No Alternative

At a critical point in my undergraduate career, I was faced with a dilemma. I had applied for acceptance into the Education program at the University of Utah. My application was declined, partly because of the number of remaining classes I had to take, and partly because although I was scheduled to take the Praxis I series of standardized tests, I hadn't actually taken them yet. So I talked to the chemistry department advisor about options. Instead of remaining in school for an additional year to reapply to the Education program (and rack up another year's worth of student loans), he gave me an alternative: get the chemistry degree, then go through the alternative licensure program the state offers to get my teaching certificate. There's enough demand for science teachers, he said, that there shouldn't be any problems doing it this way.

Unfortunately, that's not the way it's turning out.

I've sent a large number of résumés out over the last few months and filled out applications to almost every district along the Wasatch front. And I've received some interest from a couple of districts. But nothing of any substance has really materialized. It's beginning to look like the Alternative Route to Licensure (ARL) is not going to be much of an alternative to me after all.

The difficulties really started in February or so. I got a nibble from the Davis County School District. I talked to someone in their HR department, and she referred me to a man at the Utah State Office of Education (USOE). This man walked me through what was required in the ARL process, and I thought I had a pretty good idea what to do. I left that conversation with the impression that I needed to get a serious offer from a district before anything could really start happening.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I finally got an interview with the Jordan School District. I met with a man who was pleasant enough and seemed interested in my skills. However, he told me the district couldn't even look at me until I had the ARL approval letter from the USOE—the letter I'd thought I couldn't even request until I had a firm offer from a district. He went through as much of the interview as possible with me, then took a few minutes to walk through the ARL process with me. Armed with this new knowledge, I resolved to take on the ARL process as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The process basically involves four steps, each with their appropriate fees:

1. Send in an ARL Intent Form with an original college transcript and $50 Evaluation fee. The USOE looks over the information and determines eligibility for the ARL process.
2. Once initial eligibility is established, a background check, fingerprinting, and other paperwork are required. The fee for these services is $70.
3. Assuming one passes the background check, a district can hire them provisionally and set up an evaluation plan. The candidate gets their own classroom and as much attention and mentoring as the school can spare. The candidate's progress is monitored as they teach classes and completes the necessary coursework for licensure. While this is ongoing, the prospective teacher also arranges any classes they need to take to meet the state standards. A $270 evaluation fee is assessed when the plan is implemented, plus tuition for any and all necessary classes.
4. Finally, if the candidate makes it through all of this, a teaching certificate is granted. An additional $50 licensure fee is charged at this point.

So it's a long, involved, and expensive process. But if that's what I had to do, then I was okay with that. I downloaded the ARL Intent Form, got a copy of my transcript from the U, wrote the check, and sent it all off to the USOE.

I got the results back couple of weeks ago, and they weren't encouraging. The person who had evaluated my transcript—the same man from the USOE I had spoken with earlier, as it turns out—wasn't convinced that my grades proved I had a sufficient knowledge of chemistry. It's true that I had a couple of semesters where my mind wasn't on my schoolwork. (In my own defense, I was going through a divorce at the time.) But I did manage to do well enough, eventually, to convince my department that I knew enough about chemistry to be granted a degree. And I had to pass the American Chemical Society's standardized battery of Senior Comprehensive Exams before my department would give me that degree. The fact that a department consistently rated in the top 10% in the nation chose to grant me a degree at all should mean something, I'd think.

The letter from the USOE said that I'd need to take (and pass) the Praxis II content exam for chemistry before the ARL process could continue. So I looked into it the other night. I was not encouraged, for two reasons. First, the test costs, from what I can tell, somewhere between $60 and $90 plus a $40 registration fee. Okay, I can live with that. Second, I can't take the test until August 5th. That's the real killer—another month and a half of waiting to take the test, and probably six to eight weeks waiting for the results before I can do anything else.

My dreams of starting a teaching job this fall are fading fast.

Now, I try to be optimistic about these things, and I am a believer that when God closes a door, He opens a window someplace. Fortunately, that has been the case in all of this. I'll write more about that in a later post.