Certified School Teachers?

Out of curiousity, are there any certified school teachers that frequent this forum? B.Ed., M.Ed., certification, endorsements, ect.?

Are you insinuating that there are quallified teachers in Taiwan? :noway:

They frequent infrequently. I work with fully certified teachers who come on here on occasion, but don’t post.

A B. Ed. does not qualify you to teach EFL. :raspberry:

:loco:

What’s your deal?

Stating that the game can be played by jumping in and learning by experience is true. Same can be said for trying to be doctor. Sure you can learn on your feet with no training in medicine but the mortality curve, especially for your patients/students, will be extremely sh#tty.

A B.Ed does not make an individual qualified to teach. The credential that accompanies it will. Speaking a foreign language and having a teaching credential will make and individual more than qualified to teach non-native speakers English, and every other subject as well. A 100 hour TESL course does not make a teacher or a generic BA/BS. But I’m not here to argue either point.

I’m just curious, if there are any folks in Taiwan, teaching English with a similar education background and credentials. Like-minded people enjoy spending time with like-minded people.

[quote=“taiwanisfunny”]
A B.Ed does not make an individual qualified to teach. [/quote]

No piece of paper makes anyone a good teacher. We have all experienced a qualified but inept teacher. It is a vocation and some people with 4 degrees can’t kept a child interested for more than 1 second. As a supervisor of trainee teachers going through certification you have to tell some that despite their enthusiasm and hard work they just don’t have “it” and it would be unprofessional to expose youngsters to them for extended periods. Some people in Taiwan are doing ‘on the job’ teacher training and will probably excel as teachers back in their ‘home’ countries.

I think we’ve had this discussion a few hundred times already.

Anyone with a similar background want to share thoughts with the OP, like she originally asked?

Looks like this is the one hundred and first time this topic will get discussed. The teaching snobs need to get it through their skulls that a degree that trained you to teach public school subjects to western learners, in a specific location, in a western country doesn’t make you any more qualified to teach EFL in Asia than any other degree holder. The only real credential is experience.

Just for the heck of it, I called a small school near the boarder of Arizona and Mexico and asked them what would be better on a resume if I wanted to get a job working with non-native speakers in their school district.

  1. Experience in ESL in Asia
    Master of ABC songs and Uno
    No formal education degree or training
    No credential

  2. Fluent in Spanish and Mandarin
    B.Ed in Elementary Childhood Education
    Real bi-lingual and esl endorsements
    Relevent professional teaching experience

They chose #2. Suprised?

All I wanted to know was if there were any formally trained and certified teachers who frequented this website. Please don’t cop an attitude with me. If you want to feel that your few years of singing ABC songs and doin’ the dance makes you equal to a properly trained Western or Chinese teacher, then go right ahead. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, regardless of how wrong they may be.

This website was refered to me through an aquaintence as I was hoping to make contact with another elementary school teacher so that I may do an artifact exchange with their students. Currently I’m teaching 4th grade with 1/2 of my 24 students speaking English as their second language. I have a mixture of Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian students in my class. Thanks for the lecture though. I’ll pass it on to the human resources department for my district to let them know that if they ever get a resume from Taiwan, immediately give that person a job. Obviously they know much more than us about ESL eduction.

Keep workin’ the crowd Taiwanisfun. Keep workin’ it. Oh yeah, you’ve got 'em now. In the palm of your hand. You sure know how to ask for help, baby. Oh yeah. :laughing:

Yes, thanks Taiwanisfunny for your lecture on credentialism. Thanks also for your innapropriately rude response.

From the sound of things, you are not in this country anyway.

You have no idea what kind of teaching experience I possess. I do, think, however, that someone who has a degree form a western country, speciallizing in teaching grade school in the west is no more qualified for the type of teaching encountered here. The skill sets required for it are totally different.

If I were in charge of hiring for a school here who would I choose:

  1. Newly graduated B.Ed from a western country
    No esl specialty or experience in front of a class of esl learners
    No Chinese skills
    No experience living abroad or knowledge of local culture and customs
  2. Person with degree in English literature, linguistics or even a guy with no degree at all and married to a Taiwanese (so has a spousal ARC)
    Several years of living here
    Years of experience teaching esl learners here
    knowledge of local cuture and customs
    relates well with people here
    conversant in Mandarin
    I would take 2. Surprised? You as a credentialist would be. I, on the other hand advocate a more practical assessment of who is ‘qualified’ to teach here.

Nobody proves that to be true, better than you.

[quote=“taiwanisfunny”]
Obviously they know much more than us about ESL eduction.[/quote]

Well, yeah…of course.

No, we are not certified, we’re just teachers! Just happened one morning…was quite awful…realized I’d become a teacher overnight. Taiwanisfunny has the audacity to assume that teachers here are qualified, certified, diligent, reputable people. God damn! Don’t you know we’re all a bunch of loosers who can’t even spell losers living off the fat of this land?

Maybe you’d noticed there’s a special thread here called Teaching English in Taiwan with hundreds of questions and issues and topics being discussed as I’m typing this…and it’s for guys like me…not certified.

People are attacking him for asking a question. I don’t get it. He was simply asking (originally) if there were any certified teachers who frequent the site. Not, whether or not certified teachers better qualified to teach English in Taiwan. Don’t worry, they are not flocking here by the thousands to take your jobs. Say it with me…

Calm down.

