Hi all --

I just found out today that I have definitely been hired as a lateral entry teacher for children in a self-contained special education classroom.

I have NOOO training in education, although I spent the last year working with a little boy as a behavioral therapist in his first grade class -- so I basically got to watch a good veteran teacher go through the ropes with her class.

I'll be teaching 3rd-5th grade kids. My field of expertise is behavioral management, so I'm not too worried about that aspect, and I think I'l enjoy the teaching, but what do I really need to know to do well or at least not make a total idiot of myself????

Wow. Here in Canada, it is hard to become a Teacher, especially at the elementary level.

Teachers College (BEd programs) have very competitive Admissions. :S

Cannot teach w/o the BEd.

Lots of people have their Masters. (A teacher with a Masters starting salary is 44K+.)

I had to look up lateral entry teacher program and I doubt such a thing exists in Canada. We have lots of teachers with education degrees who are waiting in the wings for permanent employment.

amiegrace, I found a site that might be what you are looking for.

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/

I was hired with a Provisional Certification as a Special Ed Teacher in a resource room. For any new Special Ed Teacher, one of the biggest challenges of your career will be the paperwork. IEP's are legal documents and taken very seriously by the Administration b/c of the legal liabilities put on School Systems with IDEA Laws. Even veteran teachers find that the keeping up with the logistics and the paperwork required for a caseload of IEP's is challenging. Not to mention the additional responsibilities of lesson plans and as well as learning the schools system of entering grades into their system. I am not trying to scare you but prepare you. My advice is to solicit help from another caring Special Ed Teacher, hopefully your mentor who will prepare you and guide you in this process. One of the advantages you may possess is the ability to empathize with your students b/c of your own disability. This will help you as far as developing a rapport with the students. Be careful of self-disclosure though and ask for guidance about this issue. Will it benefit the students to know that you have ADHD and are managing to have a successful career? My contract to teach Special Ed was not renewed for the following year due to my inability to manage IEP documentation as effectively as the school administrators expected. Be proactive and good luck. For me, not being successful as a Special Ed Teacher allowed me to evaluate my abilities and limitations as a professional and learn that success as a Special Ed Teacher is sometimes measure by your ability to handle the logistics of IEP documentation not necessarily an accurate measure of your day to dy interactions with the students.
Good Luck,
Jon

I had to look up lateral entry teacher program and I doubt such a thing exists in Canada. We have lots of teachers with education degrees who are waiting in the wings for permanent employment.It's the exact opposite in the states - there is a huge shortage of decent teachers, and now they have programs where if you already have a degree (say in business, history, etc.) you can just take some supplemental teaching courses and thus you'll be certified as a teacher - they will even pay for you to go to college if you promise to work as a teacher for a few years.

In Arkansas, we call it the STAR (http://star.adhe.edu/) program.

Hi all,

I guess one of the benefits of the previous employments that I've had (case management for people with developmental disabilities) is familiarity with planning and having to juggle a lot of goals and keeping up with monstrous Medicaid requirements. I didn't necessarily enjoy it, but I have some strategies for dealing with it.

I don't plan on disclosing my ADD to my students. Perhaps if they were middle/high school it would be a different story, but in the 3-5th grade set I don't know how much self-disclosure is appropriate, period . . . I don't plan on telling the administration either (which is why I took my two Praxis tests and studied for them sans Ritalin -- I didn't know when the school would want my drug test and I wasn't going to chance it).

The teacher who will be mentoring me is a great lady who I got a good feeling about. I'm excited and scared at the same time, but I really would love any advice.

I went through the Alternative Certification program at an Illinois University. I have a MSED in Education too and now find employment difficult because school districts do not want to pay a teacher at my salary level with 2 years experience. 44k would be unbelievable to earn-it would take years in most areas I know of to hit that level. 35-36k is average for a master's with 21 hours additional and 2 years experience in areas other than the Chicago area and burbs.

The US does not have a national standard for teachers-and salaries vary widely by state and by school district. In Illinois, pay is related to the property tax base and the will of the school board as well as difficulty or ease in getting teachers to teach in a particular district sometimes.

Found this for Canadian teacher salaries. I would like to add that currently one must have a very high average to be accepted to an education program at any post secondary institution.

http://resource.educationcanada.com/salaries.html

Well, first notice that Canadian dollars are about 6% lower value, so 44,000 = 41,500.

Here in North Carolina I guess it's a pretty good deal, because teachers are paid a set rate statewide and they just got a pay hike of 5%. A second year teacher with a master's makes the equivalent of about 33,400.

HOWEVER, the kicker in NC is that is you do lateral entry/alternative certification, they will take your "related" full time work experience and pay you based on that. For example, I had a friend who completed her education classes, had 14 years of full time work experience as an interior decorator and running a program for at-risk kids. Since she was working basically as a home ec teacher, she was paid as if she had 14 years of experience -- about $39,500 US.

SO I guess stuff is pretty good here in NC!! If they count all my experience, I will start at about $37,000, plus a bonus if I finish out my contract (since special ed teachers are incredibly hard to come by in my district).