After slightly more than a month of classes as a teaching assistant at a New Education System Aligned school in Houston ISD, Nathaly Reyna quit.

She thought she'd known what she was getting into with Superintendent Mike Miles' approach to instruction and welcomed a chance to work as a TA at Gallegos Elementary in HISD's Central District where she could receive guidance and mentorship while working on getting her teacher certification.

But the three-to-four-week training the incoming TAs were promised where they would just observe was abandoned, she says. "It  did not work out that way. We were thrown into it.

"Teacher apprentices are the first called in to substitute for any class of any level and expected to handle all types of students, all grade levels. It's unfair for the kids, especially the ones in special education," she says. She was sent to all different grade levels during her time at the school.

"I'm not saying uncertified means unqualified. I don't want to make it look like there are unqualified teachers in all these schools because I don't think that. But combined with everything else going on it is a huge red flag. to have uncertified teachers with barely any training and potentially no experience in education."

Making matters worse, the air of collegiality she's hoped for was not helped by Principal Norma González who in a first meeting, introduced Rayna and the other TAs as the people who would take their jobs.

"One of the first things when we were all finally all together and done with our training, we got to meet the teachers who were there already, one of the first things she [the principal] said to them was 'Hey teachers, if y'all are thinking about quitting, there's a teacher apprentice here ready to take your place.'

"The issue I have with the NES System as a whole but also the leadership at the campus I was at, it feels, I don't know if I want to say hostile, but they're bullies and [the way] they treat the teachers; they're not valued there."

A graduate of the prestigious Smith College in Massachusetts with a degree in geosciences with a concentration in educational geosciences, Reyna says she had some prior experience as a tutor at the elementary and middle school level in HISD before signing on to Gallegos. She was intrigued by the thought of change designed to greatly improve academic outcomes in the district.

Now in early November she is looking for a new job and wondering why when the TAs were hiring on it was a condition of their employment that they sign up and pay for a course that would enable them to become certified teachers.

She's out that money which she can't get back. At the same time, HISD has a draft waiver list as part of its application for District of Innovation status, that would allow it to hire uncertified teachers without checking with the TEA first. So why were the TAs hired this fall told they had to enroll in a certification program?

A copy of the proposed plan will be posted online this Friday  with it up for approval by the 60-member District Advisory Committee in a majority vote before going to the Board of Managers for approval by at least a two-thirds vote on December 14. 

Bradley Wray a physical education teacher at Deady Middle School and a member of the DAC says theDOI application process seems rushed to him, with little room for discussion. Dropping the requirement for the certification of teachers along with waiving the requirement to tell parents that their children are not being taught by certified teachers is of primary concern to him.  (The second is the extension of the school year which he opposes or proposes that one week of teacher training be converted to additional student days.)

Reyna is signed up to speak at Thursday night's Board of Managers meeting. "I do want to draw attention to this whole certification thing. On the one hand I don't want to sit here and defend another system that is probably flawed but it's been in place for a reason. It's just strange that everyone who was hired as a teacher apprentice it was a a requirement to be in a certification program. That was the goal, to become certified. Passion is great to have. It's not enough though."

"On the one hand they were saying 'We're a team, we're all here working together, we have your back. And on the other hand saying 'Oh no, why do you look upset, why are you being so negative?'" When it's really we just have our concerns but we were not allowed to voice them. We were singled out, kind of interrogated."

In less than six weeks, her journey through the education system at Gallegos is mind-boggling.

"I was assigned as a teacher apprentice to the third grade but on the first day I took over 'Art of Thinking' which was third, fourth and fifth grade. And I was also working with kinder and first grade during their elective times as well," she says. "I understood that I was substituting and covering for a position because I was a teacher apprentice but I didn't have any certification or barely any training, I was the one that had the most experience of the teacher apprentices that they hired.

"I gave  it a chance but I saw the way they were treating teachers and I just said 'I cannot work in this environment.'"