Alfred asks why — well, one of my fellow “new” CS teachers in my district could probably tell you better.
Yes, Alfred, we do have a young man — in his 20’s, I believe who is going to start his 3rd year of teaching. He took over a program from an existing teacher, pretty early in the first year.
I don’t know all of the details, but I do know that his family are teachers. He did work in technology for a while before he decided to try teaching. It was also very difficult for him to get his first teaching gig, and he got a really good one. It’s a 5A school, so he should be able to teach CS full time.
There is seldom a stand alone CS teacher certification. In fact if there is one I am not sure I know where it is. How do you even know what/how to prepare?
Alfred also asked is there are any CS teacher certifications. Texas DOES have one, and does have several programs to prepare. Texas had one when I got certified, and since I had a BS degree in CS had to go through what they called at the time a defiency plan. I chose to get secondary certification through Texas Woman’s University and to get both math and computer science. I had to take all the teacher courses, Texas Political Science, Speech, one computer science course, and enough math courses to meet my defiency in math. I then had to pass a test. Of course that was 15 years ago.
We had a period of where we transitioned to a different certification system, and for about 5 years there was not a formal state certification. However, TEA did approve several programs including an online and summer program through Texas A&M that gave certification.
I don’t know the details, but we do have an certification plan now, and I do know that someone who is already certified can take an test to add the certification.