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Date Posted: 19:41:09 04/29/12 Sun
Author: Caroline (grim)
Author Host/IP: 5ade13c4.bb.sky.com / 90.222.19.196
Subject: Released (uh, sort of ...)

Ah well, I've resigned. To be honest, I didn't have much choice - I was told that I was unlikely to pass my NQT year and that I should be looking at a different teaching environment - probably further education (A level). If I insisted on staying and then failed I would then never be able to teach in state school as you don't get a second chance. If I resigned and sought a post in another school I would then have another 16 months to pass. In fact, they're changing the legislation to make it 5 years. I could actually do 5 years' of supply work (at which point, I would probably spontaneously combust).

So, like I say. Not much choice.

Well, I'm just waiting to hear when the axe will fall (ie, I become unemployed). Pretty ironic because I've now done all the marking for the Controlled Assessments and written most of the reports so whoever takes over will have an easy ride - more than I did because the last incumbent walked out and left me four cupboards full of crap.

Sitting here, typing away, listening to Fallen by Evanescence - surely I'm too old to be an Emo? I might just qualify still to be a Goth, I suppose.

Mind you, if I never see some of Year 8 again, it'll be too soon.

Anybody need a really good English tutor? I know everything about Shakespeare - honest!

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Replies:

[> Sorry things didn't work out -- Lewis H., 20:53:45 04/29/12 Sun (adsl-74-235-197-173.mco.bellsouth.net/74.235.197.173)

Not sure what an NQT year is but it doesn't sound like fun.
You're probably overqualified to teach at the average HS in America. In Florida our Governor spent the last year cutting the education budget to the bone and now because he gave some of it back this year he pretends he's some sort of friend to teachers. I'm pretty sure he fits the definition of "ass-clown".


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[> Re: Released (uh, sort of ...) -- Caroline, 21:28:11 04/29/12 Sun (5ade13c4.bb.sky.com/90.222.19.196)

That's so kind of you, thank you so much. After we do our PGCE (which is a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education), we have to do a further year of NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher), during which we have to meet all sorts of standards. I haven't met some of them (some of this was through illness) but nevertheless, they have not been met and so I am being shown the door and attempting not to have it hit me on the ass on the way out.


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[> Re: Released (uh, sort of ...) -- Saltygoodness, 15:24:22 04/30/12 Mon (NoHost/108.214.194.33)

What a shame there isn't a way to get an incomplete for those merits denied you due to illness. As for the rest, take some time and then, if you want, attack 'em again. There are no failures as far as this old lady is concerned, just setbacks to be overcome. Besides maybe you aren't destined to be a teacher. Could be there is something else out there that will challenge and inspire you. Besides, we all love you and are rooting for you every day. Hugs


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[> Re: Released (uh, sort of ...) -- Caroline, 21:09:14 04/30/12 Mon (5ade13c4.bb.sky.com/90.222.19.196)

Thank you. It's a bit of a tough time at the moment. As you might imagine, everything's rather painful and trying to go round school pretending all is fine to the students is really quite awful. The official line is that I'm 'not well'. I'm not sure that that's a good approach as some students seem to think that I might drop dead at any second!


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[> [> unless admin is insisting on that -- Lewis H., 16:37:16 05/02/12 Wed (adsl-74-235-197-173.mco.bellsouth.net/74.235.197.173)

just tell the kids the truth. It will be an important lesson for them about how life isn't fair in case they haven't figured it out yet. I never would have survived this long without a healthy supply of cynicism.


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[> Re: Released (uh, sort of ...) -- chuckit25, 13:49:41 05/13/12 Sun (cpe-76-84-130-127.neb.res.rr.com/76.84.130.127)

Caroline, I am seeing a lot of hoops that deter people from your profession, but my "world view" in "economics" doesn't mean your subjective experience isn't discouraging, and actually has been "set up" to be, especially when opportunism is so short sighted in the creation of real "people first" and sustainable wealth in "children first."

Teachers are no longer "just" the repositories of knowledge with a skill set to disseminate it; they are the "social network" with no net work, but holes, so people who actually can teach are driven out as "they don't quite measure up or don't fit." Those often are those who don't threaten the political positions of those "making the standards" that suit the least problematic (and creative) people in favor of those "disturbing the system" least in greater rigidity. (Did you ever see the British series on the perfect hospital, with no sick people, who actually "cost" the system?)

