Uglysasquatch wrote:
Nadenu wrote:
My system was even more weird. K-6, 7-9 and 10-12..
I thought this was the norm.
The "norm" in NJ is K-5, 6-8, and 9-12.
NJ teaching certification is generally broken into 3 groups.
One is the standard K-5 certification, which allows you to teach all basic content areas a typical elementary school teacher is assigned. It also lets you teach those skills, at the same basic level, in grades 6-12, for specific situations where that would be necessary. Caveat: it requires you to have the normal k-12 certification.
Middle school has another tier of certification, defined as 5-8, which involves topic specialization into the core areas, plus world language. These certifications ALSO allow you to teach the core curriculum for K-5. You need just as many general content area courses, plus education courses, and are also required to have additional courses in that specific topic area (plus other certifications, depending on subject, such as with language).
Both the above require coursework in early childhood education, for obvious reasons, from an accredited university.
The final "tier" is for all public schools, but is specialized. Someone with a high school science certification can teach science at any level. They can't work as an elementary school teacher (in all content areas), but they CAN act as a specials teacher (which is what my brother does - he can teach Spanish, but only Spanish, in any level school).
Plenty of teachers end up certified for elementary school, too, because the only major requirement is a few additional courses in early childhood education. My brother would have grabbed it while still in school, but he was on an accelerated track, and it meant choosing between class or work in the summer (the school being too far from the seasonal restaurant kitchen where he had a position).
So, from a certification standpoint, the only definitive point NJ has taken is that K-5 is elementary school. If your school is K-6, that's fine, but you'd need sufficient teachers with the k-8 certification to address that. And those schools do exist, but it's almost always a population-based issue.
As a result, K-5, and 6-8 is the most common grouping here. Just makes it easiest on schools to manage their staff if everyone is certified to handle all the students you could throw at them.
I've heard of other configurations though. Most scenarios of +/- 1-2 years of the normal system probably exist somewhere in NJ. I think we have... 385 public high schools, iirc from a meeting I had on Wednesday, and somwhere between 600 and 800 school districts? Something like that.