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It's a decent program, but the biggest problem you will have is that
unless you have friends in a district who can hire you, you will wait
forever and never get an internship in art. You will likely have to do
clinical teaching, to get certified.

The seminars are boring and worthless. I did mine back in the time
when you went for ten days over two weeks all day, nine hours, to a
high school auditorium where there was a thousand of us. Different
professors and speakers came in and gave presentations. We spent a
few hours on the two lesson plan days doing a group poster that was
a lesson outline.
Now there is an online program, but it isn't anymore interesting or
useful. You would learn more just picking up a teaching for dummies
book.
They also organize study groups for the content exams and the PPR,
which if you don't pass the first time you must attend.

My internship wasn't typical, as I did mine in health science
technology and I was the only teacher in the school in my subject. A
biology teacher was my mentor, but she didn't have much time to
mentor me or give me much advice. She spent a hour after school on
my first day going through the lab supply and safety procedures, and
then had me sign a letter that I'd been instructed and trained on the
safety procedures. I never got more than 5 minutes of her time after
that. She left exactly 15 minutes after the last bell. The librarian was
the one that trained me on grade speed, and getting my network
access. The rest was the standard new teacher orientation.

I saw my principal one time for a 360 observation, my AP twice for
my PDAS, and my Texas Teacher's supervisor twice, once during
each semester. The only good thing about that was that I was early in
the observation cycle and had my last and final observation in March
and could then apply for my certificate early. I left the district after
that one year.

It wasn't a bad experience, but I can honestly say I didn't learn much
about teaching or how to work with kids. Texas Teachers got paid
and I got certified, they didn't hold my hand throughout the program
or offer much help. Their advice was to talk to my district
administration. I was very fortunate that the student's in my classes
where there because they wanted to be there. All of them were going
into some allied health program or nursing program after graduation.
In hindsight, it wasn't a very well thought out program initiative. I
taught three classes of health science, and three classes of medical
terminology. Those were the only courses that would be accepted for
dual college credit. Nothing about our program was going to be a
nursing program. The district since then has poured a lot of funding
into the program, and students can now graduate with almost half an
associate's in nursing completed.

There were a lot of people in my program who didn't know their
subject very well, because they really wanted to do something like
art, music, or elementary but they couldn't find jobs in those fields so
they were talked into doing internships in special education or ESL. A
couple people in my training group had degrees in biology but were
doing certification in chemistry, physics and math, because there
wasn't any demand for biology teachers, and they were really
struggling with the material. At that time there wasn't a clinical
teaching option.

My advice is that before you do this you find out what kind of
employment opportunities you have in art or what you are going to
do with it. If you think your going to get certified and then have a
choice of nice school districts to work at in big cities, that's not
realistic. It's not even realistic that you will find a rural charter job in
art. Art teachers tend to stay in the same school and district until
they retire.

On 6/01/16, HeidiA wrote:
> I'm interested in the Alternative Certification Program
> through TexasTeachers.org, also known as A+ Texas Teachers
> org. for teaching art K-12. I would like to get feedback
> about experiences from other participants. Good/bad. I want
> this to be a worthwhile experience. Or If you used a
> different company for your Texas alternative certification,
> please let me know. Thank you!

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