Teacher Certification

Okay:

I just got back from taking the Praxis II and, boy, are my arms tired! The things that teachers are subjected to! It's like, society, practically across the board, agrees that it is the most important profession of all professions, and they show their appreciation by underpaying us and forcing us to go through a certification process that is the academic equivalent of a full body cavity search.

I get to the testing center around 7:30am. That means I had to cut my Friday night happy hour short to wake up, sans hangover, at 6:30am. Of course, my verification sheet has me registered in the wrong building. And of course, they take their sweet little time telling me this. I belong in the next building over. Mind you, I'm nursing two bad knees. (I destroyed them running in some sub par running shoes. FYI, Nike makes sub par running shoes. Who knew?). So, when I walk, it's kind of like a Cerebral Palsy/"Thriller" thing. People are holding doors for me, trying not to stare. It's a little embarrassing. There are a few cute women there, but what with the walk thing, I'm not drawing any glances. It's more pitiful than it sounds actually.

I finally make it to the appropriate room and sit down for the first time in a half hour. My legs are killing me. There's a room full of us sitting in there for about ten minutes or so when this woman walks in and announces, "All of you are going to have to leave and form a line outside. If you have to go the bathroom, do it now because I don't want to have to deal with the back and forth business." Think DMV before advanced computer networking systems.

An hour later, I'm finally sitting down again. The Alleve has kicked in, so my knees aren't bothering me so much. She starts to go into her spiel, which is laden with stereotypical sister-girl asides that have everyone laughing hysterically. Her routine reaches its climax when she chastises an African woman for asking to use the bathroom. "Lady, I done told you to use the bathroom already. Do anybody remember me telling y'all to use the bathroom? See, this is why things take longer than they need to."

I'm a high school English teacher, so I have to take a content knowledge test (read: 120 multiple choice questions about everything I ever read in undergrad--or everything I was supposed to read in undergrad). At any rate, that was almost ten years ago and I, like most of my peers, don't remember much about undergrad. Shall we say, it's all a bit of a haze.

What was more mind blowing than anything was the bold cultural biasness of it all. Out of 120 questions, only 2 dealt with works that were written by non-white authors! And I didn't know the answer to either one.

I'm not sure about the content knowledge test, but I am certain I failed the pedagogy test. They give you one hour to answer 8 essay questions. Halfway through, I realized I had misunderstood the directions and I wasn't able to complete the test. I hobbled back to my car, beaten and ashamed. My employer will not be pleased that I won't be certified until sometime this fall at the earliest. (The Praxis is only offered every 2 months or so).

So, I'm in a pretty bad mood. I'm feeling fairly indignant about the fact that I have to be subjected to all this. I'm a teacher for God's sake. I'm not building space shuttles here. They let that guy from N Sync be an astronaut and they're making me cross the burning sands to explain Shakespeare to teenagers.

I bet you old George W couldn't pass that thing either. I don't like that guy.