Ugh... (*rolls eyes*) One issue I haven't seen discussed w…

I've seen it reported often over the past decade plus how there is suddenly a teacher shortage here and there, but what doesn't get reported is how little of an effort states put forth to try and recruit talented educators. In my experience, nearly the opposite has been true. 2/

Most recently, I had applied for a new cert in a state that shall remain nameless. I applied early in the school year knowing that paperwork takes time, hoping that by the time that paperwork was processed, I'd be able to look for a new job.

It's been 2 years now. Nothing. 3/

In 2011, I completed my MA in educational technology.
This master's degree program was so young at the time, no state had any sort of certification to go with it.

Seeing that State X now has an ed tech cert, I applied for that cert so I could apply for public school jobs. 4/

State X, however, told me that even though I had the master's degree that they were looking for AND the transcript to prove it, it still wouldn't be good enough for them.

Why?

They wanted to see the course descriptions for that program I took a decade ago now. 5/

Now, I ask you, good people of the Twitterverse:

How many of you out there have completed an undergrad or grad degree AND decided to save the course catalogs of every year of the courses you completed as a souvenir?

I'm sure the answer is practically no one. 6/

Now, you might say to me, "well, Jeremy - you could just go back to your college and ask for those course descriptions. Surely the registrar has an archived copy!"

...and I did.

...and they don't. 7/

So once again, a pathway for me to teach in a public school system is once again barred, just because I didn't have the foresight from a decade ago to keep one particular magical piece of paper.

Isn't that absolutely ridiculous? 8/

Years ago, after graduating into the Great Recession and no one wanted to hire an English/Language Arts teacher, I decided to take courses to get cross-certified in middle school Math. ELA + Math is not a combo you see every day, after all.

9/

I went on State Y's website to research requirements for getting this done, & I enrolled & completed the 3 courses necessary to get this done in one semester while holding down a full-time job.

Just as I completed those courses, State Y decided to change those requirements. 10/

As a result, State Y tried to argue with me that I no longer met their requirements.

In that instance, I fortunately had printed out for my own reference earlier what their requirements were at the time I enrolled & completed the courses they wanted. 11/

State Y eventually relented and let me have the cross-certification, and in their email response literally told me they'd let me have it "this one time."

Gee. Thanks. 12/

Before that, this insanity all started back in college, when my advisors failed to advise me on which lovely standardized tests I needed to complete at which times of the year in order to make which states happy. 13/

As it turned out, there were two completely separate standardized tests for certification...and each of those tests had two parts to them that for whatever ridiculous reason were only offered in two completely different sessions. 14/

Due to lack of advice from my college advisor while I had plenty on my plate w/completing *3 English courses at the same time* in order to be able to have my final semester be student teaching, I ended up taking 1/2 of 1 test & 1/2 of the other test at first. 15/

My college advisor had also dropped the ball on giving me a student teaching assignment, by the by. Had I not visited their office one day to ask a Q about something else, I would not have been placed at all for student teaching, and I would've had to have an extra semester. 16/

Due to logistical constraints w/ how those cert tests were offered, I had to wait until the summer to take the second half of both of those tests. As a result, my certifications in both states that I had applied for were not processed until the school year had already begun. 17/

...and that's how I ended up teaching in primarily private schools over the past decade, given that private schools do not necessarily require their faculty be state-certified.
/18

...all of that is to say the process of obtaining a teaching certification from state to state is absurd. States should be trying to help people become educators in their state rather than actively working to dissuade talent. /19

I fought through all the nonsense to get the degrees and the certifications that I had put the time into earning fair and square...and apparently today, I'm still fighting, because apparently a master's + an official transcript is not good enough to make State X happy. 20/

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