Hi, nice to meet you!

Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Miss Nichols, and I’ll be teaching you what it’s like to become a teacher by Alternate Route certification in New Jersey.

What I’m not doing: The traditional route that most people take is a university program that ends with a semester of student teaching. Students come out of this program with a “CEAS” - “Certificate of Eligibility with Advanced Standing.” Additionally, many programs include extra teaching courses, and result in a Master’s degree in Education.

• The main difficulty of this system is that you’re a student the entire time, paying tuition, and having little to no time for paid work.

• The benefit is that you come out of it with experience and confidence, because you actually got to teach for most of a semester!

What I am doing: I decided that Alternate Route certification was more practical for my own life. What’s that? Alternate route is when you skip the student teaching and instead apply for a “CE” - a “Certificate of Eligibility” (that doesn’t mention your standing). This means that you’re fully certified to teach your own classes (and get paid to do it!). You’ll have to take (at least) one teaching course, and you’ll work with a mentor for awhile, but they’re not going to be in the class with you every day like with student teaching. You meet with them to discuss lesson plans and any issues you may be having.

• The drawback is that you’re teaching your own class from the start, which is a lot of responsibility. If you have 6 classes a day, with 25 students per class, that’s 150 young minds whose progress in your subject is 100% your responsibility. That’s a lot of pressure.

• The benefit is that you’re actually getting paid.

As I said before, Alternate route was the practical choice for me. I weighed the pros and cons, and decided that I can do it. Sure, it will be hard. It’ll be scary, but I can handle it, to make my dreams come true!