Univ prof, want to teach secondary level. Please help

[TonyM]

I would appreciate any help. Unlike many university professors, I'm much more passionate about teaching than research. I've always taught at small universities where teaching was emphasized. But now I want to transition to Germany, and I'm having trouble figuring out how.

Here is my situation:
• I have over 12 years teaching experience at the university level in math and science
• PhD in biological chemistry, BS in physics and mathematics/computer science (double major)
• But, I have NOT taught below the university level
• I want to teach in Germany, at the secondary school level, (but I'd consider university level)

The problem:
I'm running into problems regarding whether I'm qualified to teach at the secondary level. Some private schools there seem to have accepted my application, but others have rejected since I don't have "certification". One place I'm trying is DoDEA (dept of defense educational activities). I've emailed the contact people, and I've called the DoDEA recruitment unit, and sent more emails. No response. See below "Problem Example" for the note I got when trying to finish my DoDEA application.

My Questions:
1) If I take the Praxis tests I will be qualified to teach secondary school? at least for DoDEA?
2) What are the correct Praxis tests for me to take? I think its (A) and (B) below. Is that right?
3) Are there any other tests I should take? I would like to qualify for as many positions as possible (biology, chemistry, math, computer science, physics).

Test Name:
A) Core Academic Skills for Educators: Combined 5751, 300 minutes
B) PLT: Grades 7-12 5624, 150 minutes

Problem Example:
After I went through the long process of applying to the DoDEA, I found the following note at the right in the Qualification section of my application for DoDEA positions:

092/23/18 DP - A professional state teaching certificate is required. Or, the DoDEA Praxis testing requirements must be met. Evidence of student teaching of 1 year of teaching in a PreK-12 classroom setting is required. Professional teacher education course work is required. (e.g., Classroom Management, Educational Psychology, Methods of Teaching, Classroom Practices, Models of Teaching, etc.). Without a teaching certificate; 18 semester hours is required; with a teaching certificate, 9 semester hours is required,

[PsyGuy]

If you want to transition to Germany, DoDDS isnt the way to do it. Its got to be your plan C, you could wait years and never get an offer. the EUR region is also the most desirable and has been shrinking for years. It used to be you got in through the PAC and then transferred into EUR, but now that the transfer round is much smaller you will be waiting years, close to a decade before you get to transfer from somewhere like JP to specifically Germany and thats once you get in which could take years (another decade) just to get in.

You are not credentialed to teach at the K12/KS including secondary level. That doeant mean you arent qualified, there are lots of ITs out there without qualifications with resumes less marketable than yours. Some elite tier IS though isnt going to be super excited over your resume.

In reply to your questions:

1) No, DODEA required a field experience in a K12 environment. You must also have professional education credits of 18 hours or if you get certified you would need 9 credits. You would also have to take the PRAXIS without a professional educator credential. Taking the PRAXIS alone will do very little for DODEA qualifications, as you will still be lacking the field experience and professional education credits, and everything in DODEA is Uni credits. A state credential means you only need 50% of the credits required but you still need them.

2) Not really relevant, PRAXIS testing alone wont qualify you for DODEA, but you dont need the core academic skills PRAXIS you need the PLT (in this case the 7-12) and the content area PRAXIS for the subject your seeking initial qualification for.

3) Not really relevant either, as you cant add areas of endorsement in DODEA by PRAXIS, its all based on credits. If your credentialed in the area (meaning having a state certificate) you only need half of the 24 hours (for subsequent endorsements) or 12 hours. PRAXIS means nothing you need credits on a transcript.

