[NLA] Certification, etc. (long)

Thu Jun 27 20:14:43 EDT 2002

Maria,
You make some excellent points, however; .......
Since I appear to be the only one from GA here I must assume you were
referencing my posts.

My personal experiences with the local school system are not 'dismal', but let
me assure you that there are many children your son's age who are very
definitely having dismal experiences in local school systems all over the nation
that will affect them seriously for the remainder of their school history.  "In
his short tenure ....with some 'bad' teachers who never ....."  Already ???
hmmmm , sounds like there may be more in there than you are personally aware
of.  ??
Your situation is different in the sense that you may be able to help your son
cope with the negativity of those situations.  Rest assured that you and your
son are in a small minority, many folks are simply at the mercy of the schools
and the resident administrator/board.  They 1) don't know 'how' to teach the
child to cope 2) most parents of young children are intimidated by the facade of
'professionalism' that stalemates them at the door and 3) "accreditation" is a
false front.

"Certification" is a lot like the situation where my wife took the car to the
"dealer" for maintenance on the brakes.  The "professionally trained and
accredited" technician took the brakes apart, put them back together and after a
full day's work on the car, assured my wife that they were indeed 'repaired'.
Now because the car still doesn't stop appropriately (the original problem is
still there), we must assume that the problem is 1) the driver's unreasonable
expectations or 2) the car is simply faulty and there's nothing to be done
except 3) assign it to the "special area" (junk yard).

Good teachers are not 'born', they have to be grown into the position.  Simply
sitting in an auditorium listening to people talk about their experiences, or
taking a multiple choice test, does not provide the "understanding" of human
nature that EVERY one of our primary school teachers must have IF we are to make
a difference in our product.

Think on this Maria.  By the time your son gets to the 12th grade, based on
today's educational industry standards, over 45% of his classmates will be
unable to pass the GED.  Now go back to the "certification" paragraph above and
tell me whose problem that is.

art

Art LaChance
Gilmer Learning Center
Ellijay, GA

Maria Elena Gonzalez wrote:

> 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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