Friday, December 12, 2008

LAST exam tomorrow -- head start? or Karmic disaster?

Anyone who wants to teach in the NYC public schools, regardless of the route by which they get there (NYC Teaching Fellows, Teach For America, traditional certification) needs to jump through a number of hoops, one of which is the LAST exam.

LAST stands for Liberal Arts and Sciences Test and consists of 80 multiple-choice questions plus a 400-600 word essay. As per NY State's own language on it, "The explicit purpose of [the exam] is to help identify for certification those candidates who have demonstrated the appropriate level of knowledge and skills that are important for performing the responsibilities of a teacher in New York State public schools." -- or put another way, to make sure that teacher's have a basic level of genereal knowledge and aren't dumbasses.

I'm taking the exam tomorrow.

I wanted to get a jump on the game and get this one rather bothersome requirement out of the way so I'd be ahead of the game come Spring (since there are other exams and requirements to deal with). I do worry that it may have been a giant Karmic kick in my rear-end, since I haven't actually been accepted to either NYC Teaching Fellows of Teach for America yet.

oy vet.

I'll provide some notes on the exam this weekend.

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