How to Get Public School Certification

When we started contemplating a departure from NYC, the first thing we had to consider was my ability to get a job. Since I never got my public school certification, this meant three possibilities:
1. Get a job in a private school,
2. Find a different job, or
3. Get my certification.

I should have gotten my certification out of the way years ago, but I neglected for over a decade to send in the passing test result of my National Teacher's Exam, taken back in 1992, and in the years since then had never needed the certification. Luckily I held on to my certification file thruout all of our moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn and then to New Paltz.

Since public school jobs seemed unlikely, I looked into private schools, but it turns out that Manhattan and Brooklyn are pretty special in the number of private schools they contain. I expected that there only would be a few privates north of NYC, but it turns out that the number is closer to zero. I managed to find a great school in Pawling called Mizzentop, but the pay wasn't quite what I was looking for. Nonetheless, I figured that I could augment my income thru tutoring, so I accepted a job there as a math teacher, grades 7-8.

I didn't give up my attempt to become certified, however. Every so often I called Albany to see about the application. Amazingly, I got thru to someone during a call back in sept of 2005, and she explained that I was likely to be grandfathered in (the NTE is no longer administered) as long as I sent in an application, a money order for $100, a copy of my exam, and a detailed letter. She warned that the process could take 14-18 weeks.

Sure enough, in week 18 I got a note from the state's bureau of education: I needed to update my fingerprints. By now it was February, but it took me over a month to schedule a time for the fingerprinting. That experience was pretty frustrating (involving, among other things, a mad dash to get a money order for $1), but at last I'd gotten in all of the required parts of the application; now all I had to do was wait.

And wait I did. I called Albany and was bumped from person to person till I talked with someone who told me that the fingerprint checking process, which normally takes 3 weeks, was about 8 weeks behind schedule. So I waited some more.

By now the job at that private school in Pawling had fallen thru and I was getting no nibbles from my public school job applications, so I started looking into some Manhattan private schools. I almost got one job at Nightengale, and I was offered a few others that didn't appeal as much, but in the end I decided simply to tutor in Manhattan, commuting back and forth daily but spending most of my free time in New Paltz with Shirra. This decision came about in June of this year.

A couple months later, I had chance encounter with a great friend of mine who happened to go into politics shortly after college. Some time later, I read about how a local woman had gotten help with her certification by calling her local representative. I thouht it might be worth a try, so I phoned my buddy and mentioned my certification. A few days later, a man from his office called me for a few specifics, and the next day, I was officially certified as a teacher.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, but I have a feeling that I don't want to know.