[NLA] Certification, etc. (long)

[Maria Elena Gonzalez]

Like Andrea, I hesitate to enter into the fray here but I feel I must for a
couple of reasons.

1)the trashing of K-12 teachers - ok, maybe that wasn't the intent and it
only came from a few people who obviously have had dismal experiences in
Texas and Georgia.  However, based on my own experience with public
education when I was young and my current experience with my son who just
finished 1st grade, I don't think certification and state approval are
solely responsible for cases of bad vs. good teachers.  In his short tenure
in public schools, (since K-1), my son has had his direct brushes and
near-brushes (teachers of the same grade in another classroom) with some bad
teachers who never should have become teachers in the first place.   In the
case of those individuals, it's never been just one thing - in one case it
was someone just waiting to fulfill retirement requirements, in another it
was lack of preparation in language teaching, and so on.  This year, he's
had a wonderful young woman who is one of the most gifted educators I have
ever met.  She had solid pedagogical skills and was involved in continual
learning herself through various programs that the school itself is involved
in.  Most of all, she is as they say "a natural."  But not all of us are
"natural" - some of us have solid skills but need to improve our way of
imparting them, or need to upgrade them to keep up with increased knowledge
in a particular area.  I don't believe (and maybe that's why I'm in
professional development) that knowing how to teach is innate (perhaps in
some people it is) but that in most cases it is learned.  That should be the
general intent of certification and dare I say it on this list, standards
for teachers.  As I have just mentioned, they are far from being foolproof,
but they are needed at the very least as benchmarks.

2)professionalism of our field - several times on this list there have been
discussions that centered on how devalued the ABE field is as a profession.
Some people have mentioned those instances in which some state DOE's  try to
run programs strictly by volunteer tutors (I'm not devaluing their
contribution by any measure), their assumption being that basic skills can
be taught by anyone who possess them.  We in the adult ESOL/literacy field
know that it takes a lot more to be a successful  ESOL adult/lit teacher and
have spent many hours and our own money to learn and develop those skills.
The devaluing of our work is also reflected on how much we get paid and the
availability of sustainable employment in this field.  So there are a lot of
forces that either through ignorance or design are against the
legitimization of our profession.  For me, that has been the impetus for
working towards an adult ed certification in Mass.  I think that it has
tried to come up with "standards" that reflect what we know work in our
field.  That doesn't mean that I'm totally happy or comfortable with what we
have in place right now.  For example, the hours that an experienced teacher
has to have in order to gain certification is very high because it's based
on contact hours. This in turn is a K-12 model that assumes full time
employment with a classroom for at least 6 hrs. a day.   And there are many
pieces of the process that are still not in place so we don't know whether
they will work or not, but I believe it's a start.

I'm interested to hear other state's experiences with adult education
certification and whether it has in some measure, no matter how small,
increased the quality of the teachers who walk in the door and/or the
working conditions in the field.

Best,
Maria E. Gonzalez
SABES Coordinator
Adult Literacy Resource Institute/Boston
SABES Regional Center
617-782-8956, X15
617-782-9011 (fax)

---- Original Message -----
From: <Awilderast at aol.com>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2002 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: [NLA] Certification, state-approval, and the AELS


> All:
>
> I truly hesitate to enter this fray, but here goes.  This is my own
> experience and observation.
>
> 1)  I taught for 10 years in a private school without certification, it
> wasn't required.
>
> 2)  Then I got a master's in LD, also a certificate, this enabled me to
teach
> in public schools and to teach in other states. I ended up in a
> Pakistan/American public school among other more local spots.
>
> 3)  After my doctorate I worked as a consultant to a principal in a middle
> school, and picked up a principal's certificate, too.
>
> 4)  Then I worked with over school age adolescents in court remand (I
think
> that's the term), then to adult literacy.
>
> Conclusions:
>
> 1)  In MA there is a fair amount of coordination between requirements and
> what might actually be useful in the classroom.
>
> 2)  I was never impeded in any way by my ed courses and internships, they
> helped me to my next positions.
>
> 3)  My core experience came from my first position at the private school,
> that taught me what was possible without certification.
>
> 4)  Now, that school is an official training site, state recognized, for
> teacher training and certification.  It accepts applicants for its teacher
> training course based on having a liberal arts degree and experience in
the
> field.
>
> 5)  I think state certification is a good idea because it puts a floor
under
> applicants.  It never hamstrung me from trying out what seemed best, so I
> would knock that argument out of the ring.
>
> 6)  BUT there is Nancy with her volunteers, who she trains before they
begin
> teaching, I assume they don't have certificates and wouldn't volunteer if
> certificates were required.
>
> 7)  There may not be "one best way," there may be multiple ways.  My route
> was pragmatic, but I did learn a lot, and it opened up doors.
>
> 8)  Education in this country has always been a public/private mix and it
> certainly is today.  This makes it messy.
>
> 9)  If I wanted to give a billion dollars to adult education, I would find
> the best programs--most organized, goal directed, clear outcomes, and I
would
> expand them.  I would also use some of those teachers/administrators to
carry
> the news to other programs, or invite other teacher/adminstrators to serve
> apprenticeships and internships at the first batch of schools. Then I
would
> focus on a couple of experimental schools that were struggling but looked
> promising.  Because I've only got a billion, I would figure out how to
make
> the programs self-supporting after I left the scene via links to local,
stte
> and fed authorities.  Because I know that women in our country are under
> appreciated and underpaid, I would insist (it's my billion) that equity
and
> its realization be central to literacy programs.
>
> This scenario comes from my own experiential learning, there are probably
> other schemes that arise from the experiences of others.  Different
> experiences, different viewpoints.
>
> Andrea
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