Certifiable

I got a phone call today from the staff development department at our district office. All teachers in our county have to take the PLT – Principles of Learning and Teaching. We each have a set deadline for taking the test; we have to pass by three years after the date of our initial teaching certificate. I misunderstood, and thought that we had until the end of our third year of teaching, so when I was sent a letter in April telling me that I had to have passed this test by June, I was a little caught off guard. Anyway, I took the test and passed with a score of 190/200. The phone call today was to tell me that my certificate has been voided.

Somehow, I managed to keep it together and not freak out. The lady that I spoke to asked if I could bring a copy of my test scores to her, and she would fax them to her contact person at the state department of education. She said it may be two to three weeks before the contact person gets back to her. By that point, I'll be getting ready to go back to school. I don't think that this can really affect my job, but I'm a little worried anyway. I mean, technically, I did everything that I needed to do, but still. I'm afraid that there's going to be some problem that prevents me from keeping my job. My principal is wonderful; she would probably let me teach without a certificate if she could, so that should help my case a little.

Speaking of principals, we're getting a new assistant principal. For some reason, our asst. principal and one at another school traded places all of a sudden. I'm not sure why; it wasn't planned or anything. As a matter of fact, she heard about the change on Tuesday, it was approved on Wednesday, and the announcement was in the paper on Thursday. It'll be interesting to see how a male assistant principal interacts with the women at our school, that's for sure...