Alternative Certification for High School Teachers

Alternate
Other, different
Certification
Process of granting Official Document attesting the truth of a claim

Yesterday I gave a presentation at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois, to qualify for an alternative certification license to teach middle school and high school in the state of Illinois.

I do not know the decision the jury is going to reach. I am sure I still have plenty of work before I can claim that I am a certified high school science teacher. Nevertheless I write here some thoughts on the process of alternative certification and the state of science teaching in high school.

Alternate means that I did not take four years of courses in the education department of an accredited university in the United States. I did take four years of courses at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City in Communications and Electronics Engineering. Am I qualified to teach physics to high school students in Illinois?

If any of my current students is reading this, he or she is a better person to answer. I believe I am and this is why. 

I love physics precisely because it explains physical happenings. I want to explain to everybody how is it that I understand physical phenomena. Have I succeeded in helping high school students understand physics?

The answer to that question in part has to do with the second question I want to answer here. Science teaching in my school has at least one problem I can see. Not all the students in the classroom are that interested in this knowledge. 

The next step for me is to make it relevant to them. When I post a story that makes it to the top forty list of digg.com I will know that I have succeeded; keep coming back to this blogspot, I will announce the event.