@TonyM
PD = Professional Development. To renew a state educator credential most states (there are some exceptions) require a DT/IT to complete a certain number of hours engaged in professional growth and development activity. The problem for most ITs is that being out of state and out of country they have less availability of what activities are acceptable. In many cases it eventually comes down to Uni credits and they can be expensive.
I can see a certain type of scenario where ISs are going to be welcoming of your resume, because you are only interested in Germany, and I assume have no German language ability its going to be a very small number. Heres where I think they would get excited. A lower tier IS thats not big on the circuit, you are there and they need a Maths IT for an English academy type of program. The coin would be average and would mostly be a LH (Local Hire) with visa sponsorship, which means youd be taking a pretty big cut in salary compared to a tenured full professor with 15 years seniority.
Actually no, course credits arent that important in KS/K12 edu outside of organizations like DODEA, thats just there thing. In IE there are a lot of ways for a IT to demonstrate subject matter content, a Bachelors/1st degree in the subject is easy, but examination or certification, a major, minor, concentration, professional experience. The content level isnt very high, understand that nothing in IE at SLL (School Leaving Level) is beyond the first year university level (freshman, 100/1000 level, lower division course work). There isnt anything you couldnt teach that is more than a couple of courses in content mastery.
Whats needed for IE and whats needed for DODEA are very different things. If you have the DODEA qualifications you have the IE requirements as well, but the barrier to entry in requires less.
1) You dont need any more courses in professional education for IE. You wouldnt even need it for DODEA. If you use one of the assessment based pathways I described above you would have a state credential and would need 2 more professional education courses (though thats just the professional education courses, different categories have different requirements) for IE you wouldnt need any at all. Your credential would be enough, no further studies required.
2) You could use the MO pathway using the doctorate route, but you will only get a credential in the field you hold the doctorate in, being biochemistry they would probably give you both biology and chemistry. You wouldnt get physics or ICT (Computer/Technology) or any other sciences.
3) You wouldnt need to take any further PRAXIS tests for IE. You also wouldnt need to take any further PRAXIS tests for DODEA once you had the state credential.
4) For DODEA yes, you would somehow need to complete a field experience of one academic year, and this is regardless of you having a state credential or not. Though someone hired with one year experience (and their field experience) in DODEA for CONUS is extremely rare, very, very, very rare. The cases that do are usually someone with history or they did their field experience with DODEA and the principal really liked them. For IE the general consensus is that you need 2 years post credentialing experience to enter IE. Generally premium agencies require it and so do ISs. ISs arent a great environment to do field experience, they arent usually resourced well or able to provide the mentorship for a new DT to make their bones.
5) You wouldnt need to take the MO exam each year, you would just need to renew the credential every 4 years.
Since you want multiple credentials outside of your doctorate I would recommend you look as the MA (Massachusetts) provisional credential. Its a 5 year credential, but would effectively be lifetime since those 5 years are for employment inside the state of MA, in Germany (or anywhere else) you wont use any of that time. You can add multiple endorsement certification areas, though you will be taking a lot more tests and they are only available in the US. The MO doctorate pathway doesnt have an equivalent mechanism for bachelors/1st degrees or other advance degrees. All of the assessment based pathways require assessments like the PRAXIS regardless of your academic preparation.
There are essentially three components to an ITs resume: What they can teach (degrees, credentials, etc.), what they have taught (experience, performance skills) and to a lessor degree special skill sets. Of those experience is king. So much so that great experience and performance can overcome just about any other deficiency.
Most (the vast majority) wouldnt know what the top journals are outside of education or maybe their prior teaching field, and they wouldnt are very much anyway. Lots of people have utility and design patents, for widgets, they could not care less. What would get them excited is something they can put in their advertising.marketing literature that they could sell to parents. If your Stephen Hawking or Neil deGrasse Tyson that would work. Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling, something like that. The other uncommon but more common then celebrity status is if your degree or your past or current appointment was at one of the world 'Ivys'. OxBridge, Harvard, Yale, McGill, Sorbonne. Those things are marketable.
