Question about teacher certification

You would go to grad school to get an MAT...Master of Arts in teaching and your area would be bio.
The programs are about 36 credits or so and generally take about two years. Stony brook has good programs and they are inexpensive as compared to hofstra, dowling, etc...
Take a look at their website and it will explain it. THe central website is: www.sunysb.edu/spd

Thanks! I actually went to Stony Brook for my undergrad and am a non matriculated grad student now.

Is there a way to become certified before getting the Masters?

Here's the m.a.t. science page...
http://www.sunysb.edu/spd/graduate/matscience.html

if you look around they have postings about certification. I dont want to give you the wrong answer

I do suggest that when you decide you want to go back to school that you sub first. It is a good indicator of if you will like teaching. When i was student teaching alot of my classmates dropped out because they didnt' like it.

Good luck!! It's a great profession and science teachers are in demand.

At Dowling, you must have:

Biology '7-12'
(HEGIS 0401)

36 credits in Science required for provisional certification, 18 of which must be in Biology The student is expected to demonstrate knowledge of botany, zoology, ecology, embry- ology, genetics, algebra, general chemistry, and general physics. Where appropriate, the stu- dent will be expected to demonstrate laboratory skills.

in addition to 42 credits + student teaching. Check out http://www.dowling.edu/academics/mse.shtml for more info. You can likely become certified before getting your Masters at Dowling.

As far as I know you would have to student teach to become certified. This would be done usually in the last semester of the masters program. There are other requirements as well, such as an information retrieval (comp course), a speech course, history, phi .. most of which you probably did on the undergrad. I work at Hofstra as an academic adviser, for undergrads so I am some what familiar with their requirements.
There are some programs through NYC, where you can teach and in the process become certified. I dont know too much about those... Maybe someone on the board is familiar with what I am talking about?
Good luck

ETA - as someone else stated, science is in high demand and since you have such a wonderful background going into it, you would probably be very marketable!!!!!!

Yes, there is the NYC teaching fellows program and programs similiar to it in NYC whereby the city pays for your graduate education, places you in a needy district, and allows you to teach from day 1. My friends have had great experiences with this. They usually look for people in middle-management positions with high undergrad GPA's.

But, if you want to stay in LI, there may be ways to teach before getting your masters under the new regs. For example, at Dowling, you can student teach after taking 24 credits and become certified. Then you work toward getting your masters while you teach. As long as you student teach and have the required education courses, you can teach on LI.

if you want to ...you could teach right now in NYC...and go that route...


science teachers are in demand and they will give emergency NYC (not NYS) certifications for one year...if you have 2 years teaching experience...you do not have to student teach and you can become NYS certified...

check out www.teachny.com

queens college also offers a certification program...1 year...you only take education classes and student teach (no degree), but you come out with your NYS provisional certificate...

www.qc.edu

Thanks everybody