become a certified teacher

I quit my corporate job August 12, 2005 and decided to substitute teach until I “figured out what i wanted to do next”. I got an assignment two months later as a long-term sub for a 7th grade language arts class and ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! I ended up being the sub for the rest of the school year, realized I’d been running from teaching, and applied to the teacher certification program at Sacred Heart University. I’m now in my third long-term assignment (10th grade English) and three classes from my certification. I applied for DSAP (a way to get provisional certification) and hope to be approved soon. Though I make considerably less money, quitting my job back in 2005 was the best thing I could’ve done. I’m so happy and proud to be a teacher!

So I have survived my first week at vic uni and only got lost a few times lol!

I am now a week closer to achiving my goal of being a teacher

This is important for me to do

Its finally gone be the last year of university!! yeah!

It finally came.

My understanding is that this will take a few weeks.

All that’s left now is finish filling out the darn forms and waiting for the state to get back to me.

I teach teenagers (have taught ages 14-19) in a facility in New York for students with emotional/behavioral disorders who have been removed from public school due to violent behaviors or other problems in school or community. I love it and couldn’t really see myself doing many other careers (maybe a corrections officer or a counselor, postman, veterinarian, or small business owner). However, I think people with certain personalities make the best teachers at least for the population I work with. I’ve seen a high turnover rate for staff at our facility, making me one of the veteran employees at only 4.5 years of teaching there! The biggest thing is patience!!

I’m a patient, intelligent, structured/strict, fun-loving person with a good view on my government (respect for laws, regulations, and doing your part in the community). It’s important to have rules and to stick to them… no exceptions! Have a system of natural rewards and consequences and when you are consistent with it kids will buy into it and know what type of behavior is expected of them. I say respect of government and community because many teenagers are still deciding what type of person they’d like to be and it would be easy for a teacher to shape their mind. There have been many stories lately of teachers saying hateful things towards the US government and I would encourage parents to have their children tape record their teachers saying these things so the appropriate lawsuits can be filed. Those teachers are misusing their power and should have a consequence for that! Teaching is not about trying to trick kids into your beliefs… it’s about presenting them as unbiased picture of the world as possible and letting them decide for themselves! I get so upset when I hear stories about teachers abusing their power in that way, abusing their students, etc. It gives us a bad rep!

The main goal of teaching whether you’re a primary or secondary educator should be to produce functional, well-rounded, law-abiding members of society who can read, write, spell, perform basic mathematics, and have a strong desire to be a contributing member of this country by obtaining work. And come on people it’s not rocket science to teach this stuff and it needs to start at a YOUNG age. It sometimes seems like it’s almost too late by the time I get a kid at age 15… removed from public school in the middle of the year due to a LONG history of major problems in school and community. Now, he comes to my facility as a consequence and for me to “fix” him and it’s near impossibly as he’s GIVEN UP ALL HOPE and has pretty much formed a negative self-image and has very low-self esteem. Of course that’s not all the public schools fault, they might be to blame for ignoring little problems and letting it grow to an uncontrollable monster of problems, but it’s the PARENTS and the kids home environment that are very much to blame in some cases at least!

Obviously, I think it’s extremely important to teach social skills and humane education to instill compassion, empathy, and a basic mindset of following rules and doing your best to respect others and not harm them in any way. That, along with anger-management, is actually a big part of my curriculum being the types of kids I teach.

Anyhow, that’s just what I think :-)

And I am starting to apply for jobs for next year.

On Thursday my school’s certification officer came to our class and went over the forms we have to fill out for certification. I will be so happy when I hear that I have my initial certification!

I did this and when I finished and finally landed a job after a rough (and competitive) job search, the job was almost impossible to do. I loved the kids but the demands of the job had 99% to do with the administration/politics/busywork and 1% had to do with actually teaching kids and improving their lives. The reason it was still worth it, is that I’ve used my teaching background to launch myself into the field of behavioral consultation.