be more buearocratic, for example with this process than other states she's checked against.
Kentucky is like most states in that there are 3 possible routes to a teaching certification.
1. BA in Education from a traditional School of Education. This is route taken by the majority of young teachers who go to college and get an education degree and then student teach during their final year of college. It is not the right path for a mid or late career person hoping to get into teaching later in life who already has a degree because why repeat all of that undergrad stuff.
2. Alternative Teaching Certification Program. In recent years, most states have set up alternative certification pathways for people who want to get into education from different careers. This is for people who already have college degrees in other related fields and have work experience and want to change careers and get teaching credentials. So, for example, a biologist who already has a degree and work experience in science wants to go into teaching. It makes no sense for them to go back and get another BA and repeat all their science coursework so they would enter an alternative teaching certification program where they just take the curriculum and pedagogy type classes that are required for teaching and then do an internship year of teaching under the supervision of a mentor teacher to earn their teaching certification. There are a bunch of places that offer this in KY. Here is a list: KY: Education Professional Standards Board Certification Division - Approved Alternative Routes
3. The 3rd route to teaching in KY would be to bring a teaching certificate from another state. Most (but not all) states have reciprocity agreements with each other so that someone with teaching credentials from say Ohio can easily gain a reciprocal license in KY after some paperwork hassle and perhaps a requirement to take some tests.
If your wife has lots of professional experience including teaching at the university level but doesn't actually have a KY teaching certificate then she would need to follow path #2 which would involve about a year of evening classes which might be able to be taken concurrently with her intern year of teaching under the supervision of a mentor teacher. It kind of depends on the extent to which there is a teacher shortage in KY in the area where she would be working.
EDIT---there are also minimum coursework requirements for each area of teaching. So, for example science teachers would need to have x-number of hours of science coursework in order to get a science teaching endorsement with their general certification. The specifics may vary from state to state but they generally follow the highly qualified teacher requirements from the No Child Left Behind Act. In your wife's case she would have to do some research but with psychology and communications she probably has enough college coursework to teach English and communications classes and perhaps social studies and history depending on what coursework she had in college. She will have to do the research but it might mean picking up a class or two in the field she wants to teach in. Schools can hire teachers to teach classes that they are not endorsed to teach but they generally get dinged for that in the school ratings and such so administrators try to avoid it if they can.
Last edited by texasdiver; 05-05-2015 at 07:24 AM..
Kentucky is like most states in that there are 3 possible routes to a teaching certification.
1. BA in Education from a traditional School of Education. This is route taken by the majority of young teachers who go to college and get an education degree and then student teach during their final year of college. It is not the right path for a mid or late career person hoping to get into teaching later in life who already has a degree because why repeat all of that undergrad stuff.
2. Alternative Teaching Certification Program. In recent years, most states have set up alternative certification pathways for people who want to get into education from different careers. This is for people who already have college degrees in other related fields and have work experience and want to change careers and get teaching credentials. So, for example, a biologist who already has a degree and work experience in science wants to go into teaching. It makes no sense for them to go back and get another BA and repeat all their science coursework so they would enter an alternative teaching certification program where they just take the curriculum and pedagogy type classes that are required for teaching and then do an internship year of teaching under the supervision of a mentor teacher to earn their teaching certification. There are a bunch of places that offer this in KY. Here is a list: KY: Education Professional Standards Board Certification Division - Approved Alternative Routes
3. The 3rd route to teaching in KY would be to bring a teaching certificate from another state. Most (but not all) states have reciprocity agreements with each other so that someone with teaching credentials from say Ohio can easily gain a reciprocal license in KY after some paperwork hassle and perhaps a requirement to take some tests.
If your wife has lots of professional experience including teaching at the university level but doesn't actually have a KY teaching certificate then she would need to follow path #2 which would involve about a year of evening classes which might be able to be taken concurrently with her intern year of teaching under the supervision of a mentor teacher. It kind of depends on the extent to which there is a teacher shortage in KY in the area where she would be working.
