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CONFESSIONS OF AN UN-QUALIFIED ESL TEACHER
Confessions of an Un-Qualified Teacher
I have a confession to make to everyone. I was an unqualified ESL teacher.
Think about what that means to you. Unqualified ESL Teacher. No experience? No ESL Teaching certification? No US/UK/Aus. Teacher certification?
How about all of the above, AND no bachelors degree. That was me.
I am the archetypal tech-boom dropout. At the point where I should have been working on completing a degree, I had jumped directly from High School into the relatively lucrative Internet/Tech field, during “the bubble”.
Times were great. I was making more money than my father ever had in his life, and I felt like I was on top of the world, and it would last for ever. Why would I give that up for school?
For most of you, I probably don’t have to finish the story. The tech bubble burst. The bottom fell out of that market, and it became increasingly more and more competitive with an influx of Indian and Chinese tech guru’s, and nothing left for me but bottom of the ladder tech support positions.
So I headed to India in the height of the CRM Outsourcing trend, and did relatively well with a management consulting company there. Tech Boom. Indian CRM Boom. The trend was my friend, or so I thought.
But India, and specifically the Rajasthani dessert is a place where you can burn out, and quick. I ended up teaching in China, and then Thailand for several years.
After a short while, I knew I had found the vocation I was meant for. I enjoyed teaching more than anything I had ever done.
But I was a fraud. I had never misrepresented myself to an employer. They all knew that I didn’t have a bachelors degree, and were fine with it. I was young, cleaned up nicely, and wore a suit well for special occasions. I also intuitively developed a great classroom management style, and was at least reasonably effective as a teacher. Effective through no fault of my own.
So while it was a nice arrangement for everyone, and everyone was satisfied, I wasn’t. I knew that in order to do the best for my students I needed to meet at LEAST the minimum requirements, and that if I wanted to stay in the industry, this was important for me, personally too.
There was the obvious and tempting option: Use a fake degree. Everyone does it, and nobody ever gets caught. Usually. I’ve known enough teachers doing this to know that I could have gotten away with it, ad infinitum, with no real problems. But I’m not a person who likes to mis-represent himself. I certainly never want to lie to or cheat anyone.
So I set about looking at my options. I could take 4 years to earn the degree. I would also probably be spending tens of thousands of dollars. Since I was already an adult, I would have to work as well, so 4 years suddenly looked more like 8-10 years.
I looked at the online universities. Amongst those that are legitimately accredited, you can probably earn a bachelors degree in 3 years. 3 years was do-able for me, but not ideal.
And then I stumbled across what would ultimately be my academic and career salvation. CBE, or Credit by examination.
In the USA, there are six regional accrediting bodies. If a school is not accredited by one of these bodies, then generally speaking, they’re not really “accredited” per normal standards. Forget about everything except those six.
Amongst the universities that are accredited by the six US regional accrediting bodies, there are three that will grant degrees based entirely upon credits earned by examination.
There are lots of great sites to get more info about this. I’de recommend http://www.bain4weeks.com to get a basic idea about the whole process.
Ultimately what matters though, is that you can earn a degree that is equal (as far as accrediting goes) to any of the top Ivy-League schools by testing.
If anyone has any doubts about this, I now have a masters degree in language teaching from Indiana University, and my under-graduate credits and B.A. were accepted with no problem. IU is a great university, and its language program has turned out great teachers, philosophers and writers like Gary Snyder.
To give you an idea of what it took to accomplish my B.A., I’ll tell you that it wasn’t easy. I had to go back to the US. However, you don’t because there are testing centers in almost every country. I know that there are plenty throughout Asia, Eastern Europe, and South/Central America, and you would never have to leave the country you’re in or want to be in.
I had come back to the US for other reasons (A visa/Permanent Residence for my wife, should we need to come back in an emergency), and nearly ran myself into the ground to accomplish the task. But . . . I did it, and I did it by taking exams.
During the day, I worked for the State Attorneys office, and at night, I
studied at a feverish pace. I must have averaged 3 hours of sleep per night.
The first thing I did was knock out some upper level CLEP tests. These upper level clep exams usually translate to 6 credit hours awarded by the University.
The six upper level CLEP exams are:
ENGLISH COMPOSITION WITH ESSAY
HUMANITIES
COLLEGE MATHEMATICS
NATURAL SCIENCES
SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HISTORY
I think everyone can understand the ramifications of this. In the US, 120 credits generally constitutes a Bachelors degree. By taking and passing these five exams, I earned 30 credits, or 25% of a Bachelors degree.
Not only that, the Clep exams cost $60 or so each.
Then, I moved on to taking two GRE (Graduate Record) exams. These are tests that are administered in a select few disciplines, and many times are post graduate requirements for entrance into graduate programs. They assume that you already have a bachelors degree in the specific subject.
I took the GRE Psychology and GRE English Literature. For your reference, the GRE Psychology was much, much easier. GRE English literature required me to read, and retain all of the Nortons Anthologies of English Literature, various feminist criticism, and so on.
The great thing about the GRE Exams is that they award up to 30 credits for a score above a certain percentile. The credits are awarded on a sliding scale. If you score x%, you can get xcredits. If you score higher, the amount of credits that can be awarded is higher, as well.
Luckily for me, I had been raised in a very religious family, and spent my elementary school years memorizing entire chapters of the Bible. While I haven’t stepped foot in a church for 20 years, this served me well, and I was able to learn and remember a great deal of information in a short amount of time.
The GRE subject exams cost about $120 each, and if you pass with a high enough score, you can earn up to 30 credits.
So let’s recap. I had taken 7 tests, and earned approximately 90 out of 120 credits towards a bachelors degree, and had spent about US$ 600, plus a few books.
What’s more important than the money or time that I saved was that I was inspired to continue my education.
In relatively short order, I was able to complete the Bachelors degree. Before I was even finished, I was applying for post-graduate programs in Applied Linguistics, Language teaching, TEFL, etc., and was able to choose what I thought to be the best possible MA program available.
Did having a B.A. make me a better teacher? To some degree, definitely, but I’m the first person to admit that a non-degreed teacher with good classroom management skills can do just fine, and often times, do better than a person with an un-related degree, who’s not really interested in teaching, but just fell into it, or is cavalier and only interested in traveling across the world.
I’m sure there are teachers without a degree who would do a better job than me. I know some, as a matter of fact.
But I didn’t write this article to spark a debate about whether a kindergarten teacher in South Korea, China, or wherever needs a degree.
You shouldn’t press forward to impress the next school. Or to avoid problems with Immigration, impress your DOS, or any of the other reasons that initially compel a lot of people to take the low road with fakes and frauds.
Having a bachelors degree is the minimum for surviving anymore. To really do well, you need a masters degree. Getting the credentials to be a good teacher WILL make you a good, or better teacher. It will also help you in other areas of your life. Things will become more smooth (late nights worrying about deportation is no fun for anybody!), and more and more options will present themselves to you.
If you’ve been teaching for more than a year, you’re probably doing a great job anyhow. You’ve figured out the basics on your own, and know exactly what’s expected of you, and how to meet those expectations.
I want to let those teachers out there who are working without proper qualifications know that they can get them. You can get them quickly, legitimately, and without spending a lot of money or even living in the US/UK/Aus.
In the future, I may write more extensively about this, but right now, I wanted to go ahead and give you some basic information that you can use as a starting point in your research, and wish you the best of luck in your career.
http://www.eslsociety.com
[ Submitted with ArticleSubmitter Pro - http://www.articlesubmitterpro.com]
About the author:
Jonathan Cemenuk maintains the websites at http://www.eslsociety.comand http://www.mangodaily.com
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