Licensure

Graduate Admissions & Advising Scenarios

Scenario I: From Textbook Publishing to Elementary School Teaching

Flora Hernandez completed her undergraduate degree in English at Tufts University. She worked as a copy editor for Houghton Mifflin’s college division, focusing on educational textbooks, for 5 years and then decided she wanted to leave the world of publishing and work “on the front lines” as an elementary school teacher. For the past two years, she has been a substitute teacher at a local elementary school.

After searching the Internet for appropriate graduate programs and coming to a Graduate School open house in August and meeting the coordinator of the Elementary Education program, she decides to apply to Salem State’s M.Ed. in Elementary Education – Initial program, hoping to meet the October 1st admissions deadline. On a Saturday morning in September, she takes the MTEL in Communication & Literacy at a local high school and asks that the results be sent to Salem State. Meanwhile, she submits her application, along with her college transcript (attesting to her undergraduate G.P.A. of 3.2 and her English major); her three letters of recommendation (one from her advisor at Tufts, one from a Houghton Mifflin supervisor, and the third from the principal of the elementary school where she has been substitute teaching); and her essay describing her reasons for wanting to complete the program, her special interest in English, her desire to work with the children of immigrants, and her ability to speak Spanish. She takes the Miller Analogies Test on the Salem campus one Friday in November. Later that month, she receives the good news that she has passed the MTEL C & L. Her application is now complete, in time for the Graduate School’s February 1st review.

Flora knows that she can transfer up to 3 courses taken previous to admission into her graduate program, with the permission of her program coordinator. In October, she makes an appointment with a general program advisor in the Graduate School to ask whether the graduate course she took at Tufts in child development might transfer to her SSC program should she be accepted. After consultation with the Elementary program coordinator, the general advisor tells her it would. In addition, she asks what other course she might take in the spring semester at SSC. On his advice, she enrolls in EDU 737 (Theories of Thinking and Learning) in January.

Flora receives her letter of acceptance into the M.Ed. in Elementary Education program in mid-February. The letter asks her to make an appointment with her program coordinator within 30 days. In March, she meets with him to plan her program of study, which includes her Tufts child development course, the course she was currently taking at SSC, a schedule for taking the remainder of the courses, including an elective in teaching English language learners and plans to complete a final practicum at one of the College’s lab schools whose population includes a great number of ELL students. Her coordinator introduces her to the director of student teaching, who advises her to complete a portfolio documenting her two years of substitute teaching experience to qualify her for a reduction in student teaching. Next summer, Flora will take EDU 725 (Introduction to Literacy Practices in Early Childhood and Elementary Classrooms), which will prepare her for the MTEL Foundations of Reading test, which she will take next September. She intends to take several other courses in the summer and fall. She will take the final MTEL General Subject Matter test required for prospective elementary teachers the following December. She hopes to complete her practicum the next spring and be ready for her first teaching position and her new career, armed with her initial teaching license, the following September.