.

  • After Iowa State won the Big 12, a Cyclone made a wonderful offer to We Will that now increases our match. Now all gifts up to $400,000 between now and the Final 4 will be matched. Please consider giving at We Will Collective.
    This notice can be dismissed using the upper right corner X button.

Cyclonepride

Thought Police
Staff member
Apr 11, 2006
96,455
57,073
113
53
A pineapple under the sea
www.oldschoolradical.com
I looked into becoming a teacher because I need a change. Through my research I realized practically every different teacher needs a different license. Teaching license based on grade level, administration license, special ed license, special reading license, special license to work at the AEA, special license to coach, etc.

Are all of these really necessary? Do these licenses only serve the schools who grant them? Why can't you use experience with one to fulfill the others?

Creating barriers to entry is a great way to achieve a degree of job security.
 

ArgentCy

Well-Known Member
Jan 13, 2010
20,387
11,176
113
I'm not an expert in education theory or anything, so this is the opinion of a man with a teacher-spouse and that's about it.

Imagine if we required a special license to do most any job? To move up at your company needed a new and different license. To go from accountant to accounting manager needed not only experience, but a new legal license.

Do those limitations stifle creativity and new ideas? Do they hold people in certain positions where they might thrive elsewhere? My wife has taught for over a decade with a K-3 license. She says teaching today is basically like reading from a script with little room to explore and foster education in a way your specific classroom might respond to.

Before anyone says "You want Argent teaching kids?!" I am not criticizing a basic degree of pedagogical competence that would require a license. I am suggesting that maybe you don't need special certification to read from a script in 3rd grade vs 4th grade. Maybe you don't need a special certification to be a consultant at the AEA vs a classroom teacher doing essentially the same thing.

The more barriers we put up the more we stay stuck in the same ruts. Let people with the base level of experience try new things. If you keep demanding the same qualifications you'll keep getting the same results.

And it really slows anyone who needs a license from moving with demand. For instance, North Dakota had a huge influx of people but now they don't have enough of these people. If they also have strict license requirements they are hurting themselves from pulling qualified people from around the country.
 

DurangoCy

Well-Known Member
Jul 5, 2010
6,356
4,205
113
Durango, CO
I had a physics teacher, who was a former engineer (failed career, I believe), so they just figured he could teach the material. He was terrrible, so I wish the had required a license where you couldn't be an idiot and teach HS level physics.
 
  • Winner
Reactions: isufbcurt

madguy30

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2011
49,352
45,944
113
I'm not an expert in education theory or anything, so this is the opinion of a man with a teacher-spouse and that's about it.

Imagine if we required a special license to do most any job? To move up at your company needed a new and different license. To go from accountant to accounting manager needed not only experience, but a new legal license.

Do those limitations stifle creativity and new ideas? Do they hold people in certain positions where they might thrive elsewhere? My wife has taught for over a decade with a K-3 license. She says teaching today is basically like reading from a script with little room to explore and foster education in a way your specific classroom might respond to.

Before anyone says "You want Argent teaching kids?!" I am not criticizing a basic degree of pedagogical competence that would require a license. I am suggesting that maybe you don't need special certification to read from a script in 3rd grade vs 4th grade. Maybe you don't need a special certification to be a consultant at the AEA vs a classroom teacher doing essentially the same thing.

The more barriers we put up the more we stay stuck in the same ruts. Let people with the base level of experience try new things. If you keep demanding the same qualifications you'll keep getting the same results.

Per the 3rd vs. 4th grade thing, typically licenses for those are 'K-5' or '1-12' so there's some wiggle room. I would say it goes far beyond 'reading a script' and it's unfortunate people refer to that.

There IS some BS in states having different requirements for licensing that are basically hoops to jump through if one moves from one state to another but I'd wonder if it's similar in other professions.
 

Sigmapolis

Minister of Economy
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Aug 10, 2011
24,782
36,505
113
Waukee
Your hypothetical isn't helpful in overcoming the evident need to license in certain professions, which I'm sure are based on an identifiable professional need more than a whim. If you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a barber, or an electrician, or a teacher, you go to the appropriate schools or training, take tests, and pay a small fee to show the world you are qualified.