EDIT---there are also minimum coursework requirements for each area of teaching. So, for example science teachers would need to have x-number of hours of science coursework in order to get a science teaching endorsement with their general certification. The specifics may vary from state to state but they generally follow the highly qualified teacher requirements from the No Child Left Behind Act. In your wife's case she would have to do some research but with psychology and communications she probably has enough college coursework to teach English and communications classes and perhaps social studies and history depending on what coursework she had in college. She will have to do the research but it might mean picking up a class or two in the field she wants to teach in. Schools can hire teachers to teach classes that they are not endorsed to teach but they generally get dinged for that in the school ratings and such so administrators try to avoid it if they can.
My wife here in Argentina has two "titulos" ( degrees ) here with a couple of local Universities. One is the equivalent of a Bachelors degree. She also has several years teaching experience here, not only in local schools, but local schools in failing, extremely poor areas. She currently works as a "psycopedagoga" which is kinda of like counseling and tutoring for kids with learning deficiencies and disabilities. She's amply more than qualified and is fluent in both English and Spanish.
She'd be a HUGE asset and well spring of experience and knowledge for any school that is experiencing a booming latino population...which is an area that she hopes to be of some service in when we relocate to Louisville in the future.
My wife here in Argentina has two "titulos" ( degrees ) here with a couple of local Universities. One is the equivalent of a Bachelors degree. She also has several years teaching experience here, not only in local schools, but local schools in failing, extremely poor areas. She currently works as a "psycopedagoga" which is kinda of like counseling and tutoring for kids with learning deficiencies and disabilities. She's amply more than qualified and is fluent in both English and Spanish.
She'd be a HUGE asset and well spring of experience and knowledge for any school that is experiencing a booming latino population...which is an area that she hopes to be of some service in when we relocate to Louisville in the future.
Frustrating, I know, but regardless of your wife's practical ability and relevant experience, she would still need to take college-level education classes in order to be certified to teach in Kentucky's public schools. She could teach in a private school, tutor, and perhaps substitute teach with fewer credits in college education classes, which are mostly about teaching methods and the history and theory of education.
She might even teach in a community college, as does one of my friends - who also does not qualify to teach in Kentucky's public schools. Of course, she has some advanced placement high school kids in her
college classes...not sure how that works out legally, but there she is, master's degree, years of experience, highly motivated, well-informed, articulate and creative - yet if she taught the same class in a public high school, she'd be doing so illegally.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
I took a bunch of such classes when I was in college and student taught, but I never worked in the public schools. Despite my many years of relevant professional experience working with children and college credits beyond my master's degree, I still would have had to spend an additional year in college of education classrooms, taking twelve or more hours per semester of education classes, in order to work in the public schools.
With some fortunate exceptions, most of the University of Kentucky's education classes required for certification way back when were easy-peasy and not very interesting. I was pressured to change my major to the College of Education, but knew that an Arts and Science undergraduate degree was more significant and also knew I was heading to graduate school. But I had to check with the College of Education whenever I preregistered for the next semester's classes - they ran me around between Education and Arts & Sciences, and it was always Education that caused difficulties for me, since I refused to change to their "College".
But I still wanted a teaching certificate - and only found out two weeks too late to add a class during my final undergraduate semester than my College of Education "advisors" had misinformed me, and I was missing a required class. I picked it up in grad. school (which I attended elsewhere), but never jumped through Kentucky's hoops (the other kind) required to get a teaching certificate, and never taught, only to have the requirements change three years later so that even with my two degrees, relevant experience and many required education classes, I still didn't qualify to teach in Kentucky.
This was decades ago, but little has changed over the years. I do think teachers should be required to have some education courses and perhaps more importantly, courses in child and adolescent development and psychology - but there should be alternate paths to teaching for people like your wife. And back in the day, me.
Kentucky is much more conservative in these practices than are a number of other states, and I think we lose people who would be incredible teachers because of this.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
