The cost of certification

I met with someone at a local college that offers a certification-only program in addition to it's certification/degree combo. (I'd love to go back to school and get another degree, but there's the small matter of feeding my family to consider.)

The cost of the classes is roughly $15,000. That's about $15,000 I'll have to shell out for the privilege of taking a massive reduction in my current salary. And it gets worse: a portion of those courses is called "student teaching" during which I'll not only pay my tuition, but I'll also have to teach full time for 10 weeks without drawing a paycheck. That's right - somehow the rules say I have to pay to work full time. This is after I've already spent a semester as a full-time student taking the necessary classes, and during which I assume I'll have an equally difficult time generating income. This is basically the same deal offered by the other local college I visited, except their tuition to cover the certification-only option came close to $30,000, total. Although, to be fair, their class schedule was a bit more flexible (night classes) which would allow me to work while I took classes. But they were also careful to point out that holding another job while I performed the student teaching was strictly forbidden.

I asked my host how other people pay for this program and have enough money to live at the same time. She said many of them take out student loans and get other jobs to make ends meet.

I understand the need to qualify teachers, but this requirement seems like it does more to turn people away from teaching in the first place.

Alternative Certification - a touchy subject?

Private and charter schools do not require teachers to be certified, but as I was told by the principal at a nearby charter school: all other things being equal, he is more likely to hire the certified teacher since he knows that teacher will at least have some baseline familiarity with classroom management and the teaching task. He also said he encourages those teachers who aren't certified to get certified at some point. So I guess I should get the certification out of the way before I start, if I have the luxury to do so.

Not knowing any better, I simply chose the closest state University which I thought had a large education department, went to their website and sent an email to the contact listed for the certification program. The email exchange surprised me:

My original letter:

Dr X,

My wife and I are relocating to Illinois and I plan to pursue a career in teaching - high school physics, to be exact.

I obtained my MS in physics in 1998 and spent the last 12 years in industry, so I need a teaching certificate and I'm exploring my options. Starting my search at XXX seems a logical choice but I notice on your website that XXX doesn't offer alternative certification, and I'm under the impression that alternative certification is the most appropriate route for someone like me.

Do you have any suggestions on the best path to certification for someone in my situation?

Thanks very much and best regards,
Ben Cain

The response:

Alternative certification programs have proven themselves very poor at preparing teachers who survive in the classroom. Also, in the current climate of an tremendous over supply of qualified teachers, districts are not hiring such individuals. If you wish an alternative certification program there are still some universities that will provide one,if you pay the extra amounts required. They will not guarantee you any placement for student teaching etc.

X

No suggestions on how to move forward; no plug for his own program; no appeal to me to visit his school and spend my tuition dollars there. Nothing at all but apparent derision for alternative certification programs, devoid of references to substantiate his numerous negative assertions.

Whatever his stream of negativity might imply, I'm certainly inclined to avoid doing any more research into his program. I'll just move on.

Also interesting is his assertion that there is a "tremendous over supply of qualified teachers." If he's right, this doesn't bode well for me! However, it goes against what I'm hearing from just about everyone else in teaching.

Culture shock

While driving towards Chicago, I tuned in to a radio talk show in which Karen Lewis, the new President of the Chicago Teacher's Union, was answering questions from listeners on the topic of tenure, among other things.

I've always been under the vague impression that tenure means it's somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to fire a teacher that has it. And apparently some callers thought the same thing - someone called in with a complaint that her school can't get rid of "bad" teachers. Karen Lewis' answer to that was that tenure does not guarantee a teacher a job, but rather it guarantees a teacher the right to "due process" when being considered for termination. There wasn't much more explanation of the nature of tenure, about which I'm curious.

I suppose if I take a cynical view, I would expect the "due process" to which she referred to be defined in such a way that makes it practically impossible to fire a teacher. I don't know for sure, so I'm happy to defer that assessment. But even if I take a more benign view of "due process", I suppose I'm uncomfortable with the idea that teachers who are not tenured don't have access to "due process".

In industry, your qualifications are vetted through the interview process and then, if things go well, you're hired. Then your competence is vetted through job performance. If you do well, you flourish; if you don't do well, you're let go. The process is pretty much the same for everyone, whether they've been on the job for ten days or ten years. If the company leadership is strong, then this model seems to work pretty well.

I wonder why the same model shouldn't be applied to the teaching profession.

"We start, then, with nothing..."

Well, I've done it. For good or ill I've taken the first (rather large) step and relocated my family from the San Francisco Bay area to the suburbs of Chicago, where I grew up.

I'm in the rather luxurious position of working remotely for my current employer while I prepare for a career change. Continuity of employment and benefits eliminates a great source of stress for anyone uprooting a family, and I will always be grateful to my employer for the boost.

My plan is to work in my current position for the next year while also preparing to teach starting in the fall of 2011. I expect that I'll have to do two major things (and many minor things, of course): First, I'll have to figure out how to get certified. There are different paths to certification in Illinois, some conventional, some alternative. And I'll need to choose one that fits my plans. More on that as I discover new things about the process. Second, the part of my brain that once regularly solved physics problems has fallen into some disrepair and is in need of rehabilitation. I'll have to find an intellectual gym, too. And then there are the matters of finding a home, getting my kids into school, convincing my wife (a native Texan) not to leave me when the Chicago winter sets in...

In spite of these hurdles, it's difficult for me to express how excited I am about the prospect of my new career. I want so badly to begin that it's difficult to focus on all the other things I must do to make a living in the meantime - they seem so trivial in comparison.

It's an amazing and wonderful thing to find ones purpose.

In the beginning...

"Happiness is the exercise of vital powers, along the lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope."
                                                                                                      -Aristotle

My name is Ben Cain and this blog is a chronicle of my journey away from a career in high-tech and towards the classroom. I've decided that my energy and time would be much better spent teaching high school physics than working at a career in industry, and I want to document it just in case it turns out to be interesting or useful to anyone.

I obtained my M.S. in Physics from Texas A&M University in 1998 and I've used that education in my career in the semiconductor industry for more than 10 years. It's been interesting, challenging and rewarding, but I'm ready for a change.

Teaching high school physics is something I wanted to do both as an undergraduate and also into graduate school. Physics because I love the subject, and high school because that's the point at which most people are first introduced to the formal study of the subject. And that first introduction is where some all-important foundations are laid: we obviously get the foundation for understanding and studying the subject of physics, but with that we also get a strong foundation for general problem solving in so many different fields. It is necessary in physics to learn to identify the essential components of a problem and use them to learn something about whatever it is you're trying to study. So even if it's sometimes difficult to tell a student about the direct benefits to him of being able to calculate the force of friction on a block sliding down an inclined plane, I can always point to the benefits of training one's mind to solve a wide range of general problems (or at least invoke the helplessness of those who can not solve problems), which is essentially what the high school physicist does. Life is full of problems, and the better equipped you are to solve them, the better off you're going to be. This is something I've observed over and over again.

For the past year I've been preparing for this jump and we're now in the process of moving and getting ready for the change. I can hardly wait...