Abraham Lincoln spent less than 12 months in formal schooling his entire life.

He became an attorney the old-fashioned way -- he started as an entry-level clerk in a law office, learned on the job, and eventually passed the bar exam. He never had anything resembling an undergraduate education, much less three years in law school.

He did alright for himself.

My wife is a doctor. She told me that maybe 1% of her undergraduate training and maybe 10% of her training from medical school is relevant to what she does on a daily basis. She actually learned how to be a doctor on the job during her residency, and she has long maintained her hospital rotations her third and fourth year of medical school did a lot more to prepare her for the real world of it than anything in the classroom in her first and second years.

So what must be the point of all these hoops you have to jump through?

Creating barriers to entry is a great way to achieve a degree of job security.

Nailed in. So many of these are just a modern form of a medieval guild.

Guilds of merchants and craft workers were formed in medieval Europe so that their members could benefit from mutual aid, production standards could be maintained, competition was reduced and, by acting collectively, a certain political influence could be achieved.

https://www.ancient.eu/Medieval_Guilds/

Do I think that doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers should learn the rudiments of their profession before being unleashed on an unsuspecting public? Sure do.

I am just not sure they really learn those in classrooms or during the licensing process. They probably learn it, like the most of us actually do, while doing it.
 
Last edited:

Cycsk

Year-round tailgater
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Aug 17, 2009
26,836
14,636
113
Not a licensure story, but my wife (who has a teacher's license) was hired once-upon-a-time in a Chicago suburb and then unhired before she started when they recognized that she had a masters degree (in college and university student personnel) because it meant they had to pay her more. She was very well known and appreciated by administration as a "classroom mom," was recruited by the administration, and would have worked for "whatever" because it was more about serving the community, but nope, not allowed.
 
Last edited:
  • Friendly
Reactions: NWICY

ArgentCy

Well-Known Member
Jan 13, 2010
20,387
11,176
113
I had a physics teacher, who was a former engineer (failed career, I believe), so they just figured he could teach the material. He was terrrible, so I wish the had required a license where you couldn't be an idiot and teach HS level physics.

I could probably find a few idiots out there teaching HS physics. A license isn't going to stop that from happening.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: usedcarguy

Jmarsh13

Well-Known Member
Sep 28, 2006
274
348
63
Engineering licenses are typically able to be obtained in other states by reciprocity. Send in an application with fee and paperwork that shows that you meet State X requirements and State Y will give you a license. Then it is keeping up with each states Cont. Education requirements to keep them current.

California does require additional testing due to seismic loading for Structural Engineers and also because they are California...
 
  • Agree
Reactions: isutrevman

ArgentCy

Well-Known Member
Jan 13, 2010
20,387
11,176
113
To the OP you might qualify for one of these exemptions. No idea how this works in practice but might be worth a shot.

https://www.boee.iowa.gov/enter-teaching-profession-iowa

Career and Technical Authorization. This route requires hours of experience to teach in career and technical fields (no degree required). 6000 experience hours (approximately three years) or 4000 experience hours (if the applicant also has a bachelor’s degree) are required. Applicants can begin teaching immediately, and short courses in basic pedagogy are completed online. This is a highly successful alternative program which fills a great need in Iowa including but not limited to areas such as construction, drafting, welding, mechanics, military, electricity, culinary, agriculture, engineering, technology, and many more.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Sigmapolis

Cyclones_R_GR8

Well-Known Member
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Feb 10, 2007
22,523
23,951
113
Omaha
Its for the kids. :rolleyes:
giphy.gif
 

madguy30

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2011
49,352
45,944
113
And I have never said remove all teacher licenses. Please quote me if you believe I have. What is the difference between someone with 15 years of teaching experience teaching 3rd grade and 4th grade? My wife would need a different license. How about teaching special ed in a classroom vs teaching special ed as a traveling teacher. Need a different license. Are you a natural leader with an eye for detail and the ability to communicate with everyone? Want to work in administration? Need a different license. Again, I am not saying let people off the street be a teacher. I am saying we should trust people who have education and experience to look at things with a fresh perspective. Why are you against that?