I would first start by seeking to obtain a professional educator credential. This is pretty easy. Though the best option for you holding a Ph.D is to apply through Missouri vie the doctoral route. You will need to take the MEGA (a Missouri specific licensing exam) in professional knowledge secondary (063). This will get you a 4 year credential you may renew as needed/desired without any form of PD. The other options would be MA (Massachusetts) but that would only get you a provisional license and would require more exams (but the credential would never expire) or the UT (Utah) route which uses the PRAXIS and you can take globally which is valid for 3 years and is renewable but requires PD. All of these are assessment based pathways, beyond that you are looking at next skills based pathways and doing an EPP/ITT program through an organization such as Teach Now or Teach Ready, but those wont help you for DODEA, as you will need an academic pathway requiring you to return to Uni as a studnt and do a traditional EPP/ITT program.
The professional credential from any of the above options will eliminate the need for PRAXIS, but you will still need to complete the field experience (which both the skills based and academic based pathways will provide) but only the academic pathway will give you the units you need to meet DODEA requirements.

IE is a different matter. Any of the three options will meet the requirements for IE, and while recruiters and leadership are very weary of professors transitioning to K12/KS without experience your teaching fields and academic background have high utility, youre just not going to find elite first tier ISs going out, and limiting yourself to Germany means you have a very limited range of opportunities.
The best option if its Germany or Bust is to relocate to Germany, there is plenty of work in Germany but its all on LH (Local Hire) contracts that doesnt get to the IE recruitment channels.

[TonyM]

Wow, thank you so much for such a thorough reply! I really appreciate it, but I admit, some of it was hard to understand because I'm not used to the acronyms (eg, what's PD?). But I think one of your main points is that it's possible that I could work for an international school, but only in the unlikely event they were super excited by my resume for some reason -- because they'd have to overlook the deficiencies you mentioned.

I'm starting to realize the numbers of semester hours per subject area is quite important to K-12 educators. I'd never thought about these at all. But since you made me realize this, I remember the secondary teachers I knew did mention it a lot, so I went ahead and tabulated mine. Here's what I found (all converted to semester hours):

.................undergrad.........grad...........total
Hum..............58...................................58
Math..............31...................................31
CSci...............13...................................13
Phys...............35.....................6............41
Chm................7....................19............26
Biol........................................12............12
Educ........................................4..............4

In the process of making this table, I realized that I had 4 education credits from something called Ed 590 "Techniques of Teaching Physics". So, if I understand you correctly, the shortest route for me to become hirable by secondary schools in Germany, and/or the DoDEA, would be to:

1) Take 5 more semester hours of education courses,
2) Pass the Missouri 063 Professional Knowledge: Secondary exam, and then
3) Take the PLT for 7-12 Praxis test, plus the specialized Praxis test in chemistry (my PhD), and
4) Somehow get 1 year of teaching experience at the secondary level

Furthermore, you are saying that I'd need to keep taking the Missouri test each year to renew my certification status.

A problem with the above is that it limits me to Chemistry, but I've noticed that most of the jobs seem to be in Math. It seems I'm not far from being able to get certified in Math, Physics, Biology, and Computer Science, right? Except that I don't have PhD in those. Or would my Bachelor's be enough (its in physics and math, but there are all those computer science courses mixed in -- and also, grad school included a lot of biology since I was in an interdisciplinary program). Of course, I want to be as marketable as possible, and I do feel I could teach those.

Finally, I'd like to hear more regarding your comment that "some elite tier IS" would not be super excited over my resume. Can you tell me what they would be excited over? For example, publications in top journals?, patents? having done science with world authorities in nanotechnology? I really don't have a good sense of what is important to secondary educators because I've been in other spheres, so I appreciate the help. Also, I don't want to come across as arrogant -- I hate that I have to sell myself when looking for a job -- and I'm passed the desire to prove I'm something. So, please be honest.

Thanks again

[wrldtrvlr123]

TonyM wrote:
> Finally, I'd like to hear more regarding your comment that "some elite tier IS" would
> not be super excited over my resume. Can you tell me what they would be excited
> over? For example, publications in top journals?, patents? having done science with
> world authorities in nanotechnology? I really don't have a good sense of what is
> important to secondary educators because I've been in other spheres, so I appreciate
> the help. Also, I don't want to come across as arrogant -- I hate that I have to
> sell myself when looking for a job -- and I'm passed the desire to prove I'm something.
> So, please be honest.
===================
Not trying to be cute, but elite int'l schools (and most schools in general) get excited (or at least mildly stimulated) by successful experience teaching secondary subject content to actual secondary students.

