The International Schools Review Forum

I have been searching around a lot for the best alternative teaching certification programs/routes (Teacher Ready, Texas Teachers, Texas based ACPs, Utah APT) to do while overseas and am having a lot of trouble finding information on which of the exams can be taken while overseas, specifically in Russia or Ukraine. All of the programs rightfully seem to require completion of the exams before you can actually be hired for a position or before you start the pre-teaching program. I’ve actually tried to e-mail the TExES ETS people directly, but got an unhelpful generic e-mail in response. I have even been playing around a lot with the ETS, Praxis, and Pearson site locaters without much success. So I am coming here for help.

I will be doing my first stint as an ESL teacher in Russia this AY and would like to keep my mind on self-improvement and forwarding my career while I’m over there. Most of my research has made it pretty clear that that my semester of teaching at a college, years as teaching assistant in grad school, and EFL experience won’t help me at all with international schools. This has made the Texas based alt. cert programs really stand out to me because they require that you do a year of teaching in Texas for the full cert. That and they seem very willing to hire people with the initial certification. I am absolutely willing to come back to the States for a year in order to gain some experience before heading back to Russia if needed, but I would like a program (tests and all) that I can complete while I am in Russia so that I am fully qualified when I start to apply for first year jobs. Or at least so that I have completed all of the steps needed to enter a summer ACP. Flying back home just to take some tests will be quite time consuming and expensive given that I will be in a small city in Russia. My location will also make it impossible to do Teacher Ready or Teach Away because I don’t think there are any international schools in my city. Does anyone have any advice or knowledge on which of the alt. cert. routes would be easiest for someone in my situation? I am not very picky.

Also, to be clear, my goal is to teach at an international school in Russia. I would also seriously consider any country in the Caucasus, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and even Moldova. I am looking to get certified in general primary education (EC-6 generalist in Texas). I know I won’t be able to land a sweet spot, like AAS, ISM, BSF, EIS, or MES with only a year of experience and a completely unrelated degree, but I’d probably be happy getting my feet wet in a lower tier school. Although, I am also having trouble figuring out which IS in Russia are lower tier. CIS Russia has stood out as a potential candidate, as they seem to have several openings for primary teachers very late in the year. But they also have the CIS tag, which makes me think they might be better than I am guessing. I’d appreciate advice from someone that knows about the Russian IS market.

To summarize the test providers and programs:

Teach Ready: FL based ACP/Skills program. The FTCE exam is a Pearson provider and not available in Russia or the surrounding region.
Teach Now: DC based ACP/Skills program. Uses the PRAXIS which is available in Russia.
Utah APT: UT based DOE/Assessment based program. Uses the PRAXIS which is available in Russia.
Massachusetts Preliminary: MA based DOE/Assessment based program. Uses the MTEL which is a Pearson provider, the exam is not available in Russia.
Texas Teachers: TX based ACP/Skills program. Uses the TeXas exam which is an ETS provider, and not available in Russia.
Outside of the PRAXIS you would have to travel significantly to a test center, and while you do not have to travel to the US, there are test centers in other regions, within a few hours by plane.

For both Teach Now and Teach Ready you can take the exams later in the program but you generally cant start field experience until you have passed them, although this is essentially at the end point of those programs.
The Texas ACP program has two routes the internship route (which is a full AY as DT of record in a classroom) requires you to complete the exams before you can be placed in the classroom. The other option is clinical teaching which is a similar field experience to student teaching you would find at a Uni. You need only take the exams prior to certification not placement.

Your "semester of teaching at a college, years as teaching assistant in grad school, and EFL experience" arent worth anything in IE.

Its true the Texas ACP program with the internship route is a full year of teaching, and counts as experience on your resume, but it isnt unique. There are other states with similar AY long internship programs. One of the minor advantages of the Texas program is that Texas has only a single level of credentialing, the Standard certificate (professional grade), which is the credential awarded after completing an EPP/ITT program.
The Texas ACP programs field experience is not available during the summer.

The standard bar to entry in IE is 2 years of post credentialing experience, typically as a DT. You have such a narrow regional focus, that most of IE is of no interest to you. The premium agencies have about 16 ISs in those regions and are essentially limited to the 1st tier/elite tier ISs in your regions of interest. As a primary DT/IT academic preparation is much less important, there are a lot of primary ITs who dont have degrees or majors in anything education centric. Lots of them have general liberal arts backgrounds.

The major technical difference between ACP/skills programs and DOE/assessment programs is cost and resources. An assessment program can be completed in a matter of days and costs about a tenth or less of the costs of an ACP/skills program. I would recommend that you start with the UT APT program. There are no special requirements for primary as opposed to MA and you need only take a single PRAXIS exam which is available in Moscow, whereas you would need to complete some seminar training and complete 4 exams for Massachusetts. All of which would require more extensive traveling. The UT APT credential will give you 3 years before needing to be renewed at a cost of a few days effort and less than USD$500. During that time you can determine your marketability based on the preferences you have indicated.

