I signed my contract last Wednesday. I went to the district administrative offices and spent two and a half hours signing my name, writing my social security number, and writing the date. Tedious, to say the least. Although my contract was part of what I signed, I also had to deal with all of the health benefit packages, retirement plans, etc. that the district offers. They actually offer quite a nice benefits package, and for the first time in my life, I’m actually going to participate in all the retirement plans that my employer offers. As we stand now, the Hubby and I have no retirement other than what we’ve had deducted in Social Security taxes. Beginning in August, I will no longer work in a job that participates in Social Security, and there’s a very good chance that I never will again. Regardless, Social Security is not enough to retire on. Even the pension plan that the district offers in lieu of Social Security won’t be enough for retirement. And, strangely enough, the Hubby’s job doesn’t offer retirement to their truck drivers. I guess they don’t expect any of their drivers to work there long enough to get to that point. So, until he is able to change jobs and work for someone who does offer retirement, I need to be taking advantage of everything my district offers.
I’ve personally been on edge this past month, waiting for the contract signing to happen. Apparently, everything else having to do with teacher certification was waiting, as well. One of the papers I had to sign, initial, and date was a checklist of things the district needs me to do as a new professional employee. About half of them were details handled during the paper-signing extravaganza, such as signing the Social Security statement and completing a W-4. The other half were tasks dealing specifically with my certification.
I’ve done a lot towards getting completely certified to teach. What I’ve done so far has barely touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of everything that needs to be done. What I’ve finished to this point was everything that could be done prior to signing a contract with a school district. Now that that contract has been signed… I spent Thursday on the phone and on the internet, getting the ball rolling on the next phase of my certification.
I need to submit a copy of my probationary teaching certificate to the district. In order to get my probationary certificate, I have to apply for it through SBEC. Part of applying for my probationary certificate, I have request a fingerprinting kit (also from SBEC). Requesting this “kit” does not mean that an ink pad and paper are sent to my home. It means that I am provided a list of approved fingerprinting labs so that I can contact the one closest to me and set an appointment with them to come in and be fingerprinted. The cost of applying for the probationary certificate was over fifty dollars. The cost of requesting a fingerprinting kit was around forty-five dollars. The cost for the appointment at the fingerprinting lab was around ten dollars. Apparently, the state has no conception of what “poor college student” means!
Once I’ve applied for my probationary certificate, SBEC sends the application to my alt. cert. program. The program then checks to see if I’ve submitted three forms (something else I had to do on Thursday: find a fax machine so I could submit those forms), and if I have they will send their okay for me to receive said probationary certificate. But I’m still not done.
In July, I have fourteen training sessions I must attend – two per day – in order for my alternative certification program to approve me to take the second of my certification tests. (I took the first one – my content exam – during my last semester of college before I could forget everything.) This second exam is called the PPR, which stands for Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities. Before my alt. cert. program approves me to take this test, I must complete all fourteen training sessions, and pass their on-line “practice” PPR, which is infinitely harder than the actual test. But I’m still not done.
Once I’ve passed the PPR, I can then apply for my standard teaching certificate and submit both my passing PPR scores and a copy of the standard certificate to my district. These things must be done before December 30th this year. In other words, I have to finish my certification and exams before first semester is done. Throughout the school year, I am required, both by the state and my alt. cert. program, to complete professional development hours. I can’t remember how many hours per school year the state wants me to complete, but the alt. cert. program requires that I complete fifty before the end of my first year of teaching. In addition to the professional development hours, I also have to complete a certain number of observations of other teachers, as well as have other people observe me a certain number of times. The professional development hours and observation hours must be distributed throughout both semesters of the school year.
And then, maybe, I’ll be done.
And then, I’ll start graduate school! Yay!
This flurry of activity and paperwork just showed me how starved I am for purposeful activity and goals. I need something useful to do. I was hoping to get a copy of the teacher’s manual before the end of the school year, just to give me an idea of what kinds of lessons I should be prepared for, but I never got a response from my assistant principal. I also asked for a copy of the district’s Scope & Sequence, which is a detailed outline of what each grade/subject covers and in what order for an individual district. I wasn’t able to get that, either. I’m wondering if I would be able to find the S&S on the district website, and failing that, check the department of educaton’s website to get their list of what is supposed to be taught per grade and subject. I feel a need to get some kind of general lesson plans together. Very general, since I don’t know what order my district goes in nor how long they spend on each topic. But at least I’d be able to research the different skills and topics to find some fun things to do with those lessons. Developing specific lesson plans that stem from the textbook and worksheets will be super simple and fast. What I wanted to do over the summer was find some other activities that were still applicable to the subject, but that would change the routine a bit and keep things from becoming boring and stale. Fun worksheets, puzzles, games, research and art projects, even books or poetry I could share with my classes.
Of course, to do this requirest that I get my lazy bones out of bed before noon, and into bed before 4am, so that I actually have the energy to spend a few hours on my computer. I’m working on that.
(Edit: Apparently I wrote this entry, saved it as a draft, but never published it. So, here it is. Belated, but there.)
