For the longest time, I've avoided becoming a full-blown teacher, despite the fact that many of my relatives are or were wonderful teachers and had rewarding careers. I've always been attracted to the profession though and all it has to offer. I love helping people of all walks of life and from all over the world. I love learning languages and other topics and sharing what I've learned with others. I enjoyed creating my own lessons in Ecuador when I taught English to young adults (even though I had no training). I loved co-teaching middle school girls a color guard routine for the Salty Sea Days Parade back in high school. I currently enjoy solving different grammar mysteries or sharing helpful community resources with the adult immigrant and refugee students I advise.
While I was in Ecuador this last trip in March (before I got horribly sick with a strange form of something like "Atahualpa's Revenge"), I was told that I'd be a great teacher. I decided to look into this idea further and finally follow my roots. First I had to find out what it would take to become a teacher in Washington State. Three months later and after reading oodles of paperwork and websites, I found a few programs that fit what I'm most interested in, which is teaching ESL, Spanish and bilingual education. It's quite a complicated process to become a certified teacher in Washington State, but teaching in the K-12 system was recommended to me by an experienced community college teacher and friend who thought there'd be more a chance of getting a full time position in the public schools. (Getting a full time position teaching ESL in the community colleges is nearly impossible.)
One amazing program at Seattle Pacific University is for a Masters Degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, along with a K-12 teaching certificate in ESL. If I decided to go with this program, I could also take a few extra classes in order to get my Spanish teaching endorsement and possibly Bilingual Education endorsement. The MA TESOL plus teaching certificate program takes 2-3 years to complete in the evenings after work. A wonderful aspect of having my MA in TESOL is that I would have the ability to teach in the community colleges (at least part time) or abroad and I would also have my teaching certificate to be able to teach in an elementary, middle or high school. In our current economy with numerous hiring freezes, having more options sounds like the safer way to go.
I haven't decided what age group I would prefer to teach though. I really enjoy working with different age groups. I taught an Earth Day lesson in my dear friend, Julie's adult ESL class this past spring. I've taught young military adults English in Ecuador. I've worked with middle school girls before. I observed recently at the dual language elementary school, Woodin in Bothell in the Kindergarten, 1st grade and 2nd grade classes and absolutely loved seeing the American and Latino children reading in Spanish!
Gaining literacy in your native language and a second language is such an important issue to me. And there's a really neat program on Bilingual/Bicultural development for Preschool through Elementary school at Goddard College in Vermont. It's a low-residency program, so I would only have to go to Vermont twice a year for a week and then work on my own the rest of the semester with a faculty advisor. Goddard focuses on social justice and progressive education which sounds excellent to me and a great way to incorporate cultural competency in my teaching! The flexibility of the program--working on my own versus commuting to class several times a week would cut down on time, but I would also have to be very dedicated and not procrastinate. I think the program would probably take 3 or 4 semesters, but I still need to find out if there's a way to get certified through Washington State, even though the college is in Vermont.
Western Washington University also has a great program for a Masters in Teaching Secondary Education, where I may be able to get my Spanish teaching endorsement, but in order to get an ESL endorsement, I would have to go to Bellingham (3 hours north of here) or study at a different school for the endorsement. I also have to translate my syllabi from the classes I took in Ecuador 10 years ago to find out if those classes would count towards the Spanish teaching endorsement requirements at WWU.
So my big debate is deciding between focusing on teaching ESL and/or Spanish to various age groups versus teaching both languages in a bilingual elementary school. Unfortuantely there aren't very many dual language schools in the Seattle area, so jobs may be hard to come by. I'm planning on volunteering in the classroom more regularly next school year to help me decide. The biggest difference between both interests is that teaching in a dual language elementary school usually requires an elementary education teaching endorsement. If I study in the SPU program, I would have an ESL endorsement but not an elementary education endorsement. The elementary education endorsement requires a wide variety of classes, from lab science to math so I would probably have to take more classes. And my main interest is teaching languages.
I found an exciting 4 day course at the Washington Academy of Languages in Seattle, near SPU, that is offered this summer on Teaching World Languages. I'm hoping to get funding to take the class through Professional Development funds at my work. This will also help me to see if teaching Spanish is more my passion. I'm really fond of all of these areas--teaching ESL, Spanish language and bilingual education. But it might be smarter to focus on one of these so I can complete my degree faster and then be able to start teaching!
This month I'm going to start teaching my very own adult ESL class through Hopelink as a volunteer on Tuesday nights in Bothell. My class will be a level 1 class of Spanish-speakers. I'm excited for the challenge and to be able to plan my own class again! Hopefully this experience will also help guide me to the best path in teaching.