Before taking more classes (of which you seem to have an impressive amount) you should explore all of your options for becoming certified in a US state (PG seems to have a handle on most of these). Once you are a "certified teacher" in a secondary subject then a much larger portion of the int'l school community will be more open to your candidacy.Then, once you get an actual K-12 teaching job and log a couple of years of successful relevant experience, another group of schools will be more open to you.

DoDEA will also fall into this category if you can get qualified in a reasonable range of high needs (relatively speaking) areas for them. State certification will help you by reducing the numbers of credit hours DoDEA requires for qualification.

You may have passed the desire to prove you are something, but you will need to prove to schools (at least the good ones) that you can actually do the job you want to be hired for (teaching secondary students). Your existing experience certainly has some relevance but it is not evidence of the type of skills/success that they are looking for (just as teaching at a K-12 school is not evidence that someone would be a successful university lecturer).

[fine dude]

Here is a question?
How can you help someone pass a test / comprehensive exam who can understand only 10% of physics from your lecture/lab? Prove this to schools repeatedly, document the evidence, then you can consider yourself winning the high school teaching Nobel.

[chiliverde]

I think you are vastly overestimating the importance of content knowledge in the PreK-12 field. Elite schools (and any school worth its salt), will want to know:

How do you design lessons for students who are ELLs?
How do you accommodate 5 ILPs and various other learning styles into your approach?
Classroom. Management. You will be teaching children. Depending on where you teach, 10-90% of your students will have little to no initial interest in the subject you are teaching them; some of them may disrupt your lesson daily. Which does not mean they are incapable of learning. How do you put a respectful and logical behavior management system in place? How do you get them to invest in the material? At this level, you are responsible for the achievement of every student.
Quality curriculum is skill, not content, based. How you do backwards design units with appropriate authentic assessments that allow for varied learning styles?

If any of these are not things you have at least moderate experience with, then prepare to be challenged in the PreK-12 setting, and prepare to be overlooked in the hiring process by elite schools. Teaching is a craft. I may be an amazing cobbler, but that doesn't mean I can design and tailor clothes. I may kill it on the cello, but that doesn't mean the philharmonic will take me on to play the timpani.

[shadylane]

chiliverde wrote:
> I think you are vastly overestimating the importance of content knowledge
> in the PreK-12 field. Elite schools (and any school worth its salt), will
> want to know:
>
> How do you design lessons for students who are ELLs?
> How do you accommodate 5 ILPs and various other learning styles into your
> approach?
> Classroom. Management. You will be teaching children. Depending on where
> you teach, 10-90% of your students will have little to no initial interest
> in the subject you are teaching them; some of them may disrupt your lesson
> daily. Which does not mean they are incapable of learning. How do you put a
> respectful and logical behavior management system in place? How do you get
> them to invest in the material? At this level, you are responsible for the
> achievement of every student.
> Quality curriculum is skill, not content, based. How you do backwards
> design units with appropriate authentic assessments that allow for varied
> learning styles?
>
> If any of these are not things you have at least moderate experience with,
> then prepare to be challenged in the PreK-12 setting, and prepare to be
> overlooked in the hiring process by elite schools. Teaching is a craft. I
> may be an amazing cobbler, but that doesn't mean I can design and tailor
> clothes. I may kill it on the cello, but that doesn't mean the philharmonic
> will take me on to play the timpani.

Completely agree

[TonyM]

Once again, I want to thank all for their responses to my detailed questions. I finally heard back from someone at DoDEA and they confirmed much of what has been written here. For the sake of helping anyone else in a position similar to mine, here is the response I got:

"Without a valid state teaching license, you would need to meet DoDEA's Praxis testing requirements. In addition, we would screen your transcripts for 18 semester hours in professional teacher education course work and a formal student teaching/internship experience as part of an approved teacher education program in an accredited U.S. educational institution."