I am sure you have given every respect to all the hoops you are required to jump for "that license" to practice your craft. And you actually have to see this is all to deter bright, new talent, as well as justify "cost savings" on "how to build a civilized person" for THIS world, not the one they will live in (to make a viable future for themselves within a burgeoning world of promise and problems, especially in the face of realities that clearly don't work. It simply does "take everyone, 24/7," because the families don't have "singular" problems in which children have to grow up. Communities have to "do it themselves" as it were.

I remember when the need for people "in the know" and grounded in the real world was so great that teaching positions were opened to all kinds of professionsals, earning their actual teaching licenses within two years--as the "credentials" were "the proof of the pudding" in their skills in the real world, e.g. to actually create entirely new disciplines in the requirements of "cross-over" knowledge--the jargon being one of the great hurdles to such interconnected relevance in new approaches to problems.

Here in the US, instead of the fed "just giving" states the funds to hire/rehire teachers, public workers, that actually spend money AND do double duty that their jobs make a "future" possible, we think 'austerity' will serve against debt, when you have to know that Britain has had 125 percent G.D.P. to debt for (ever) decades, with the current spike. (US in the crisis is now 75 percent G.D.P. to debt; I know you have social systems that seem "burdensome," but would only serve to put less money into the economy if they are destroyed--especially with an "entrenched" class system--while BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China are the countries of trade surpluses--your country has real problems if education isn't seen as your "salvation," and it's a crime to waste your drive and talents in this direction).

However, I think Salty is on to something. Consider the "shape of your dream" might wear different clothes, e.g.if your desire to teach is in developing young people, which has as many venues as their needs and (underfunded or ignored) rights strike the imagination; or to share knowledge--the passion for a subject to find its place and new connections to other expression, or point the way to how to cross hurdles between disciplines. Illustration: I recall (Germany)was seeing dancers used in physics; to test and to illustrate molecular behavior within the chaotic or "random" universe--black light revealed the same (unseen) color "found each other"--straight/gay people or not.

I don't need to tell you that "unwell" creates "lizard brain" reactions in people, rather than the very support and kinds of attention you would support in creative reach and in wiser understanding you seem clearly able to assess in the individuals around you. People have problems and people have to be ones solving them. That's a pretty wide net for you to cast and your passion shouldn't be derailed by other people's narrow force fed shaping of it.

The fact you describe these options as barriers in your choices requires you clarify the shape of your dreams and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. If one is here, and one needs to get "there," the rest rather fills itself in. Should you see the cost and consequence and "prices too high to pay" THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU FAILED. You are finding the "best soil" to bloom, in your unique and individual beauty in creative balance--a person is not a job description, after all--and I hope you find courage and strength in your own willingness to give yourself in joy. THAT takes guts, not "passing tests" you never really designed for yourself! Every pearl on the string, great and small, has its place and makes the whole in shape, beauty, and meaning.
Be well!
chuckit25


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[> [> Re: Released (uh, sort of ...) -- Caroline, 03:56:20 05/15/12 Tue (5e084cea.bb.sky.com/94.8.76.234)

Wow, Chuckit - that was an incredible response. Sorry, I've only just got round to reading it but the last couple of weeks have been awful and I've been up to my eyeballs in stuff that had to be finished off before I left.

Thank you all so much. I am still trying (yes, my husband says that I'm very trying - old joke) and am today applying to a convent school, although I shall also have to look at supply as we have to eat - shame I'm not one of the cats, I could just go out and kill something.


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[> [> [> Re: Hee hee -- chuckit25, 09:59:27 05/15/12 Tue (cpe-76-84-130-127.neb.res.rr.com/76.84.130.127)

Illegitimi non carborundum. hehe.(Don't let the bastards get you down).

And, don't give up, even if you had to work retail for a few crumbs--after school skilled care with teaching/tutoring can be brought together with adult retraining/continuing ed, which itself can be a full time job. Just not "conventional" hours. It's not only through the public sector, but through charities "creative" opportunities can be found or go forth and forge them!

Even a cat can't kill "stupid." It seems crazy (and is) that the desire to "give" is treated so shabbily, so hurtfully. Live well; it's the best vengeance.
Be well!
chuckit25


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