(no subject)
So I need to vent and I don't know where/how else to do it.
As everyone knows, I am majoring in Social Studies Education at UGA. I've been in that major for a year now. When I was accepted into the major, I met with my adviser, who laid out everything I could expect. All Social Studies Ed. majors have an area of specialization within the major. Most choose History; I chose Geography. I told my adviser my real dream was to teach high school economics. She looked at my transcript and said that specializing in econ would take me another year.
It didn't matter what I specialized in then.
After taking your specialization courses, and before graduating, every student must take and pass the PRAXIS II exam in Social Studies. In Georgia, this would earn you what's called a "broad-field" certification, meaning that you were then qualified to teach ALL areas of Social Studies. Someone who took history classes would be able to teach history, or economics, or geography, or political science. This is why I want to teach economics but am specializing in Geography. My specialization was irrelevant, because I could still teach whatever I wanted.
It matters now.
Without anyone in the College of Education telling me, without so much as an e-mail, Georgia has changed its certification process in a way that leaves me, frankly, terrified. At the end of the summer, I looked up the website for certification in Georgia, just to see when the tests are offered. I was greeted on the home page by a link that says: "Social Science (6-12) Teachers: Important Certification Changes."
I clicked. I almost wish I hadn't.
Over the summer, Georgia changed the whole way it certifies Social Studies teachers. The PRAXIS test is no more, now Georgia uses its own tests, created specifically to be in line with the new set of "performance standards" that spell out what students are expected to know and when. The broad-field certification I had been counting on? GONE. It's been replaced by a series of tests, one for each subject. Which means that, if I want to get the new equivalent of the old certification, I now need to take at least four tests, instead of two.
What's worse is that the tests are more difficult. I had been banking on my rather high skills in economics, geography, and political science to boost my PRAXIS scores, as I am flat-out terrible with history. I have no desire to teach history whatsoever. I'm terrible at it. I would be thrilled to teach what some consider the "lesser" subjects.
The problem is this: Georgia changed the rules, but hasn't yet changed the teacher education programs. This leaves me "caught in the switches" and out in the cold. I will not receive any type of remedial instruction in the subjects I'm NOT specializing in. If I want to receive certifications in these other subjects, I am on my own to learn the material, study, and pass the tests.
Not only that, but the program at UGA is actually going to hurt me. Although I'm going with geography, which is far less popular than history as a specialization, I am still required, as are all Social Studies students, to take a "Teaching History" course. Note that there is no equal course for anything else, no "Teaching Economics" or "Teaching" anything else. So I'm going to have to waste my time taking a course to teach something I don't even want to teach?
Maybe not. I know that if I only get certified in Economics and Geography I will be less attractive as a teacher than someone who has more certifications, regardless of whether or not I would use those certifications. So I may end up having to take all the tests after all, just to get my first teaching job.
Lost yet?
I'm infuriated for two reasons: First, the silence coming from the College of Education on this issue is deafening. I found out about all these changes literally by accident. Though the program was announced in May, the last PRAXIS was in August, and the first new test is in October, I have not received my first e-mail from the Social Studies program. Students in the major are now discussing the whole affair on, of all places, Facebook, where I have exchanged numerous messages with other students in the program. I'm angry that I'm not being told any of this. If I find all this out on my own, what do I need an advisor for? Where's the "advice?"
Second, the state could have made this change in certification requirements effective for new students entering the program, and phased the PRAXIS out over the next year or two as students advance through the program and then graduate. We students could have been given some option. Instead, I feel like the state has pulled the rug out from under me. This underhanded changing of the certification requirements and the application of them to students currently in the program is simliar, to me, to changing the rules of a baseball game at the bottom of the 6th inning. Inherently unfair to those currently playing.
I feel like printing this out and sending it to someone, but I don't know who. Georgia's great education bureaucracy is such that nobody is responsible for anything. My Education department is responsible for not giving me any heads-up on the changes, but they have nothing to do with the tests. The Georgia Professional Standards Commission made the test changes, but had no way of knowing I was about to take the PRAXIS. They couldn't have notified me. There's no name on any of the decisions to change the policies, so no love there.
And so I sit here, alternating between anger that this has happened and fear that I'll never get a teaching job.
