Teachers: Where do you pick up your recertification credits?

[Hillary in KS]

We're new to the area, and are about an hour from a large city. I called the local school district, and they said most teachers take classes online, or out-of-town over the summer.

 

The out-of-town part is not possible for me. But I can apparently take credits from any accredited online college.

 

So, where do you get your credits?

 

Thanks!

[BamaTanya]

I was able to take advantage of some free (but not online) courses over the years. One was through a special grant to help prepare early childhood teachers in special education and another was through the National Writing Project. Earlier in my career I took university classes sponsored by National Geographic. Good luck!

[Jeanne in MN]

Here are things I've done and used for CEUs:

 

-Homeschool conferences/workshops

-MN Master Naturalist conference

-HS support group meetings. I created a form and had our leader sign it.

-Our church has workshops for religious ed. instructors which I can use. A recent one was on mental illness in youth.

-The school, community ed. or Health Services sometimes have courses that will work.

-You can attend your school's inservice days. (At least I was told I could here.)

-Project Wild, Wet, Learning Tree, etc.

-A program on how to use photography in the classroom.

-Volunteer coaching

 

-Volunteer teaching I've done for:

Boy Scouts

Interpretive Programming at our State Park

MN Master Naturalist courses that I teach

I've taught Religious Ed. classes too, but I haven't tried to use those because I've heard they won't accept that.

 

In MN the schools have a license renewal committee that goes through our paperwork and decides if what we've done is enough and/or acceptable. Perhaps your local ISD has a committee, with a head person, too that would have ideas?

 

Some of our requirements for license renewal include leaning signs of early onset mental illness, curriculum adaption, modification, positive behaviorial intervention strategies, etc. For those I explained how I constantly adapt and modify curriculum for my kids and how and I actually read books on the others.

 

Check environmental learning centers, science centers, Extension offices,-any place you can think of that might have teacher training workshops. We have U of MN experiment stations around the state that offer education workshops for teachers. There may be classes through community ed. that would work. Find other teachers in your area and ask them for ideas.

 

Don't be afraid to BE CREATIVE! Good luck!