Kathy D,

You referred to the training involved in teaching high school. I used to teach
high school human anatomy/biology (familiar refrain in my room: "Yuck, Miz
Vickers. That's GROSS!" ;-) ) and have a BS in Biology with concentration in
Education and an MEd in Science Education. The education courses I took were 90%
useless as far as actually being helpful in the classroom. Unfortunately, most
of them were taught from the standpoint that everybody in there was really
pursuing an "Mrs." degree. Nothing prepared me for my first year when I had 3
physical science classes (and little background in the physical sciences) with a
textbook that said "Someday man may go to the moon." (This was in 1978....) and
2 low level biology classes that included one that had all the Behavior Disorder
students, a legally blind girl, and a hearing impaired boy. The good weeks were
the ones I only came home in tears 3 days out of 5!!

When I was trying to amass hours to sit for the IBLCE exam, I wrote a letter to
the powers-that-be and told them that I had a Master's Degree and wondered if
that would further reduce the number of hours I needed (since having a 4 year
degree required fewer years than a 2 year degree). I also told about all the
personal experience I had bf my two kids. I got a very nice letter back saying
basically, "Gee, Melissa, that's great that you have all that experience. Now,
in order to sit for the exam, you will need 2500 hours of practice
consulting....."!  I was not a happy camper then, but after "putting in my time"
and taking the exam a few years later, I realized the value of those hours of
experience. I don't know that having less than a 4 year degree should mean
having more hours, though, especially since as you point out that degree could
be in anything. I'm not sure that a 4 year degree in fine arts would be worth
more to a potential LC than a 2 year nursing degree.

Melissa Vickers, IBCLC (and most happy to be out of public school teaching!)
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