Where are you seeing people need a different license between 3rd and 4th grade and special ed in the classroom vs. traveling? Never seen that specific of detail.
 
  • Winner
Reactions: jsb

BCClone

Well Seen Member.
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Sep 4, 2011
61,203
55,652
113
Not exactly sure.
The worst part of the education license is the the requirement that you have to teach X years to be a Superintendent. In our school the Principals determine the basic education needs and the Sup will go strictly off financials. Dude doesn't understand financials very well because he went to school to be a PE teacher and his business background is weak, but they were limited in the candidates since it was a smaller school and rolled with him since he was considered local.
 

Cycsk

Year-round tailgater
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Aug 17, 2009
26,836
14,636
113
Abraham Lincoln spent less than 12 months in formal schooling his entire life.

He became an attorney the old-fashioned way -- he started as an entry-level clerk in a law office, learned on the job, and eventually passed the bar exam. He never had anything resembling an undergraduate education, much less three years in law school.

He did alright for himself.

My wife is a doctor. She told me that maybe 1% of her undergraduate training and maybe 10% of her training form medical school is relevant to what she does on a daily basis. She actually learned how to be a doctor on the job during her residency, and she has long maintained her hospital rotations her third and fourth year of medical school did a lot more to prepare her for the real world of it than anything in the classroom in first and second years.

So what must be the point of all these hoops you have to jump through?


Nailed in. So many of these are just a modern form of a medieval guild.

Guilds of merchants and craft workers were formed in medieval Europe so that their members could benefit from mutual aid, production standards could be maintained, competition was reduced and, by acting collectively, a certain political influence could be achieved.

https://www.ancient.eu/Medieval_Guilds/

Do I think that doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers should learn the rudiments of their profession before being unleashed on an unsuspecting public? Sure do.

I am just not sure they really learn those in classrooms or during the licensing process. They probably learn it, like the most of us actually do, while doing it.


In most fields, most people learn most of what they need to know on the job. So, why don't we organize higher education around jobs? It is because of a false notion of how college helps you "grow up into a mature citizen." Maybe once upon a time, but now the crisis of prolonged adolescence dominates the undergraduate experience (and I don't like the idea of wiping out the student loan debt that has been used to fund it).

About the closest to "learning on the job" in formal higher education is coop education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_education

Most online programs could be made so much better if they were structured to take advantage of learning opportunities for people who already have positions in their field, but alas, most online programs provide a similar abstract, impractical approach that tries to mimic the traditional instead of leveraging the reality that students are in the midst of real life learning communities.
 
  • Disagree
  • Agree
Reactions: alarson and mb7299

Sigmapolis

Minister of Economy
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Aug 10, 2011
24,782
36,505
113
Waukee
To the OP you might qualify for one of these exemptions. No idea how this works in practice but might be worth a shot.

https://www.boee.iowa.gov/enter-teaching-profession-iowa

Career and Technical Authorization. This route requires hours of experience to teach in career and technical fields (no degree required). 6000 experience hours (approximately three years) or 4000 experience hours (if the applicant also has a bachelor’s degree) are required. Applicants can begin teaching immediately, and short courses in basic pedagogy are completed online. This is a highly successful alternative program which fills a great need in Iowa including but not limited to areas such as construction, drafting, welding, mechanics, military, electricity, culinary, agriculture, engineering, technology, and many more.

My father-in-law did something like this in Florida.

He went from an engineer (electrical engineering from Madison) to a high school calculus teacher with what amounted to a single summer course and boom, in the classroom.
 

