Licensure

Graduate Admissions & Advising Scenarios

Scenario II: A Computer Engineer Wants to Teach Math

Roberta Graham has had a productive first career in computer engineering. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts with a major in engineering and several years’ work experience at a Route 128 dot.com firm. Roberta is concerned about the need for more math and science teachers in middle and high schools and also about the continuing need to recruit more young women into math and science careers.

She learns from a general advisor in the Graduate School that she has two options for pursuing a program leading to an initial teaching license in mathematics. Her first option is to continue working at her dot.com firm and apply for the graduate initial licensure-only program in mathematics, which would prepare her for her license with 6 education courses, a student teaching practicum and some additional courses in math. This option would allow her to continue working at the firm until the semester of her student teaching.

Or, she can get a preliminary license to teach math by passing both the MTEL C& L and the mathematics test and then seek a position as a math teacher. If she secured a teaching position, she could then complete SSC’s “fast-track” initial licensure-only program in math, a program arranged for teachers without initial licenses, where students can use their teaching positions as their practicum sites. Because her undergraduate major was in engineering, rather than math, she will have to supplement the math courses she has already taken with additional math courses to complete the required math subject-matter background for the license.

Roberta decides to take the MTEL tests, both of which she passes. She applies to the MDOE and receives her preliminary license to teach math, and is successful in securing a position as a math teacher in a local public high school. Roberta applies to SSC’s fast-track licensure-only program in math in time for the October 1st admissions deadline. Following her acceptance, she meets with the SSC math faculty member responsible for reviewing her content background, taking to the meeting her transcripts and the graduate school form that she needs to document the content review. In addition to the education courses required in the fast-track program, she will need to take 3 math courses. She brings her signed content review form to a meeting with the fast-track program coordinator, and they plan out her course of study together.

That spring, she takes a course in adolescent psychology, which is a program prerequisite and one of the math courses she needs to strengthen her content background. The following summer, she takes two more math courses and two education courses. The education courses provide her with an overview of high school curricula and organization, and teaching and assessment strategies. In the fall, she begins her teaching job. Two evenings a week, she comes to the college for another education course and a seminar to support new math teachers. She learns how to manage and motivate a classroom of high school students of both genders and varied backgrounds, and how to adapt instruction for their many different learning needs. The following spring, she takes her final education course and the continuing support seminar. By May, she has completed her licensure program and is more confident and knowledgeable about how to teach mathematical concepts and skills in meaningful ways. Because she wants to complete a degree program and her professional teaching license, Roberta decides to continue her graduate study by enrolling in the M.A.T. in Mathematics, which she will complete at a slower pace as she builds on her classroom experience.