Page 5: What "Route" am I?

To get your ABE Teacher's License, you will have to meet a number of requirements--basic requirements, such as a bachelor's or master's degree; subject matter knowledge requirements, such as the knowledge a person would gain from obtaining a bachelor's degree; and professional or "teaching" skills requirements (subject matter and teaching standards are listed in Appendix A.) New or novice ABE teachers will have to meet 21 or more teaching standards (Routes 1, 2, and 3), but teachers with five or more years of experience (a minimum of 2400 hours of teaching) will have to meet only eight standards (Route 4). So, an important question for you will be, "What Route am I?" SABES has developed a Years of Experience Worksheet to help you determine which route you might qualify for. Keep in mind that all candidates will have to demonstrate their teaching, regardless of Route.

Requirements in Summary

The bachelor's or master's degree requirement aligns this license with the other state educator's licenses. However, as will be explained, non-degree-holders can get help in meeting this requirement, so the intention is to include good teachers who might not have a degree. The subject matter knowledge requirements set the bar a few notches above the usual bachelor's degree by asking teachers to know something about theories of reading, writing, and language acquisition, and math to the algebra level. The professional teaching standards (29 in all) will look familiar to some of you, because many of those standards have evolved from past Massachusetts work groups where teachers were asked for input.

For whatever standards you must meet based on your route, you will collect evidence in a portfolio that will be reviewed by a Review Panel. The panel will comprise a set of peers, mostly veteran ABE teachers.

A big question any license-seeking teacher would have is "How much evidence will I need to show that I've met a given standard?" Those measures are described in an "evaluation rubric" in the approved Guidelines. To help give you an idea of the kinds and amounts of evidence needed, let's take a look at one standard and the evidence needed to prove that a candidate has met it. Go there now!