The California Teacher Certification of a Teach for America Corps Member

A Teach for America Corps member tells the story of her ongoing certification work.

---

As a first year teacher who was charged with teaching English Language Arts young minds straight after a degree in journalism and political science, I am tremendously thankful to Teach For America for guiding me along every hurdle. I was told when and where to take:

1. the four CSET exams—in May right after graduation; bad idea to take them all in the same sitting but TFA sent me a test prep book and provided a bus for all of us first-year corps members,
2. the CBEST—in June, leaving me in amazement that a person gets the okay to teach after clearing this test,
3. and the Teaching Foundations Exam—in August, right after five weeks of summer institute in Watts. This test involved driving for two hours in the early morning from Long Beach to a place called San Bernardino, but institute prepared us well for this test, and evidently it saved us from a slew of pedagogy classes, a strategy I quickly adopted—clear any test that will get me out of taking more of those classes.

After clearing these tests, I enrolled in classes to obtain my preliminary teaching credential. This process entailed attending three-hour long biweekly, and later monthly, sessions with a group of teachers who taught various subjects and classes. I dutifully made the trip after ten hours of teaching, but I was not a good student nor an active participant, and I used all my excused absences. At the same time, I never felt particularly guilty, because the whole program was run by a small, unknown university and tailored to fit the needs of TFA folks. It was a slight discomfort to type out 25-30 pages of Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) reports three times over the year, but I learned that I earned the same grade regardless of the effort I put in, so I went a few notches higher on my level of apathy. I also passed a technology test (yes, it allowed me to skip a whole semester of technology class) for which I was shockingly unprepared, but I managed with the help of Google and my memory that dug out nuggets of information from an 8^th grade computer class.

In the end, the whole ordeal was not that harrowing. I received my credential, my Americorps reward from TFA covered the entire tuition, and I met some admirable educators. The most useful aspect of the program was being assigned a field supervisor, a mentor of sorts, who observed and visited me every two weeks. From what I hear, this assignment is a matter of luck, and I got excessively lucky with mine, who was kind, knowledgeable and supportive. Even the educators who ran our seminars and workshops are truly good teachers, but the entire program is set up in a way that makes every task just another step in going through the motions.

California Teacher Certfication Story - Earning a Credential While Teaching

A California teacher describes his time in teacher training classes...

During my first year of teaching, I found a way to teach and receive my credential at the same time. I enrolled in a preliminary credential program which required a weekly meeting of 3 hours each. During class, I would have to sit through stories of teachers frustrated with their schools, colleagues, and even students. I doubt most of those new teachers had the desired passion and dreams to teach because they obviously didn’t know what they had gotten themselves into. So I would go to class with student work to grade and lessons to plan. At the end of each semester, I was required to do two teaching performance assessments (TPA), which were supposedly used to determine whether I knew how to modify my curriculum and teach ELLs and special-needs students. I usually start my TPAs the night before they’re due and it took me about 2-3 hours to fill out 20 pages of nonsense.

After I received my preliminary credential, I was told that it was not renewable and I had 5 years to complete a two-year induction program to clear it. So in my third year of teaching, I am in an induction program where I have to meet with a group for 3 hours once a month, meet with my coach twice a month, and turn in homework assignments to show my growth as a teacher. None of it is much different from the preliminary program, except I’m only required to attend class once a month instead of once a week. Next year, I will be teaching AP Calculus and hopefully be able to clear my credential and be done with it all. The only problem is that I doubt my mentor will be able to do much to help me prepare my students for their AP exams. I’m sure it won’t be so different from the last two years.