In getting an MDiv, one can only attend seminary to get the MDiv with continuing Bishop's approval for the three years that degree involves. That approval process is long and arduous from the start and continues until authorization to be ordained, because it's necessary in order to receive episcopal endorsement to preach, teach, and practice the faith on real live people. This has always been the case in hierarchical religious careers, and is even more the case nowadays with rampant sex abuse scandals, risk management professionsals, malpractice insurance, etc. For example, a background check is now part of the process early on, as are psych evals (at least in our denomination).

If a teaching certificate is governed by similar requirements, there's the issue. The teacher candidate may have indeed earned an academic degree, but what was expected for a teaching certificate?


Take a look at it from the view of a parent whose child has been caught up in a scandal involving their teacher, a teacher whose certificate has led to tenure and who cannot be removed from the faculty without a lengthy and messy process. Say you are the parent of such a child, and you find that a certificate to teach was given a few years back to that person, even though the grantors of the cert knew that there was a clear public record of her unsuitablity to work with very young children (which may have included more than the MySpace item and may have been investigated more fully, appropriately, and factually). Don't tell me that we here at Mudcat wouldn't be set to howling over how could she have "slipped through the cracks" for so long!

My son fell into such a situation. My office in the school system just happened to be next door to the classroom in which he spent most of each day. I could HEAR his teacher's abusive approach verbally. Her targets were always little boys (and often, BTW, African-American little boys). I could hear her shrill voice raised to tell them they were stupid. One day she dragged my son bodily into my office in mid-rant to tell me how awful he was, shoving and scraping him in through the partly-opened door!

Although the principal was a friend and colleague, and he believed my account, there was very little he could do to affect her tenure unless he saw these things himself. Now, he'd inherited her from his predecessor and the stories about her were common knowledge among parents and faculty. Kids would be moved out of her room if they could not tolerate the abuse. The story offered was that she just had been teaching for far too long and wouldn't resign till she qualified for retirement benefits. Maybe she should never have been teaching, at all.


A, I think we don't know all there is to know about this individual case.

B, I think it's naive to think our online lives will not and should not play a part in our careers.

C, Get real!

~Susan