The Green Cup

I signed up recently for one last round of tests in Georgia. I’ve talked elsewhere about my certification.

Georgia has a system that allows teachers to add certifications to their license based on a test (and a test alone). As a special education teacher, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) puts a lot of pressure on me to collect certifications. If I teach math to a 6th grader with a learning disability, I have to be “highly qualified” in learning disabilities and in middle school math. If I teach social studies to a 9th grader with a disability, I have to be “highly qualified” in that disability area and in high school social studies.

At the moment there are alternatives to full certification in the different content areas, but eventually “highly qualified” will require full certification in a content area.

I’ve taken a number of tests in Georgia and transferred the certifications I earned there back to my West Virginia license. If you’re interested in doing the same thing, the first step is to get a Georgia license. Start by applying for a Georgia license to teach. The application fee was $20. They’re going to want transcripts. You can find the application here: Certification Forms and Applications

To get a Georgia license of any kind today you have to pass the technology exam. It’s a one hour diagnostic test on Word, Access, Excel, Windows, and the Internet. It was free when I took it. You take it at a Georgia RESA office, by appointment.

Georgia uses its own content area tests, the GACE tests. You can register for a GACE online here: http://www.gapsc.com/TeacherTesting.asp.

After you have the certification you want in Georgia, fill out the paperwork to get it recognized in your own state.

In the past year or so, I’ve gotten certified in Georgia (and then in West Virginia) in elementary education (including preK), middle school math, middle school social studies, reading (preK-adult), and a variety of special education areas (including autism). On my next trip to Georgia I’ll take the tests for high school English and middle school language arts.

The visit went well. My eye doctor said that my vision had change very little since my visit two years ago. And since my current glasses are working fine for me, I get to go a few more years with just those reading glasses…

I remember as a teenager that I had reading glasses. I have no idea what happened to them – when exactly I got them or when they disappeared. It seems to me that they were corrective, designed so that if I wore them I eventually wouldn’t need them anymore. By my mid-twenties they were gone…

In the summer of 2004 I took nine graduate hours. I’d moved out of higher ed jobs into the public school classroom and I was trying to become fully certified in special education. I’d always been a bit far sighted. I could read the billboards down the highway before anyone else in the car. But I needed a book to be a good 20 inches or so from my face in order to read it comfortably.

After I started taking classes for certification, 20 inches became two feet. Then two feet because 27 inches. Soon my arms were too short for me to read the paper…

I managed to spread my classes out so that I only took a course a semester for a time. Then in the summer of 2006 I took nine hours again. One of the classes was three semester hours in 15 days. At the end of the summer I visited an eye doctor and got my first pair of glasses as an adult.

My eye doctor tried at the time to convince me to get bifocals. I would walk around with glasses always on my face. And there, in the bottom half of them, I’d have the magnification I needed for reading. I got reading glasses instead.

Tomorrow I see the doc again. (I guess tomorrow has already come, since it’s after midnight.) It’s been two years and he sent me a postcard saying I should come in. It’s hard to ignore a postcard from a doctor. So I called and made an appointment.

I can still see everything I ever could. Well, most of the time. If I concentrate. If I don’t concentrate, then I can’t even find the raisins in my cereal. I suppose the time has come. We’ll see what tomorrow holds…