Now that I'm clear about the situation, I will be mostly looking in other directions. Obviously those in my position don't fit into the system, and from the responses above, I'm starting to piece together why. As chiliverde put it, "I think you are vastly overestimating the importance of content knowledge in the PreK-12 field", and others have expressed well the other things which are felt to be important.

I've considered related matters very much. Personally, I did my best to excel in (1) True mastery of content, (2) Clear communication in multiple ways, and (3) Having a heart to truly serve my students as people. These items should be enough, but I'm well aware that they are not because of many negative things. In brief, education, like all human institutions, has become a system and a very sad reflection on how our society has "evolved".

Thanks again all who helped me become clear. I'll be mostly looking elsewhere.

[chiliverde]

I'm glad that you feel that you are pointed in a clearer direction. Aside from that I must say, you post has me..... flummoxed.

I should clarify that of all the areas of desired experience I listed, I feel that they largely speak to the BEST parts of education done well today (accommodation for special needs, understanding how to develop and deliver authentic curriculum, knowledge of child development, etc). That's not to say that there aren't problems with the system, but I'm surprised that that was your takeaway from this thread.

You currently have a different skill set than that which this job requires. It's as simple as that. The fact that you still believe that what you have "should be enough" means that you are missing something pretty fundamental here. If you can, try to spend a day observing in some classrooms and talk to some teachers in person about their experience.

At the risk of exhausting everyone with more metaphors: someone who is a gastroenterologist can't just show up and be a dentist. The world of dentistry didn't fail you. You can have a heart to truly serve your dental patients as much as you want, but if you've never practiced dentistry....

I think that what you've brought up here is actually really enlightening to the discussion of how the teaching profession is misunderstood, and undervalued. Because if it were just about content knowledge, anyone with that knowledge could do it.

[fine dude]

There is a difference between mastery of content and pedagogical content.

If I're you, I'd aim at private schools for gifted in the US, work towards the teaching credential, gain some STEM experience, and then apply overseas. Many of those prep schools would not require a teacher license.

[chilagringa]

Expecting teachers to know how to teach is not sad, it means that "the system" wants good teachers.

My content knowledges ranges from excellent to just okay, depending on what class I'm teaching. I'm always trying to improve my content knowledge BUT I am still a good teacher in all my classes because my mastery of pedagogy is sound.

[TonyM]

Once again, I appreciate all the thoughtfulness in this forum. Teachers can be great people, and I've always had the heart to assume the best in people's motivations. However, sad reality has often entered into that view.

My experience is that all that is said above about the importance of what has been termed pedagogy here, is properly subsumed within the 3 categories I mentioned above; i.e., (1) content mastery, (2) clear communication, and (3) a teacher's heart. While I realize that entire careers are built upon the idea that (2) and (3) can be taught, I am persuaded that 90% of those qualities cannot be improved through training. Rather, I would call (2) and (3) gifts: you either have them, or you don't. By contrast, (1) is not a gift, and nearly 100% can be improved through training.

I used to be so enamored with theories, but eventually I realized that they tend to mislead, and instead I needed to tie my opinions to clear observations and reproducible facts. So here is one fact that has persuaded me to hold the view above: Throughout all the world the US education system is highly desired at the university level and people flock to US universities and graduate schools because of their reputation, at least in the hard sciences and technology areas I'm familiar with.

And yet, as this forum discussion has demonstrated, those teaching at that level have, for the most part, very little training in pedagogical principles and furthermore, the value of "teaching" is diminished, and even ridiculed as something "anybody can do" (lip service to the contrary notwithstanding).

By contrast, K12 education has a strong emphasis on pedagogy, as seen in this thread; even erecting barriers to keep those out who lack that training. Why then does K12 education not have, shall we say, such a stellar worldwide reputation that you would think it should? I mean, if pedagogy were so important, it should, right? Again, at least in the hard sciences and technology areas I'm familiar with.

