Secondary Credential Advisor -- In Name Only

I enrolled in a local state university to earn my teaching credential, about one semester after having received my bachelor's degree.

I was briefly flirting with a legal career, but after viewing much of the grunt work that young lawyers have to do with, plus the overweening arrogance of many judicial officers and the harsh demeanor of the other officers of the court, I decided to go back to the teaching track.

I wanted to be a French teacher because I liked learning French. I liked speaking it, and I wanted to share this interest with others. My French teacher my senior year let me teach my French class for one week, which was very successful. Some of the students thought that I did a better job than the full-time instructor.

So, I had high hopes that I could do this teaching thing. I did not have a lot of experience beyond what I had done in high school and a six-month stint in a preschool.

That would prove crucial to affecting whether I would have continued in the profession.

Another factor was the secondary credential advisor, a walking stereotype of New York Jewish disgust, one who felt called to pump up her own imperiousness and seriousness, a graduate instructor who refused to accept final assignments half an hour late, who prided herself on correcting people who dared to call her by her first name.

This woman held in her delicate hands my future, and she did not hold it very well.

For one thing, she had never taught middle school or high school. "I don't particularly care for teenagers," she commented off-hand, yet it shook me completely. If she had such little interest in young people, what business did she have overseeing a program to prepare the next generation to teach the next generation?

Because she had never taught high school, whatever advice she felt pressed to give us teachers-in-training was absolutely useless. For example, she told every student teacher to step in right away, taking as much control over the classroom as possible. That is the most ludicrous of ideas. A new teacher cannot just step into another teacher's classroom, a different culture with a different student feel, expecting to take over right away. Much of the time, the students spend more time schooling the student teacher than the other way around. Could it be otherwise -- the kids know the school, the culture, the ins and outs far better than the visiting teacher. At least two weeks should pass before a student teacher steps in. I learned this fact of life the hard way.

My credential advisor's disdain of anyone who did not share her point of view was also troubling, nothing like what an educated mind manifests. She acted as if she knew every neighborhood from San Clemente to El Segundo just because she had the sociological imagination to guess that poor kids were more likely to take orders and their parents would never complain. She made a particular stink about this during my student teaching assignment, when one parent complained. "One parent complaining ikn a working class neighborhood is like five parents complaining in a middle class or upper class neighborhood."

In reality, parents across the economic spectrum are getting vocal, complaining about the poor education that they and their children have to tolerate, while the state wastes the funds that it disperses on unnecessary administrative costs and teacher training that has nothing to do with instilling skill and confident in today's teachers. But I digress. . .

My credential advisor was a real piece of work, a woman who basked in her own negative publicity, fired up about how she intimidated other people. I thought she was a caricature, someone whom I had little use for, and certainly received little worthy advice from.