All the prior contributors aside, my instinct is that you care about getting to Germany more than anything? 15 years in tertiary ed, you have to have tenure, be at or close to full professor. You would be giving up a significant amount of salary moving into IE even at top elite tier ISs. For some reason theres a driving force for you to relocate to Germany, and you ahve this 'instructional' skill set in one part of the edu continum, and you see this other part next to you called 'secondary teaching' and you think its right over there and it cant be that different? In some aspects I agree with the prior contributors, there are different skills and different considerations but:
1) This isnt magic. There is nothing about what KS/K12 teaching requires that you cant learn adapt and apply.
2) Its not rocket science, even the rocket science isnt rocket science. There isnt anything in the fields youve mentioned that you arent content wise, prepared for.
Pedagogy isnt everything, and ITs and leadership that say it is have a narrow world view on what the tools and process is for delivering instructional services and the transfer of knowledge. The trinity of KS/K12 edu is pedagogy, methodology and assessment.
Pedagogy is theory, it gives us the 'why' of learning, why we do this and why this work and why this doesnt. it was a lot more important in the early days of organized professional education when DTs had to take 'texts' and make them manageable and appropriate to facilitate that knowledge transfer. That changed many decades ago with the the 'textbook' and subsequent 'teachers edition' of the textbook, and has been slowly whittled away with CMI (Computer Medicated Instruction), DTs dont design and create as much and to the depth that they used too. Methodology is the 'how' , how we do this to get this, its the instructions, the recipe, the protocol, the checklist of activities parsed out in time. Lastly is assessment which gives us the 'what' or more specifically what happened, did the thing we do as edus get past the iPhone screen and the angst and find its way to the brain and settle in to stay.
I review these because they have a correlational aspect to the type of tasking that DTs/ITs do. Which are: preparation, performance, and production (theres actually a fourth presence, but its not particularly relevant in this context).
Preparation is all the cognitive thinking activity and tasking the DT/IT does. Performance is presentation and delivery components and production is all the make and do activity and tasks.
Where the prior contributors have it wrong, is if i picture a BS (British School) A* SLL level maths course in calculus and theres a DT at the front of the room demonstrating proofs on the white board (drill and kill) from the standard text and then shift that course to a 1st year (or second year) calculus course with a professor (or likely lecturer) at Uni and the scene from the back of the room wouldnt be too different, you could probably switch the teacher and professor and not really notice any change at all. Further a lot of maths courses would be like that and ICt courses, and moving into the sciences even physics and chemistry less so for biology. Change the curriculum to an AS and AP course and its a little more showmanship and stage awareness as you move from the maths courses to the sciences and its still pretty much the same. I dont think youd need a lot more int he way of meds/peds/asst to make that transition. A little extra planing for SPED/SEN/LD with that IT and some varying amounts of L2 (Language 2) preparation (pre-exposure to vocabulary) and in an old school classroom or gymnasium, there probably isnt anything you cant figure out with minimal resources. So yes "anyone can do teaching" given certain environments the degree of training and education too optimize that lesson is going to vary. To give you an example, you have very likely used an SEM youre probably proficient in its use enough that given enough time with no training or education in 'teaching' can successfully transfer the procedure to a 1st year Uni student, and that student could in turn with enough time and effort transfer that knowledge to another year one Uni student. You dont need to have any semblance of professional education or meds/peds/asst to do so. Increasing the level of training (meds/peds/asst) makes the process more efficient and less likely to result in damage to the SEM (as well as less costly in materials), but you can do it without.
What the prior contributors got right is going beyond that type of scenario. Your in a German Gymnasium (Prima level, last two years of high school), the students you have are all taking the Abitur. Thats the scenario above. Now however you get assigned to year 7 and 8 general science. Now you have angsty teens to deal with, with lessor developed brains, decreased maturity level, and lessor ability to mitigate distractions.There lifes are so hard and no one understands them, and sometimes they just need to know a caring adult is more interested in listening to them, then in having to listen to the adult. Its beyond that idealized scenario above that the prior contributors have significant merit in their expressions.
Tertiary education is inherently more selective, and has means of purging itself of those individuals lacking the motivation for scholarly activity (The US has a lot of Unis more so than anywhere else in the world, its one of the USs chief exports). If students just stare at their phone sitting in the back of the lecture hall and they fail, well they fail. In KS/K12 environments if a student fails you the IT/DT did something wrong. The responsibility for success of the student is shared (its a traditional complaint of edus), further you cant simply dismiss students especially in DE where children have a "right" to edu.
