{"id":28546,"date":"2017-08-10T15:49:08","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T20:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=28546"},"modified":"2017-12-01T12:00:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T18:00:20","slug":"teach-first-train-later-becoming-an-emergency-certified-teacher-in-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2017\/08\/10\/teach-first-train-later-becoming-an-emergency-certified-teacher-in-oklahoma\/","title":{"rendered":"Teach First, Train Later: Becoming An Emergency Certified Teacher In Oklahoma"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lindsay<\/p>\n

Emily Wendler \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Lindsay Judd will be one of hundreds of emergency certified teachers taking the helm of Oklahoma classrooms this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Oklahoma schools are becoming more and more reliant on teachers with no training.<\/p>

A lack of school funding, low pay, and waning morale have driven many of the experienced teachers out of the classroom, or out of the state.<\/p>


\n

Superintendent of Mid-Del Schools, Rick Cobb, said he used to have 10 to 15 applicants for every open teaching position. Now he\u2019s lucky if he has two.<\/p>

\u201cYou want to know you\u2019re picking the best person that you can, and that\u2019s hard to do now with the super shallow pool of applicants,\u201d he said.<\/p>

In recent years, schools have been resorting to emergency teaching certifications to fill open positions. These allow schools to hire someone with no teaching experience, and get them in to the classroom as quickly as possible.<\/p>

Normally, a person would have to complete the full certification program before becoming a teacher, but with an emergency certification they can work on the process after being hired.<\/p>

Since 2011, the state has seen a 3,000 percent increase in the number of people taking this accelerated route.<\/p>\n

\u201cI WANT TO DO A GREAT JOB\u201d<\/h3>

Lindsay Judd is a newly-emergency certified teacher in the Mid-Del school district.<\/p>

She\u2019s a former businesswoman with no teaching experience, but will be taking on a second grade class this year at Pleasant Hill Elementary.<\/p>

She said she\u2019s really excited, but also pretty nervous.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m terrified,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge responsibility to be responsible for someone else\u2019s children. And not only their children, but their children\u2019s education. Like, I don\u2019t take that lightly at all.\u201d<\/p>

She feels confident about the classroom management aspect of teaching; she\u2019s got three daughters, and said they\u2019ve given her plenty of practice wrangling children. But she\u2019s got some catching up to do when it comes to the educating kids part of things.<\/p>

\u201cI have to learn how to write a lesson plan, because I don\u2019t have formal training in that,\u201d she said.<\/p>

Before this, Judd worked for the Chamber of Commerce in Midwest City. She liked it, but said it kept her from spending time with her kids, and that\u2019s part of the reason she decided to make the change.<\/p>

When she told her brother \u2014who has a college degree in education and has been teaching for three years\u2014he tried to talk her out of it.<\/p>

\u201cHe said \u2018don\u2019t do it! If I can tell you one thing just don\u2019t do it. It\u2019s not worth it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

Judd says her brother loves his job, but he gets frustrated by the lack of funding and all the testing; two issues that have driven many teachers away from the profession.<\/p>

Judd said she appreciates that he\u2019s trying to protect her, but she\u2019s ready for the challenge.<\/p>

\u201cI want to do a great job. I just want greatness for this classroom,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to just jump ship, I mean, because they are going to rely on me.\u201d<\/p>

To get ready, she\u2019s been reading books, and asking for advice on social media. Her favorite tip so far:<\/p>

\u201cSomebody said it best: my lesson plans are the agenda to the meeting, not the minutes of the meeting.\u201d<\/p>

That\u2019s kind of like saying, it\u2019s OK if things don\u2019t go exactly as planned.<\/p>\n

HARDER THAN YOU THINK<\/h3>

Mid-Del Schools superintendent, Rick Cobb, said an emergency certified teacher\u2019s first couple years can be especially tough, because they\u2019re just jumping in, and don\u2019t get to practice first.<\/p>

\u201cIn my case, I worked out a lot of rough draft problems as a student teacher,\u201d he said. \u201cFiguring out you can do this, you can\u2019t do this, this is what it\u2019s like to be underprepared, while having someone over my shoulder to make sure that I only slipped and I didn\u2019t fall. And so our emergency certified teachers don\u2019t really have that advantage.\u201d<\/p>

Still, he said some of them become rock stars. Others don\u2019t last a week.<\/p>

\u201cThey\u2019re surprised that the job is this hard,\u201d he said.<\/p>

Cobb will have 28 emergency certified teachers in his district this year, but across the state there will be hundreds more. In the past, the school districts with the highest numbers were Oklahoma City Public Schools, Tulsa Public Schools, Putnam City Schools, Lawton Public Schools and Enid Public Schools.<\/p>

Cobb said the hope is that they stay and become long-term teachers, because otherwise the churn can really mess with a school\u2019s climate.<\/p>

State Department of Education data shows a third of emergency certified teachers leave the classroom by year three.<\/p>

Cobb hopes to give all his first-year teachers some extra professional development this year, and intends to start by checking on them at the end of their first day.<\/p>

\u201cYou know, \u2018What was your first day like?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re running out the door with their hair on fire, or they\u2019re kicking themselves for not getting into education sooner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma schools are becoming more and more reliant on teachers with no training.A lack of school funding, low pay, and waning morale have driven many of the experienced teachers out of the classroom, or out of the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":28554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[743],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28546"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28896,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28546\/revisions\/28896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}