Thursday, December 1, 2011

Academic Drama: CalTPA 2

Ok so, I've been away from my blog for a couple weeks for a couple reasons. #1 I was occupied with enjoying my Thanksgiving break. That's 1 week. #2 I was preoccupied with revising my CalTPA for the 2nd and 3rd time. I just submitted it yesterday.

For those of you who are not familiar, anyone in a credential program in California must complete four CalTPAs. That is, they are state mandated assessments. CalTPA stands for California Teaching Performance Assessment. Each CalTPA has a different focus: #1 "Subject Specific Pedagogy," #2 "Designing Instruction," #3 "Assessing Learning," and #4 "Culminating Teaching Experience." I was working on #2. #1 & #2 consisted of a series of questions which needed to be responded to with justified answers as opposed to multiple choice, fill in the blank, and so on.  
 
Now, this is why I am referring to the CalTPA 2 as academic drama for me. For the 1st and 2nd CalTPAs, my credential program allows me to resubmit them if they are not satisfactory. I had to resubmit the 1st. I did that in my 2nd semester. I'm in my 3rd semester now. I had to resubmit the 2nd one as well. My credential program does not allow anyone an infinite number of resubmissions. Makes sense. After the 4th total submission, they suspend you from the credential program and you cannot continue with the next term until you complete it successfully. Successful means scoring a 3 or higher. 1, 2, 3, and 4 are the possible scores. On top of that, I wouldn't have been allowed to submit my CalTPA 2 until February. Essentially, I would've been set back a year if I didn't get a satisfactory score on the CalTPA 2. That would've pissed me off. I have goals to pursue!

Anyway, to make a long story short, this last week, I spent most of my available time trying to score a 3 on my 2nd CalTPA. I succeeded. Thank you, thank you, thank you.... because I don't like getting angry.

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