In KS/K12 edu you cant separate classroom and behavior management from teaching. Again, you cant fire your students, you can give them referrals and leadership has tools including suspension and expulsion, and in IE admissions can deselect a student at term, but most of the time a student you send out is going to be coming back at some point sooner rather than later. You can say they are separate but in practice thats not the performance standard your evaluated on. You cant engage in that knowledge transfer process under chaotic classroom conditions. Parents expect results and outcomes and leadership is their enforcer and representative on site. All that said its a lot easier in IE then it is in DE, the students in IE are well resourced generally and are motivated and their are cultural factors (especially in Asia) that are intolerant of disruptive behavior with edus.
You actually dont need heart to be a good DT/IT the IE and DE communities have ample examples of DTs/ITs who have come to hate teaching and children but still knock out great lessons as they grind ever forward to the day they can retire.
As for the gastroenterologist and dentist paradigm. Thats not a great example. It depends what the dental procedure is, and what the tools that are available. All specialists are first generalists. if a gastroenterologist had to fill a cavity they could. Assuming they had an xray, a drill, and filling material (plus the tool) they could make it work.A certain amount of medicine is at the foundation level that any practitioner would have a basic professional understanding of.
Most of the advice generated by the prior contributors is superfluous for you, you arent interested in KS/K12 edu your interested in maximizing your options in relocating to Germany and finding employment and sponsorship. For all practical purposes, my original recommendation is to get yourself one of the assessment based credentials (MA is my recommendation), study some German, buy a ticket and get an apartment/flat and then hit the streets. In all reality your more likely and better off finding an ESOL position in a German Uni a lot easier than you will a position in IE at this time. Once you have a German Uni appointment you can work those relationships with the regional DSs, the MA credential will check the appropriate box. Once youve moved into that type of position your realistically most likely to be in the idealized scenario I described above. At that point you can keep your ear to the road and jump on any immediate emergent IE vacancies. Some one goes on medical or maternity leave and the IS needs an IT and there you are with your resume, your credential a visa and your already there, many leadership would consider themselves blessed to have that kind of solution to their problem on that particular day (especially in hard science and maths). Almost everything the prior contributors have raked you over the stones for can be mitigated by right time and right place.
@SJ
Yes CAN does, Royal Roads university is in the same league as some of those US Unis Id call "crappy".
@chilagringa
The unsuccessful ones generally fell into two groups:
1) Those that couldnt downshift the content to age appropriate levels and fill a lesson with it. They would reduce the content to the required level after much reflection , and then 5 minutes later didnt know what more to do with the rest of the 45 minutes in class.
2) Their delivery style was direct teach lecture, and they didnt have any other tools.
The successful ones, generally had a respect for children as people and stakeholders.
Univ prof, want to teach secondary level. Please help
Re: Univ prof, want to teach secondary level. Please help
Wow -- I never expected such a thorough, thought-filled, and apparently experienced-based response. Like I said earlier, I was planning on just moving on. Yes, you are right that I have other motivations -- relationships -- for getting a position in Germany.
I'm going to copy your (and the other's) posts, just in case I need to refer back to them. As you say, some "raked me over the stones" here -- but I understand their feelings -- and honestly still appreciate their perspective. But the effort you went through -- again, all I can say is, "wow"
If someone does happen to give me a chance, the insights I gained here will stay with me.
I'm going to copy your (and the other's) posts, just in case I need to refer back to them. As you say, some "raked me over the stones" here -- but I understand their feelings -- and honestly still appreciate their perspective. But the effort you went through -- again, all I can say is, "wow"
If someone does happen to give me a chance, the insights I gained here will stay with me.
Comment
@TonyM
This isnt the first time the major contributors have had a professor write into the forum about transitioning into IE with a similar point of view. I understand the prior contributors position as well, it has significant merit, it should not go ignored as you move forward.
This isnt the first time the major contributors have had a professor write into the forum about transitioning into IE with a similar point of view. I understand the prior contributors position as well, it has significant merit, it should not go ignored as you move forward.