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As parents, teachers and others what do you all think of people who are taking the alternative certification route to become a teacher? Some who do this are recent college grads who decide to teach after college and others are career changers who decide to teach.
The difference to me seems to be time- alt cert is faster and more intense, with more of the responsibility on the student to do lots of studying on their own.
I'm interested as to how the teachers from a college program feel about alt cert...
As parents, teachers and others what do you all think of people who are taking the alternative certification route to become a teacher? Some who do this are recent college grads who decide to teach after college and others are career changers who decide to teach.
The difference to me seems to be time- alt cert is faster and more intense, with more of the responsibility on the student to do lots of studying on their own.
I'm interested as to how the teachers from a college program feel about alt cert...
I'm in favor of it for people holding professional degrees with work experience. I think once you've proven that you're capable of learning and relearning your job and you're proven to be a subject matter expert, you're good to go. What's taught in ed classes is often geared towards young people with little real world experience. Just being a bit older can be an advantage.
I'm convinced no program can prepare you to teach. It's all theory until you step in front of that classroom and then you will figure out, by trial and error, what works. I think alternative certification programs that involve shadowing other teachers would be a great way to train new teachers.
I'm not in favor of student teaching. Stepping in front of someone elses classroom is not like stepping in front of your own. About the only thing it did for me was give me a taste of the workload and stress level of a teacher but it didn't prepare me for either when I got in front of my own classroom. What I learned my first year, mostly by making mistakes, is where the learning curve really starts.
As long as it's thorough, I don't think it matters. You won't know how to teach until you just do it (and have been doing it for a while), anyway.
I agree. You have to do it to learn it. No one can tell you how. They can give you pointers but you have to figure out your own teaching style. What schools need to do is insure you know your material well enough to be adaptable and you understand the legalities of the profession.
Before entering the classroom, I think you should be established as a subject matter expert, have a methods course in your major/minor (that includes writing lesson plans), a class on the difficulties in mainstreaming special ed students and your legal oblications to special ed students, a class in adolescent psychology and a class on using technology to teach. Most of the other classes I took would have had more impact if they'd been taken after I was a teacher.
One thing I wasn't taught in school that I should have been was how to write sub plans. We should have had a class where we had to write sub plans for other students and then have someone else teach them so they could be critiqued.
Alternative Teacher Certification is different from state to state and program to program. To evaluate them it MIGHT be best to be specific. Some programs are obviously capable of producing third year teachers who are superior to third year teachers in traditional programs and others aren't.
I'm in favor of it. My son had an economics teacher who was alt-cert and came from the financial field. He brought real-life into the classroom and my son learned alot and was "into" the class.
I don't think a book learned only teacher would have brought the same type of "experience" into the classroom.
I'm interested as to how the teachers from a college program feel about alt cert...
It isn't so much what other teachers think but what decision-makers who hire think. There are lots of principals who are biased against teachers who did alternate certification...it makes it more tough for teachers who take this route to land jobs.
I would rather my son have teachers that have worked in the real world before teaching, than for him to have just career teachers. Alt-cert teachers seem to be 2nd career teachers that I prefer, so I am okay with it. My guess, though, is they only teach 2-5 years and then leave, but that's okay. Career teachers can be way out of touch with reality when it comes to real life.
For what it's worth, my college is highly ranked, and has a decent ed program, but my methods classes were essentially worthless. All my content area-specific education courses were useful, and my theory classes were fascinating, but the methods classes were a humongous waste of time. Offering occasional departmentally-sponsored workshop throughout one's course of study would have been much better for learning the mechanics of things like lesson plan writing/sub plan writing/maintaining gradebooks and the like would have been more than sufficient. Taking time out of a collegiate academic schedule to take entire courses on such planning/housekeeping issues was always frustrating to me. Important, sure, but not the sort of thing I need to learn in a college class.
In my opinion, student teaching was very useful. For me, it served VERY strongly to teach me all the things I DIDN'T want out of a career in education. Which is important. I wish it had been more pleasant, and I truly did not enjoy the experience. But for all its awfulness, I couldn't say it wasn't useful.
As far as the "career teachers vs. those who have worked in "the real world" before teaching, I find that I have a unique perspective, because I studied education at the collegiate level and was certified concurrent to completing my bachelor of arts in English. But I opted NOT to teach, at that time, and instead spent the next ten years working in other fields, before returning to education. So I have both the formal training of a teacher and the so-called "real world" experience. IMO, however, working in a school is no less "real world" then when I worked in nonprofit human services, or when I worked in journalism, or when I worked in poverty law. Every field is its own little bubble.
It isn't so much what other teachers think but what decision-makers who hire think. There are lots of principals who are biased against teachers who did alternate certification...it makes it more tough for teachers who take this route to land jobs.
I never knew principals who were biased against alternative ed certified teachers. In fact most wanted them. There is a difference between hiring a teacher who HAS alternative certification and one who is WORKING ON. The alternative ed certified candidate has a BS and Masters if coming from a quality program. They have their undergrad in content and their grad in education. They have completed their in building experience. What is there not to like about them over a first year teacher who has completed their in building experience and doesn't have a Masters? There needs to be specifics about the program and the stage the candidate is in to evaluate how people will respond to hiring them. People coming in from private industry want to be hired prior to completing the program. That is not always easy to do. However once you have completed the program at the right school and content area you can be highly sought out after. Now if you can't get accepted into a quality program or can't afford.........
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what do you all think of people who are taking the alternative certification route to become a teacher? Some who do this are recent college grads who decide to teach after college and others are career changers who decide to teach.