TS, I would also go with candidate number 2, but as you were trying to to show, because a teacher here involves more than being in a classroom. It involves being able to survive here. No teaching certification is going to guarantee that someone will not go through absolute culture shock upon arriving here. But other factors aside, teaching is a profession. You wouldn’t go to a hairdresser or a therapist who learned the trade out of a few books from Caves and week-long course
(by Harry Cotton, Ph.D.)
and expect to walk away unscathed. Maybe you’d go for something minor, but certainly not for something serious.
On the plus side, many of the people who are enrolled in English schools are not enrolled as seriously as, say a parent who enrolls their child into one of the international schools, thus why those schools require certified teachers with international experience whereas a buxiban is more willing to overlook professional training and at other factors that they feel quantify a good teacher (even if those two factors are 1. blonde hair and 2. blue eyes).

The doctor analogy is false. No one walks out of med school straight into the emergency room with no experience. Would-be doctors have to spend several years interning as assistants before they’re allowed to practice on their own. Even I knew that. You need to watch more reruns of ER more often before you shoot your mouth off about the medical profession.

Aren’t most serious professions like that? The degree + experience. Everybody has to do their apprenticeship with the masters before they’re set loose to fly airplanes and do brain surgery and defend accused murderers in court. Even journalists have to sweat out as cub reporters before they’re allowed to handle the serious stuff, and that hardly counts as a serious ‘profession’.

I agree. The doctor comparison doesn’t hold up as doctors need experience and not just a degree. Another point I made and will make again is there is very little in a standard BEd course (unless they did an esl specialty) that applies to what we are doing here in Asia. Imaniou talks about international schools. Yes, they require BEds, but that is because they are teaching western subjects to foreign passport holders.
A BEd does not, however, make you qualified to teach any goup of people any subject anywhere in the world. I come from a family of teachers. I know what training a BEd receives. I’d love to see a fresh elementary BEd grad try to handle an adult business English class in Taiwan. It’s laughable to say that person is the most qualified “teacher” to handle that job. A scene repeated often at my buxiban: newbie who can’t even find his way down the street yet walks in and claims that he is a “real teacher” because he has a BEd. He then turns and asks me for help planning his lessons and for esl classroom activities. “But I thought you were the ‘real teacher?’”

Imaniou - Thanks for your responses.

Why is it that when someone compares experience to education it is always someone who has years of experience paired with the freshly graduated noob?

Common guys, everyone knows that a certain amount of years makes up for a lack of education when applying for a job, but it can’t take the place of an education.

TS - please don’t play this game with me. I know what you’re doing because I used to play the same game years ago and have moved on. I’ve already spent several years in Asia, part of the time in Taipei. Now I’m married, with a Taiwanese wife, who loves living in the USA… who is also a school teacher here, an educated and certified ESL specialist.

A B.Ed in Education usually focuses from K-8. If you want to teach above 8th, and in many places, above 6th, you will need a BA or BS in your prefered field plus an additional year of course work for certification and field experience. You are right about having difficulty with a regular B.Ed and teaching business English courses as that would require an additional two years of study for a MA, M.Ed or MS in a specific field plus field experience to teach at the college level but you already knew that because you come from a family of educators, right?

Lesson planning is much more than organizing your week with games and activities. Of course the individual with the B.Ed should be confused as hell when asked to plan an lesson at a buxiban. Wait a second… why am I even talking about buxibans? That has nothing to do with my original question.

What annoys me is that with two MAs, a Ph.D (in Foreign Language Education), five years of teaching experience in Taiwan (colleges, universities and government training centers) and a year of high school teaching experience here in the States (without actually killing or maiming anyone including my AP), I am still not considered qualified to teach high school in New York State. They are sobbing about the shortage of teachers, but I’m not about to sit through the inane content of what they consider to be “certification classes” like “Foundations of Education” and “Psychology of Adolescents.” Now, if I were military, everything would be cool…the weird thing is, I’m qualified to TEACH the courses they are demanding I take, but they won’t give me credit for them or exempt me from them.

Sometimes I think Taiwan isn’t the only logic-optional place going… :loco:

[quote=“taiwanisfunny”]

Lesson planning is much more than organizing your week with games and activities. Of course the individual with the B.Ed should be confused as hell when asked to plan an lesson at a buxiban. Wait a second… why am I even talking about buxibans? That has nothing to do with my original question.[/quote]

Why are you talking about buxibans? Because this is a forum for teaching in Taiwan. I realize you don’t live here. Perhaps, if you want non-Taiwan themes, you should be posting on non-Taiwan sites.

I’m glad you finally admit that a basic BEd won’t qualify you to teach any group of students any subject anywhere in the world more so than any other combinations of degrees, experiences, skills or qualifications.

Don’t assume everyone is planning only “games and activities” and don’t make a lesson plan sound like brain surgery, it isn’t.

BTW, I majored in English. I’m now teaching English. I believe I’m more qualified to teach my major than someone with a general BEd. In fact, I know so. I’m surrounded by BEds who have no idea how to teach grammar and composition classes properly. “I’m supposed to teach present perfect today. What’s that?” And do you know how easy it would be for me to become “certified” for North American public high school teaching, had I even the slightest interest in doing so (and believe me, I don’t)?

Finally, look to the tone of your posts, your sarcasm, your holier than thou attitude you have taken with me and your all around lack of respect for insight into why I am not being so nice to you.