My foundation for that recommendation is based on the premise that your goal is to live in Russia, the edu. portion of that is just the means by which you afford to do that. As a result, youre really going to be in ESOL for a considerable length of time until some third tier IS needs a last minute primary IT. Adjutant to that, is your rate and proficiency in Russian, the sooner you develop fluency the sooner you can leverage your ET contacts and relationship into a Russian DS as an HRT.

Thank you for the reply PsyGuy.I am curious how you were able to find a PRAXIS test center in Russia. While searching for PRAXIS test locations, I was brought to the ETS site and was unable to locate any centers in Russia. Being able to take a PRAXIS test in Russia would seriously increase my options. I am also curious why you think that the Utah credential is more valuable than credentialing in another state and gaining a year of DS experience when you (and I) have made it pretty clear that my ESL experience will be worth nothing. Several years of worthless experience seems a lot less valuable than 1 year of relevant experience (which is apparently half of the minimum). I did mention that I am willing to leave Russia and come back.

One of the appeals of Texas is also that they seem to be quite willing to hire teachers from AC programs. A lot of their AC programs have reviews/forum posts of people successfully finding jobs in Texas. I also looked into the iTeach route, which offers certification in Texas, Nevada, Louisiana, and Hawaii, with the latter two requiring PRAXIS tests before signing up. I couldn't find any success cases, though. A quick AC and a teaching job in Hawaii sounds a little too good to be true. If I can actually take a PRAXIS exam in Russia and can find a state where it would be easy to get a job with an AC, I would be set. The trouble now seems to be finding a PRAXIS state with good AC programs and a need for teachers (assuming I can actually take the PRAXIS in Russia). Texas also appealed because some of their AC programs seemed decent and would even help train me while I was doing my first year. Becoming a better teacher is always a goal of mine.

Also, is the two year DS experience a requirement for tier 3 schools too? I noticed that QSI seems to get ripped on a lot, but also has some support from teachers that have been there (especially from the primary levels). Those schools seems to have a presence in the Caucasus and if they aren't as hard to get into, might be a decent start for me. I'm quite open to suggestions, though.

@paintchip

Go to the ETS/Praxis testing site locator:
https://www.ets.org/praxis/register/centers_dates
Under Country/Location select Ukraine. Number 9 is the American Center for Education and Testing in Moscow/Russia.

Short Answer:

The UT credential will take far less in resources both temporally and financially. Further it eliminates a lot of other challenges, and gives you 3 years before you have to figure out the next step in your life, because you are very likely to be unsuccessful as an IT with your goals considering you already have your dream location, and a job, etc.

Long answer:

1) Do you know someone in a DS in Texas that will hire you as an elementary DT? If you dont then you are very likely to never find an internship to complete your ACP. Texas Unis pump out hundreds, thousands of elementary edu graduates who were academically prepared, and have relationships with districts and DSs where they did their student teaching. So if you dont know someone at a DS either a principal or super who will give you an appointment and a contract, why would any district hire an elementary DT who completed some PowerPoint slideshows, and took an exam? There are plenty of other candidates with better resumes waiting for those positions.
The only way your going to get into a primary classroom as an ACP candidate for an internship without knowing someone who can make that happen or having a genies wish is if you are a bilingual/ESOL candidate or SPED/LD/SEN, and even then its a long shot.
The other option is do clinical teaching for your field experience over a semester, but then you need to pay the ACP the full fee and at least another $4K to live off assuming you dont have a vehicle.

2) One year is nothing, is it better than zero years, sure, but at the ISs it would have some utility at, they arent in your region. You would be better off spending that year teaching ESOL, and improving your Russian, because the third tier ISS in your region are essentially regulated DSs with some kind of Academy program, and in IE you can be first, be good or be lucky, of the three being first (right place and time) is easier, especially if you can establish some sort of relationship with those DSs as an ET or member of the community.

3) ACP programs with online delivery and internship options dont train you, they dont hold your hand. They take your coin, and give you a letter. You have to find your own internship. Most if not all your training will come from your mentor, and thats a roll of the dice. You could get a GREAT mentor who guides, you meets with you daily and shows you the ropes while sharing with you. You could end up with a mentor who doesnt even know your name, doesnt care, doesnt like you, is too busy with their own drama, etc.
If the ACP route and that experience is REALLY the direction you want to take, then look into Teach Now or Teach Ready. Both of them will let you do what you want in Russia. The field experience for Teach Ready is 5 days, which is a MUCH easier sell to an IS. If you can find a cooperating IS then Teach Nows field experience is three months.

4) You need to figure out if you are a DT/IT to begin with. Theres a reason the profession has a LOT of attrition. Being an ET is not even close to being an IT or DT for that matter. No other instructional occupation is even close. If you get the UT credential, you can take the exam locally, get your fingerprints done before you leave and have 3 years to figure things out for a few hundred USD. If no one hires you and it doesnt work out, you will feel a lot better having only spent that instead of thousands on an ACP

The general bar to entry into IE is 2 years post credentialing. ISs (most) just arent good places to make your bones and hone your craft for a variety of reasons. However, the third tier covers a lot of the IE spectrum, and yes there are bottom tier ISs in hardship locations that cant get any better for the coin they offer and the lifestyle available and will appoint ITs with little experience or credentials.