Special Ed is the new black...

... well, at least it was at Hunter College's Open House for it's Graudate Education Program. They had all the different teaching concentrations arrayed around the lobby of the Hunter-West building (not to be confused with the Hunter-East building, the Hunter-North building, or the Thomas Hunter building) and damnit if all the young ladies there (yes, they were all young, and mostly female) weren't crowded around the Special Ed table, elbowing one another aside for better position, like pre-teen girls at a Jonas Brothers concert ... not that I have any idea who they are ...

First, the badness:

1. The open house was full-up on mouth breathers, to my horror. My hope is that most of them do not become teachers. Likely a foolhearted hope.
2. Most of the faculty there were some combination of useless and clueless. The woman at the English desk didn't really know anything, though she was pleasant enough.
3. The informative handout they gave everyone -- all nice and glossy, well constructed and properly bound -- was straight from the program catalogue, which is available online. Again, useless.
4. A homeless woman wandered in at one point and started shoving the free food into her mouth.

And, the good:

1. The pleasant woman who knew nothing called over the one guy in the room who actually had a clue. I was able to extract a few useful pieces of information from him.
2. I found out that, even without any sort of Alternative Certification program like the Teching Fellows or Teach For America, one can obtain an Internship Teaching Certification and begin teaching before fully completing their Masters program. So plan C could possibly have me teaching by the September after next.
3. I, much like the homeless woman, made off with a bottle of water and a few cookies.
4. The cookies weren't bad.

So, to sum up:

Like most of the other information sessions I've been to, this was mostly a bust. The great majority of the information supplied at these things is readily available on the web with minimal digging. You would think that anyone even remotely interested in any of these programs would do a modicum of research on their own ... but ... yeah ... I guess not (see "mouth-breathers" above).

Open House for Hunter College Education Masters

I'm skipping out of work early and going to the Hunter College School of Education Open House for Prospective Graduate Students. It's in the Hunter West building from 4-5:30 today.

I know -- it's a traditional education Masters program, having nothing to do with either the NYC Teaching Fellows or the Teach for America program. I'm going for two reasons:

1) I'm sure there'll be useful information about an education masters program in general -- which is part of both of the alternative certification programs I'm looking to do.

2) You can't have enough fall-back plans, and while NYCTF is plan A, and TFA is plan B .... it's always good to have a plan C.

I'll post back with any good information I gather. However, given my experience with information sessions of all sorts thus far, I'm not expecting any serious enlightenment.