Member since Jan 14, 2018

Contributions:

  • Posted by:
    Brian Salazar-Prince on 01/14/2018 at 7:27 AM
    I'm a school counselor with three graduate degrees and I support the law because it allows me to be more flexible within my school and provide more support to my students and the teachers with whom I work. Now, I can get certification to teach psychology or health courses ( have a M.S. in Counseling Psych and an MPH in Public Health) without having to go back to school to take additional coursework in teaching.... It allows my students to learn from an expert in the field (for example, right now our music teacher teaches health and our science teacher teaches psychology) which gives me more of a chance to make the information more useful, relevant, and even accurate for them.

    Teaching does require a special set of skills and it is an important job, but it isn't something that requires year of coursework at a college to get down. If you know the content, the rest you can master with practice and professional development courses provided through the district. Since teaching is a skills-based profession, there's no point in requiring coursework in skills people have already mastered; allowing the districts to provide individualized support increases the potential for new people in the field to succeed without making entry so onerous that nobody wants to bother.