What do teachers do during the summer? Would you believe it: they go to school! Well, a lot of them, anyway. And now is about the time each year that much of it gets plan
It's that time again: pre-registration. Teachers go to school, too. There are a certain number of required hours of "professional development" or continuing education that a teacher has to have each year. It varies from state to state. Marshall University let current students (like me) sign up for classes this week for the summer. And I did...
It looks to be a busy summer. At the moment I'm registered for two separate special education courses for the summer - one in the field of learning disabilities and one on emotional disturbances. One of these classes meets over three weekends in a row in July (Friday from 5pm to 10pm, Saturday from 8am to 5pm), the other meets every Monday from 5pm to 9 pm starting in May (before school actually lets out for the summer) and going until just before school starts again in August. Probably I will end up using those classes toward a second master's degree (everybody needs a second master's degree, don't they); definitely they will count toward some additional certifications for me.
If you look closely you'll find that my left nostril is bigger than the right. Marshall University is the most relevant, convenient place for me to do graduate work. But because I live in Virginia and Marshall is in West (by God) Virginia, I pay through the nose. (Really, there's a guy in the accounting office there that sticks his right forearm up my left nostril all the way to his elbow and pulls out about $2 grand for each class I take.)
The path to job security in education these days is found in accumulating certifications one on top of another. My current license lets me work with kids that are mildly mentally impaired, have learning disabled students, or are emotionally disturbed (behavior disorders). Probably the day will come when I add a certification in autism.
There are also opportunities to attending workshops and trainings that pay me to go. My county wants me to attend something they call a reading academy. The plan is to spend five days there this summer - one day on dyslexia, one day on grading policy, one day on differentiated instruction, and two days on how to collaborate with other teachers. For that workshop I can sleep in my own bed each night. But they also want me to go to a week-long math workshop that's three hours one way from my house - and that means living in a Comfort Inn for a week...
Now, I've saved the best part for last. I'm not highly qualified. Probably the majority of special education teachers are not (technically speaking) highly qualified any more because No Child Left Behind says that it doesn't matter how much you know about learning disabilities, if you teach a kid math, you have to (basically) be certified to teach kids math. I'm not certified in elementary education, per se. My county is offering to help pay for classes that will certify teachers in math or science, and so to get highly qualified in a content area, I'm starting the math program this summer, too.
So let's see, that's:
- a graduate class on learning disabilities
- a graduate class on emotional disturbances
- a week at the reading academy
- a week of math training
- and a refresher course in college algebra before I get shipped off to be tortured in things like advanced quadratic equations seminars and the Tao of Trigonometry later in the year.
Hopefully in a few years President Mark Warner (maybe it will be Bill Richardson or John Edwards) will save us from the idiotic notion that the current president calls "highly qualified" and wants to impose...
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