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…

Blogging is a literary form. It has become very much a genre in its own right. It’s a growing genre, an influential genre, and it is genre that we need to acquaint students with at an early age.

The word “blog” is a shortened for of the word weblog. The “we” gets amputated from the front of the word. That word formation process is just one example of the new level of creativity that online writing brings to our language.

Blogging has become for literature today something like what keeping a diary was in the 18th and 19th centuries. But not exactly. On the one hand, a blog can be private and personal. On the other hand, it can be designed to promote an opinion, a perspective, or to give advice – to the point of being commercial. It can be closed, accessible only to people you allow to see it. Or it can be very public, easily accessible.

Because blogs have become so numerous and influential, it’s important that students be aware of them and have some understanding of how to evaluate a blog. The skill of discerning fact from opinion is more important now than it has ever been. It’s important that students have some idea of how to find a blog if they want to look at one. Google, for example, has a special search engine that only searches websites it classifies as blogs. And, finally, it is important that students know how to create a blog for themselves if they want to – and that they understand the privacy issues and the liabilities that come with setting themselves up with a blog at a site like MySpace or FaceBook.

I personally think that digital self-expression is a wave of the future that could revive and regenerate the skill of composition in our language. Blogs have a profound impact on literacy in America and we need to be sure our kids are positively impacted by that…