How to Get an Iowa Teaching License Through an Online Program: What I Learned Comparing Alternative Pathways
Last Tuesday I sat at my chipped oak kitchen table in West Des Moines, folding soccer cleats and 2nd grade handprint art, while my group chat with the other paras from my elementary blew up. Three of us have been floating the idea of getting our teaching licenses for years, but until recently, none of us could figure out how to swing it. I’m a para with a 10-year-old, a husband on swing shift, and a decade-old bachelor’s degree in communications that has nothing to do with education. In-person night classes twice a week don’t work with my schedule of pickup, dinner, homework help, and bedtime routines. So I spent the last three months digging into alternative pathways in Iowa, specifically online programs, to see what actually works.
Two weeks ago, Sarah and I met at the taco truck outside the school after dismissal, splitting an order of carnitas tacos while we compared notes. She’d found an online program advertised on Facebook that promised a teaching license for $4,000, no residency required, and I had to break the news that it wasn’t approved by the Iowa Department of Education. That’s the first mistake I see people make, jumping at the cheapest or fastest option without checking the state’s requirements first.
Iowa doesn’t accept licenses from just any online program, so the first thing I did was pull up the Iowa DOE’s public list of approved educator preparation programs. Filtering for online alternative route options got me down to 12 programs, most through public state universities, a couple through private nonprofits. If you already have a bachelor’s degree (which most of us switching careers or moving up from para already do), these programs are designed to get you licensed in 12 to 24 months, which is way faster than going back for a second bachelor’s the traditional way.
The biggest win for people already working in Iowa schools is that most of these online programs let you complete your required student teaching residency at the school you already work at. I don’t have to quit my job, find a new placement, or rearrange my entire life to get the 12 weeks of full-time teaching experience I need. My program’s advisor told me that as long as my principal signs off that I’m getting the right experience working with my 2nd grade special ed group, that counts. That’s a huge difference from the in-person alternative route at my local community college, which requires you to do your residency at a different school than you work, which meant I would have had to take 12 weeks unpaid leave to do it.
Cost varies a lot, from $8,500 to just over $15,000 for the entire license after a bachelor’s. Before you pick a program, the first call you should make is to your district’s HR department. My district offers up to $3,000 a year in tuition reimbursement for staff working on their teaching license, as long as I agree to stay for three years after I get licensed. That cuts my total cost by almost half, which makes the mid-priced program I picked way more doable than the cheap unapproved one Sarah found.
Not everyone looking for an online program already has a degree, of course. There are four fully online approved programs that offer a full bachelor’s degree in education for people who don’t have one yet. The only hard requirement there is that you still have to do 12 weeks of in-person student teaching in an Iowa classroom, and all the programs I looked at help place you with a local district if you’re not already working in a school.
I started my first semester in August, so I’m already seeing the drawbacks. It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re doing all your coursework at 9 pm after the kid goes to bed, sitting on your couch alone. I used to skip discussion posts or push back essays when I had a busy week, until I teamed up with two other people in my program who also live in central Iowa. We meet for 20 minutes on Zoom every Sunday night, just to go over what’s due that week, ask each other questions, and vent if we’re overwhelmed. It’s a small thing, but it’s cut my missed deadlines down to zero so far.
No matter what program you pick, online or in person, you still have to pass Iowa’s required Praxis tests: one for your content area, and the Principles of Learning and Teaching test. Most online programs include free access to Praxis prep courses and practice tests in your tuition, which is a big plus I didn’t get with the in-person community college program I looked at, that charged extra for test prep.
Last Saturday, all three of us from the chat met at the city playground, watching our kids climb on the jungle gym and chase each other with water bottles, while we filled out our program applications. Sarah decided to go with the same program I’m in, after we confirmed it’s approved and her district will reimburse her too. The third person in our group, Mia, doesn’t have her bachelor’s yet, so she’s starting the fully online bachelor’s program through UNI next fall.
I’m halfway through my first semester, and some weeks I still feel like I’m juggling too much. Last week I had to finish a unit paper the night after my kid’s school play, and I went to bed way later than I should have. I might end up taking an extra semester to finish, instead of rushing through in 18 months, and that’s okay. This isn’t the fast or fancy path, but it’s the only one that fits the life I have right now. We’re all still figuring it out as we go, but for the first time in years, getting that teaching license actually feels like something I can do, instead of just a dream I talk about at lunch.
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