It’s Back to School Time

Posted January 24, 2018 by Prairie Wife - 2 comments

If you follow us on Instagram you may have caught this pic…

Yeah…sigh…it’s true. I signed up for 6 credits of online education classes.

Because I’m crazy and I needed one more thing to do?

No.

Trust me when I say this is not exactly high on my list of “fun things to do with my non existent free time.”

When you’re a parent there are certain things you HAVE to do, and this falls under that category for me.

Feeding your children, hugging and kissing them at bedtime, and providing them with warm winter hats and gloves (we all know half the time they won’t actually wear them but we still have to have them available) are a few examples.

Creating a Will is another thing I think all parents should do as well and is a topic for another day…

Even though I haven’t had an official teaching job in almost a decade (I don’t really count Sunday school) I still have my degree from the University of Wyoming.

The jury is still out on if I will ever go back to teaching when LittleMissH is in school.

So, every five years when the time to renew my certification rolls around, I find myself asking the same question.

Do I REALLY want to renew this?

For those of you that aren’t familiar with what this means, I’ll quickly explain.

The renewal process involves taking 5 credits of college classes (approved by our state Professional Teaching Standards Board) every five years. If you are an active teacher this is no problem. The seminars and education conferences your school has you attend yearly usually adds up to 5 credits pretty quickly. For people like me, it means I need to pay to take college classes online. Making it through these classes usually takes a few months and lots of hours of work (reading articles, staying active in chat forums, short answer essay questions, watching videos and a final project).

If I let my certification lapse I have to go back to college for two years, basically redo my degree.

It may seem like a no brainer a few months vs. two years, but it’s harder than you think.

At this point I really can’t see myself going back to being a teacher.

Yet, if anything were to happen to The Cowboy (I’m talking death or severe injury), teaching would allow me to have the hours I need to parent as well as insurance that would be vital to my family.

As a parent I just can’t let go of the fact that I need to plan for the worst cast scenario. So, here I am back in school.

It’s a lot harder this time. When I renewed my certification 5 years ago I only had 3 kids not 5 and I wasn’t a blogger with two work from home jobs!

I know (I think) this is the right and responsible thing to do, but I’m feeling a bit whiny about it right now (can you tell).

I’d much rather be snuggling and reading with the littlest Cowkids, or kicking back and watching Netflix during naptime. Instead, I’m reading articles about “Letting data inform, not drive, my classroom instruction.” and answering short essay questions like “Give examples and non examples of positive parental interactions.”

Non examples ?! Insert eye roll emoji here.

Obviously it’s too late for me to back out this time, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Is it irresponsible to let my certification lapse?

Am I just worrying over nothing?

And please, if you have any tips to get me motivated to actually get this stuff done…help a mama out lol!

PS If I miss a few post over the next few months please be patient with me, and imagine me banging my head against my computer trying to come up with some non examples!

Categories: Life As It Happens, Parenting, Prairie Life

Tags: , advice, back to school, online classes, parenting, renew certification, teacching