A horrible experience today. I live in NC but am hoping to move back to CA this summer…which is why I am attempting the CTEL exams. I was scheduled for this morning, 5/20 at 9:30. After taking a day off from work and driving an hour, I show up at my testing site (a community college) at 9:00. At 9:20 a woman comes out of her office and asks me what the tests are because she has never heard of them, has never administered them before and doesn’t know the protocol for taking breaks or lunch or anything else. When I explain that it is English Language Learner and that I am moving back to CA, she makes a rude comment “yeah I guess you would need that going back there”!! NOT a good way to start getting into test mode. At that point I questioned proceeding further. When she asked for my ID I gave her my NC driver’s license which had expired on my birthday but I realized that so I stopped at the DMV before testing and got it renewed. She denied me based on the fact that my DL was expired and that my temporary paper license had no picture. It kept going from bad to worse. She called and gave an incident report based on my DL and I called and gave an incident report based on her not having a clue as to what she was doing!! If I pay almost $300 to test, should I assume I am going where they have experience giving these exams? I feel I deserve to be rescheduled

Sorry for the delay in approving your comment, but I was out of the country for 10 days – without Internet access. It’s been a couple of years now since I took the exam, so I don’t remember actual essay questions, but I do remember that being able to provide teaching strategies that matched language levels was important. Also, when I took the exam, each was collected before the next was handed out, but the multiple choice questions served as a reminder to me of points I should include in the essay questions.

I’m sorry to hear about your lack of responses to your applications. I have found that an easy entry into a school district is to register as a substitute teacher. You’re sure to get calls as well as start building a job network. In California, as the economy starts to pick up, so will the job market for teachers. I would definitely plan to take the next CTEL round in August, in case that’s been an obstacle to getting an interview (and it may well be).

Gail

Just a suggestion, but you might want to think about using Google Hangout for your study get-togethers. That way, distance is not an issue and you can save and archive your sessions.

Gail (blogwalker)