When I was younger, friends and acquaintances told me that I should consider becoming a teacher, because they saw that I related well with children. And, beginning in the 1980s, I began hearing that schools were “begging” and “crying” for teachers. However, as I was growing up, I hated school. For that and other reasons, I didn't begin to consider teaching as a profession until 1990.
I left high school in 1973. Between 1973 and 1990, I went from job to job, with most of those jobs having to do with automobile repair. I also stumbled into a B.S. in agriculture (soil science emphasis), with a minor in biology, and an A.A.S. in automobile technology.
In the 1980s, the State of Texas asked businessman H. Ross Perot to help to reform the education system in Texas. One of the proposed reforms was intended to help people in other professions to “streamline” the process of becoming certified as teachers (partly by considering job experience as credit for some teaching courses, as applicable). Apparently, many people who wished to change professions to teaching hesitated, because of all of the hours of classes required to become certified. This proposed “streamlining” process initiated by Ross Perot could have—should have—helped me become a public school teacher, but, as you will read, it didn't.
In 1990, I sent a letter to (Read More....)
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