I’d like to teach at an international school one day. Most, if not all international schools require that you have a teaching certificate from your home country (USA for me). There are a few programs online I’ve found, but it seems that while you can do the coursework online, they want your in class hours to either be in a U.S. school or an international school that follows a U.S. curriculum. It’s the classic, need experience to get a job, but the job itself is the experience conundrum. Right now I work at a juku-like school with mostly kids, but students of all ages.
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TLDR: Is there any programs for getting a U.S. teaching certificate where they would count classroom hours from any type of classroom?
9 comments
Following.
I had a teaching license that expired with no reasonable way to renew it while in Japan.
Looking for other options there’s a way.
Following too
Moreland University
You can get a provisional teaching license from the state of Massachusetts by simply taking some tests called the MTELs which you can do at Pearson testing centres. There’s one in Tokyo at least, but I think there were some more within Japan (and I think there were some kind of options for doing them at your own home as well maybe?). There are different tests based on the field you’re going into. I did mine in ESL and just had to take two tests which were both really easy in my opinion. After submitting some documents like my BA and getting the results back, I was issued PreK-12 teaching license earlier this year. I was recently offered a position at an IB school here in Japan, so I know it’s good enough for that at least.
Tcnj.edu bebbeh
Keep in mind that the majority of real international schools won’t hire you so you probably have to leave japan and come back. Not impossible but difficult since eikaiwa doesn’t count as experience
Moreland University is your best bet. They are very versatile with their practical portion of their course. I don’t know your exact teaching situation at your juku, but if you get approval from your boss you can likely make it work. Moreland is always doing info sessions where you can ask if your situation will work for them. I did Moreland while working at an eikaiwa and they hooked me up with a local international school. I went there two mornings a week for three months to get my degree, and got a job offer from them right after I finished. I found more money elsewhere, but overall it was a very positive experience.
You can get them online from some places but you can’t get the three to five years experience that the real international schools want. Some shitty programs (Arizona 🙁 ) allow zero or unregulated classroom time but the schools you are applying to won’t accept it.
I would really love to know what options there are as well.
I have a teaching degree and did my student teaching. But I came to Japan right after graduating and my state only offers 1 year licenses. And you have to teach in my state in order to apply for a 3 year license and then so on so forth. Impossible for me, who came to Japan. It’s annoying, I have all the training and prerequisites. I’ve done my 6 months of student teaching and the tests. I just wish they had license options. I know some places give out permanent licenses, that don’t expire in 1 year.
Very curious to know what the options are.