Thanks, Georgia.
As everyone knows, I am majoring in Social Studies Education at UGA. I've been in that major for a year now. When I was accepted into the major, I met with my adviser, who laid out everything I could expect. All Social Studies Ed. majors have an area of specialization within the major. Most choose History; I chose Geography. I told my adviser my real dream was to teach high school economics. She looked at my transcript and said that specializing in econ would take me another year.
It didn't matter what I specialized in then.
After taking your specialization courses, and before graduating, every student must take and pass the PRAXIS II exam in Social Studies. In Georgia, this would earn you what's called a "broad-field" certification, meaning that you were then qualified to teach ALL areas of Social Studies. Someone who took history classes would be able to teach history, or economics, or geography, or political science. This is why I want to teach economics but am specializing in Geography. My specialization was irrelevant, because I could still teach whatever I wanted.
It matters now.
Without anyone in the College of Education telling me, without so much as an e-mail, Georgia has changed its certification process in a way that leaves me, frankly, terrified. At the end of the summer, I looked up the website for certification in Georgia, just to see when the tests are offered. I was greeted on the home page by a link that says: "Social Science (6-12) Teachers: Important Certification Changes."
I clicked. I almost wish I hadn't.
Over the summer, Georgia changed the whole way it certifies Social Studies teachers. The PRAXIS test is no more, now Georgia uses its own tests, created specifically to be in line with the new set of "performance standards" that spell out what students are expected to know and when. The broad-field certification I had been counting on? GONE. It's been replaced by a series of tests, one for each subject. Which means that, if I want to get the new equivalent of the old certification, I now need to take at least four tests, instead of two.
What's worse is that the tests are more difficult. I had been banking on my rather high skills in economics, geography, and political science to boost my PRAXIS scores, as I am flat-out terrible with history. I have no desire to teach history whatsoever. I'm terrible at it. I would be thrilled to teach what some consider the "lesser" subjects.
The problem is this: Georgia changed the rules, but hasn't yet changed the teacher education programs. This leaves me "caught in the switches" and out in the cold. I will not receive any type of remedial instruction in the subjects I'm NOT specializing in. If I want to receive certifications in these other subjects, I am on my own to learn the material, study, and pass the tests.
Not only that, but the program at UGA is actually going to hurt me. Although I'm going with geography, which is far less popular than history as a specialization, I am still required, as are all Social Studies students, to take a "Teaching History" course. Note that there is no equal course for anything else, no "Teaching Economics" or "Teaching" anything else. So I'm going to have to waste my time taking a course to teach something I don't even want to teach?
Maybe not. I know that if I only get certified in Economics and Geography I will be less attractive as a teacher than someone who has more certifications, regardless of whether or not I would use those certifications. So I may end up having to take all the tests after all, just to get my first teaching job.
Lost yet?
I'm infuriated for two reasons: First, the silence coming from the College of Education on this issue is deafening. I found out about all these changes literally by accident. Though the program was announced in May, the last PRAXIS was in August, and the first new test is in October, I have not received my first e-mail from the Social Studies program. Students in the major are now discussing the whole affair on, of all places, Facebook, where I have exchanged numerous messages with other students in the program. I'm angry that I'm not being told any of this. If I find all this out on my own, what do I need an advisor for? Where's the "advice?"
Second, the state could have made this change in certification requirements effective for new students entering the program, and phased the PRAXIS out over the next year or two as students advance through the program and then graduate. We students could have been given some option. Instead, I feel like the state has pulled the rug out from under me. This underhanded changing of the certification requirements and the application of them to students currently in the program is simliar, to me, to changing the rules of a baseball game at the bottom of the 6th inning. Inherently unfair to those currently playing.
I feel like printing this out and sending it to someone, but I don't know who. Georgia's great education bureaucracy is such that nobody is responsible for anything. My Education department is responsible for not giving me any heads-up on the changes, but they have nothing to do with the tests. The Georgia Professional Standards Commission made the test changes, but had no way of knowing I was about to take the PRAXIS. They couldn't have notified me. There's no name on any of the decisions to change the policies, so no love there.
And so I sit here, alternating between anger that this has happened and fear that I'll never get a teaching job.
Thanks, Georgia.