Don't get me wrong: I abhor the lack of emphasis on quality teaching that is pervasive at the post secondary levels, and would love to see it changed. But my point is that an emphasis on pedagogy training is not the solution. All the great teachers out there, in my view, have been diligent regarding (1) and have gifts in (2) and (3) -- which have perhaps marginally been enhanced through training.

[shadowjack]

Um, because post-secondary is financially selective and intrinsically screens out those not interested in being educated? And secondary and primary don't? That could be a huge component.

Most teachers on this board cut their teeth in domestic education. You can go on about your 3 categories, but not a single one of those includes such important things as classroom management, differentiation, IEPs, parent-teacher conferences, disruptive students, inclusive education, ELL and EAL and ESL learners, or a myriad of other things that you have not even touched on. For instance, what would YOU do when a student jumps up on a chair, starts spouting gibberish, and rips off his arm cast to the cheers of his classmates? What would you do when two students are engaged in a fist fight and the students don't want to let you through? What would you do when a student stands up, shouts, "This is bullshit," and refuses to follow your (very reasonable) instructions, escalating the situation further? University doesn't engage in any of those meaningful questions. (and I could give you many more real life examples of situations like this - swarmings, etc).

My advice if you REALLY have a calling to be a teacher? Go and get the training, teach domestically for two years, THEN head out overseas. If you don't want to teach domestically, go through Teach Now and get DC certification, or Teacher Ready and get Florida certification, or do the TCNJ Global Education Program and get NJ certification. But at present, your current PhD is not a valid credential for many international schools because it lacks the element of training and certification that schools and national governments who provide visas expect teachers to have. It is nothing against you personally.

AS to why K to 12 in the US doesn't have the stellar reputation you would think it should (and to clarify about tertiary education, there are bucket loads of US universities I wouldn't want my kids at because they are really not good, especially in comparison to my own country, where there is no such thing as a 'crappy' university). To start, K to 12 is teach to the test. There are very few elements of critical thinking taught. It is all about forcing students to master and regurgitate content now at US schools to get the bucks that State governments have deliberately underfunded in at least 30 states I can think of. No Child Left Behind and American test culture which benefits test companies have gutted the heart of what education can and should be. Add on to that the stupidity of the politicians and other special-interest groups who have crappy curriculum in place, and you have a recipe for disaster (think many TX public schools, where their text books are not always factual, Intelligent design is in and evolution out, education has been politicized, and teachers appear to be not valued. Yet TX textbooks are used by many other states (not the Blue states! haha) simply because TX orders so many textbooks that they have them updated more often and they are cheaper because of volume. I could go on. Don't get me wrong - there ARE many great American public schools - but I believe that barring some exceptions, the majority of them are in upper socio-economic areas where parents and tax base means schools don't have to pay attention to NCLB and can pump money in to really educate the students and provide top notch education in up-to-date skills using modern equipment.

[chilagringa]

shadowjack wrote:
> Um, because post-secondary is financially selective and intrinsically screens out
> those not interested in being educated? And secondary and primary don't? That could
> be a huge component.

That's a great point. I have a friend that is a university instructor. He's a great teacher at the university level, where students choose to take his courses. He's thought about switching to secondary... but I'm afraid the students will eat him alive!

[TonyM]

I think this discussion has gotten off track. All the things you mentioned about managing a class I have no issue with. I just don’t think they have anything to do with “teaching”. There’s a difference between being a “good teacher” and being an effective employee in what is supposed to be teaching institution. Not long from now to be the latter might require marksmanship skills, but that won’t make you a good teacher.

If we stick strictly to the subject of quality teaching, then what I’ve said makes sense, at least to me. And as to the point about student quality: of course it will always be the case that a good student is the easiest one to teach. All these are beside the point that I was making, which was that quality teaching does not depend very much pedagogical training.