u/anonymousacademic

If you’re a teacher in California, can you tell me what graduate level PD credits your district accepted and from where?

I’m currently in a MAT program to get my credential and I’ve also taken additional grad level courses outside of my university so that when I’m hired next year I land as far right on the salary schedule as I reasonably can as a first year teacher! However, it’s a bit of a gamble because I obviously can’t get prior approval if I don’t know where I’m working yet. During my summer break, I earned grad credits from Ashland, Andrews, UMass Global, and Northwest Nazarene universities. These are all regionally or nationally accredited universities, and all of my credits are specifically teaching related (no random Intro to Music etc), so I’m not concerned about them being accepted to be honest. However, it does have me curious!

I'm currently in a Masters program (halfway done!) and I completed Student Teaching 1 (spring semester) at a public school. However, many of my classmates work for private schools as Associate Teachers. As an AT, you can complete the second portion of student teaching while getting paid a full time salary instead of the unpaid labor we provide in the public school ecosystem as regular student teachers. When I found that out, I immediately started applying to the private schools in my area and landed a job as an AT of a small, progressive private school that starts this August!

I'm really excited but nervous, as I obviously have certain requirements I have to hit for the student teaching portion of my credential, like my STII/III supervisor coming in for observations etc, and I'm not super sure about how it all works. The school knows I'm in a Masters/credential program and did sign an MOU with my uni, so I am sure it will be fine! But, anxiety is a demon that whispers in my ear.

Posting to see if anyone else here has gone this route and can tell me how their experience went/is going? Did you find your workload was overwhelming? I'm nervous about working full time Mon-Fri while also full time in grad school (15 credits) but I'm hoping it'll be the "best of both worlds" because as an AT, I shouldn't be bringing much work home with me like a typical Lead teacher would, but I'll still make a solid paycheck and it counts for student teaching, so it felt like a no brainer when the alternative was 4-5 days full time unpaid at a public school to fulfill student teaching. I'm just starting to freak myself out though that this is going to be a lot.

Edit: 4th grade!