3TrueFans

Just a Happily Married Man
Sep 10, 2009
58,984
52,499
113
44
Ames
And I have never said remove all teacher licenses. Please quote me if you believe I have. What is the difference between someone with 15 years of teaching experience teaching 3rd grade and 4th grade? My wife would need a different license. How about teaching special ed in a classroom vs teaching special ed as a traveling teacher. Need a different license. Are you a natural leader with an eye for detail and the ability to communicate with everyone? Want to work in administration? Need a different license. Again, I am not saying let people off the street be a teacher. I am saying we should trust people who have education and experience to look at things with a fresh perspective. Why are you against that?
She would need a different certificate or endorsement, the license is the same. Teaching 1st graders is not the same as teaching high school subjects. Just like teaching just about anything isn't the same as teaching special ed.

It sounds like your wife only has a PK-3 endorsement?
 
  • Agree
Reactions: SoapyCy

1UNI2ISU

Well-Known Member
Jan 30, 2013
6,781
8,567
113
Waterloo
Wait, weren't you moving to Des Moines on a whim a couple weeks ago and now a career change on a whim?

I mean this in the nicest way possible. You need to sit down and really evaluate where you are in life versus where you want to be. I'm not sure running to a message board is your best play here.
 

Cycsk

Year-round tailgater
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Aug 17, 2009
26,836
14,636
113
A few years ago, I knew someone who couldn't be hired to coach a high school team until completing a college-level "coaching" course, even though having a resume that included coaching a Big 12 team to NCAA championship competition!

Paper credentials are meaningless if we don't pay attention to the actual person. No one ever questioned the "credentials" of the doctors at Michigan State and Ohio State, but a little bit of monitoring would likely have exposed what was really happening.
 

ghyland7

Well-Known Member
SuperFanatic
SuperFanatic T2
Sep 8, 2012
515
1,321
93
Hello. I teach band at a public high school in North Central Iowa.

Licenses are earned through certain requirements from coursework and/or teaching experience. Most states, including Iowa, have some sort of requirement of taking a course based on the history of education in that particular state. If a teacher were to come in from out of state, they would have to take a course, or potentially multiple courses depending on the licensure requirements of the state they come from. That being said, the BoEE offers programs to teachers moving in from out of state; most can apply and use a temporary license for a few years while finishing any other requirements for Iowa's license. This can almost always be easily done during summers and nights if the candidate already has a teaching license in another state.

Personally, I technically have two endorsements; Music K-7, and Music 5-12. Almost every high school band director/choir director I know has those same endorsements. The requirements to earn these endorsements are in the classroom, taking a cumulative exam (Praxis), and a certain amount of experience in the classroom, which is met for most teachers during their collegiate career with student teaching/practicum, or upon renewal from their actual teaching experience.

Most endorsements have a breakpoint depending on grade level; as I said before, music splits into two categories, K-7 and 5-12. These are not meant to be punitive or gatekeeping in any way; teaching elementary music is vastly different from teaching an instrumental ensemble in the upper grades.

Working with students at different grade levels can have incredibly different experiences. While it's often easy to make fun of all the red tape, teaching special ed at the HS level is nothing like teaching general mathematics in third grade, other than the low pay. In order to get your educational license, you must take certain coursework, regardless of endorsement. You must pass a background check, and you must pass a general test covering (mostly) developmental psych, and educational theory/foundations. You then get endorsements in whichever content areas you wish to teach.

Perhaps as a licensed teacher this makes me biased, but in teaching, you must have mastery of your material and subject. Your job is to teach and pass on that information to the students in an interesting, engaging, memorable way, whilst simultaneously teaching them the soft skills necessary to succeed after secondary school. I do not see an issue at all in requiring certain licensure in order to teach certain courses. Frankly, I find many of the responses here indicative of the public sentiment towards teachers; "anyone could do it! Why are we paying for babysitters?!"

That being said, there are avenues and opportunities to earn a teaching license without having the specific education degree; I do not know the ins-and-outs of these, as I am a more traditional teacher, but I am aware that Iowa allows professionals who have the want and passion to work with young people the opportunity to do so. I would suggest contacting the Iowa BoEE with further inquiries.