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Former Teachers turned SAHMs- certification question
I renewed my certification the first year I was home with Kate and I will be home with her until she is at least 3. Ideally, I'll be home with her until she starts kindergarden. More ideally, I'm able to get pg and stay home with future baby. 
Even if I go back to work when she's 3, I'll have been out of work for 3 years and I won't have any staff development hours from that time for my certification renewal. ::cue panicking::
Anyone know how to get staff development hours while not teaching? Obviously free. I know I could get some for graduate classes, but tuition is not in the budget at the moment. Ditto workshops. I have *no* desire to spend my limited fun money attending workshops. I know that Region XIII has workshops that are free (right?) but are they only free to current teachers?
What happens if I let my certification lapse? Do I just have to pay a fee to get it reinstated? Or do I have to retake the tests.
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Re: Former Teachers turned SAHMs- certification question
I'm not a SAHM but I do have an expired teaching certificate. The last time I called about renewing my expired certificate, they (SBEC) told me that the only way I could renew it was to obtain the required professional development hours. They wouldn't allow to me to just take the tests again. This was about a year/year and half ago.
It looks like TEA has a lot more up-to-date information on their site, including a list of free online sources where you can gain professional development hours. I'm sure if you work on taking hours between now and when your certificate expires (sounds like it's around 2-3 years, right?) you probably could piece together enough free hours to renew without letting your certificate expire. If you plan on going back to the classroom ever, I would really try not to let it expire. I'm finding out the hard way that I probably should have tried harder to keep mine up-to-date.
So I found those courses, they look fascinating. lol. I think they'll work though and it looks like I can do an independent study for a percentage of the hours. I'm sure I can find a few books.
Do you have any idea how many hours you get for each of these online courses? It says to discuss getting credit with your administrator.
I just got an email earlier this summer for some free online courses. I don't know what you're certified for so this may or may not help you but to me, online + free = best option. Hopefully it'll help.
https://extensiononline.tamu.edu/courses/cte_teachers.php
That's good to know - that's completely different than what I was told when I called about 2 years ago!
Kiarox - Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many credit hours each of the online courses would give you. I kind of stopped looking into it when I discovered just how many hours I would need to bring my certificate up-to-date, and when they told me I couldn't just take the tests again. Yup, lazy me!
Libbyann - It might be worth calling again if they told you something else. My certificate is a few years older than yours so perhaps that makes a difference. I'm not sure. The lady I spoke with probably thought I was crazy because I asked her about five different times if I could just take the test again. Of course, each time she said no.
Just wanted to give you an update - I did call just a few minutes ago, and you're correct. Though apparently this is fairly new. I hardly have any professional development hours on record since I only taught for a year (and from March-May was on maternity leave!) before quitting - ugh...not sure it's going to be worth it for me to try to keep up with those if I'm not planning on going back to teaching ever/for a very very long time.
It really sucks that they don't make it easier to keep up with...I get WHY you need the hours, but I feel like you should be able to take a weekend workshop to get caught up and then re-take the tests or something in order to get it reinstated. Even taking a semester long class would be better than trying to find the time to fit in all those hours.
We should have a study group for this. We can get together, let the kids play and do these online courses. I'm only sort of kidding.
I'm so irritated because I'm pretty sure that if I had gotten my certification one year earlier that I would have a lifetime certification.
Thanks for the update, Libbyann! I was really hoping that they'd tell you something different, though. Oh well!
Kiarox, I'm right there with you. I'm pretty sure I missed out on the lifetime certification by a year as well, possibly even just a semester. Ugh.