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None of the ACP programs are any better than the
others as far as finding a job. A principal will look at
your resume and quickly find that you weren't trained
at a college or university. Some principals have a bias
against teachers who were not trained through a
university.

I would strongly recommend Texas Teachers because
they have a clinical teaching option, which is very
much like student teaching. Elementary teachers are a
dime a dozen, unless you know someone who is an
administrator who can hire you, you will otherwise be
waiting a very long time to get an internship in
elementary. There are lots of elementary teachers
coming out of universities who are fully certified. Why
hire an intern at full salary who has a few weeks of
seminars and hasn't seen the inside of a classroom
since they were a student?

If you must do the internship route due to financial
reasons, even if you want to ultimately teach
elementary, you would be better certifying in special
education or ESL just to do the internship and get
certified.

The Texas Teacher route is pretty simple. You apply,
and once you are accepted and pay the initial fee, you
get a letter from them that allows you to start looking
for an internship (job). It's not too late for some high
needs areas that are almost all special education or
ESL vacancies.

Once you get the letter you are approved to take the
content area certification exam. Most of these can be
taken year round, and are administered online. The
exams are 5 hours long. You need to take the exams
for certification and to demonstrate highly qualified
status.

At the time of admission into the program you have to
choose whether to do your seminars online or do
them in person. The online seminars you can do on
your own time and at your own pace, but there are
points in the presentations that you have to respond
to questions. If you do the in person seminars you
only need to attend and sit in the room to complete
the program.

Once you have an internship, you will apply for a 1
year probationary certificate and will start working.
Texas Teachers will assign you an internship
supervisor who will observe your teaching once
during each semester. Your school will also assign you
a faculty member to be your mentor. At the end of the
year you must score satisfactory on your T-TESS
(formally PDAS) and your principal makes a final
recommendation to approve you for certification

Near the end of your internship in April or May you will
be approved to take the PPR exam. This is the exam
certification programs are evaluated on. Texas
Teachers takes it very seriously. If you fail you have to
do some test preparation workshops with Texas
Teachers. You may only take the PPR a total of three
times, after that you can no longer receive approval to
register for and take the exam, and without passing
the exam you can not be certified.

If everything goes well you will be able to apply for the
Standard certificate.

The other option is clinical teaching. This is a 12 week
program in a school where you work with another
teacher directly in their classroom. You are basically
an assistant teacher. In the beginning you mostly do
observations for a few weeks in different classrooms,
and more and more take over responsibilities in the
classroom, by the end of the 12 weeks you're
essentially running the class by yourself for a week,
though the supervising teacher is still in the room.

Aside from the reduced time commitment of only 12
weeks, you must pay for the entire program upfront. If
you obtain an internship Texas Teachers will do a
payroll reduction during the internship.
You also have less of a workload. You aren't creating
daily lessons, grading assignments, or a lot of the
everyday things teachers do to teach every day.
Lastly, you have a little more time to take the
certification exams. You don't need a probationary
certificate to do clinical teaching so you can wait on
the content exam. You won't be certified until you take
both the PPR and content exam, but you can schedule
them at the end of the clinical teaching over the
winter/summer break if you want to.

It's not too late for clinical teaching and it's the only
way I see you getting elementary education certified
anytime soon.

It wasn't difficult for me to find a job when I did mine,
but my area was health science technology. I know a
LOT of teachers in elementary who applied for the
program and waited and waited before getting
certified in something else just so they could get an
internship.

If you want a better program, I would recommend a
Post-Bachelor's program. These are 1 year (Summer,
Fall, Spring, Summer) programs offered by education
departments in colleges and universities. They are
basically a minor in education (15-18 hours) plus
student teaching. Of course you pay tuition but you
qualify for financial aid (student loans and a little bit of
grant money), there are some scholarships for math
and science at certain colleges and universities.
These programs take longer and cost at least twice as
much. It's very difficult and many colleges officially
prohibit you from working during student teaching.

Whatever you learn in Texas Teachers is going to
depend almost entirely on your mentor teacher and
the support you get at your school. The seminars
aren't worth very much, and you don't really practice
anything. You won't learn much in a university either.
You spend a lot of time making lesson plans you aren't
really going to use and studying theories that are
decades old that you will also never use.

On 8/11/16, Casey wrote:
> Hello everyone, I am considering beginning
> a career as a teacher and want to know the
> steps I have to take to receive an
> alternative teaching certification. What
> program is the best? (Easiest or or gives
> me a better chance at getting a job) Ive
> looked at the texasteacher program.has
> anyone done the paid internship route? If
> so how was each part of the process? Was
> it difficult to find a job afterwards? Are
> there any better programs to look at? Also
> is it to late for me to start since school
> is starting in a week or two? I'm looking
> to be certified in elementary in the
> plano/garland area. Thanks for any help!

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