LOL, but I wasnt drinking tea that time.

My iPad thinks it can read my mind and type better then I can.

Your very correct, but I used "postal script" purposely.
Postal Script is a historical reference referring to the margin message in a telegram, often used for giving delivery instructions, it was considered text that was free of charge and not used when calculating the cost (which was charged per word).
The use became popular in international and inter regional communications, when one telegrapher would hand a message off to another and so forth, often crossing more then one telegraph provider. Using postal script was a means of relaying extra text, at a lower competitive cost.
Thats how my professor once described it.


Postal Script: Belief generally has little effect on reality. The "force" doesnt work like it does in Star Wars, natural laws are pretty immutable to ones will.


Post Script: You realize then that your arguing with a 5th grader?

Sorry, there nothing to apologies for, and I really do like my anonymity.

Postal Script: (hope you won another bet).

My doctorate consisted solely of my dissertation. It was a lot of work, and it was all on my own the whole time. You really have to be organized, and the self motivated type. There are no artificial deadlines, and I know friends in the states that worked 10 years on their doctorates, some stayed ABD forever.

Unless you want to be a school head a doctorate isnt really much help, and can actually be a hinderance getting a classroom teacher position. "If you have a doctorate why do you want to teach K-12?" The job market for university faculty positions is so fierce if you didnt come from a top school, or havent been publishing fiercely, your basically going to get little more then adjunct work, or part time at a community college. The view by international schools is that your really just hanging out in K-12 for the paycheck.

If your planing on staying a teacher the pay isnt that great either, some schools will really reward you for having a doctorate, some schools give you a slight bump on the pay scale and some dont even recognize a doctorate anymore then they do a masters degree. It would be difficult to make the investment back if you werent planing on going into administration.

The best advice I have is dont go into a doctoral program not knowing what you want to research. Really there is nothing to keep you NOW from determining a research question, and focus. Do a lit review, then start looking at schools, you will be a stronger applicant if you can show them what youve done already, and your research proposal is already strongly written. It will also help you focus on which schools to apply to, because your going to need a faculty chair whos research interests are parallel to your own. Youll save money too, if you can go right from committee formation, to IRB, to data collection.
Keep in mind where your going to get your subjects from, using your own students and school as resources makes the search for subjects a LOT easier. Otherwise your basically begging others for cooperation (its the only thing i would have done differently).

This has come up on the forum before, i understand your stress and your frustration but dont kid yourself. If your certificate, license, credential whatever its called expires, lapses, is non renewed, suspended for not paying fees, your not a certified teacher, and not having one is going to be a serious disadvantage in finding a job, and even maintaining a job. Your certificate is the key that allows you entry into this profession, without one your not entitled to be in a classroom. I know a certificate doesnt make someone a good teacher, but it makes them a legal one. You cant drive a car in California with an "expired" license, not legally and if you get pulled over your going to get a ticket for not having one. You cant practice medicine, accounting, law, etc without a valid license, and international teaching is a competitive business, not having a legal qualification is going to close a lot of doors for you.

We had to let a teacher go over the winter holiday because her certification had been inactivated, and she couldnt renew it (we hired her back for the remainder of the year as a substitute).

If your planing on going overseas, you need to complete induction, and going back to university is going to be the most practical (though not cheapest) way of accomplishing that.

I switched my certificate to California, so that i wouldnt have to do PD anymore.

What part of "I like my anonymity" is confusing?

ISC is the generic form and abbreviation for the International School (IS) in Copenhagen.

Being the academic/IB coordinator, one of the problems I had (though couldnt really do anything about it, and what Im planing for now next year), and an issue that is prevalent in ISs is training schedules. A school with new teachers coming just doesnt really have the time to spend a month before school starts to really train new teachers unfamiliar with IB philosophy. Teachers barely arrive in time to breath and get their homes settled, and paperwork taken care of before the couple days of PD and students arrival. Unless a school also has a sizable inexperienced group of new teachers starting its not really practical either.

If next year is like last year, we had 9 new faculty, and id like to put together a training program of at least 2 weeks before school starts. Have them start August 1, let them get situated, and figure out the basics and then spend 2-3 weeks just training, but it would never happen.

I havent been back to the states in years, but even the american students ive had in classrooms seem more distracted and have a sense of entitlement. They are still very much a "me" generation. My european and asian students always seemed more connected to their community.

YIPPY, Oh my gosh like attention from my arch nemeses again, your really going to spoil me. "Carefully crafted" oh gosh thats going to make a sticky spot.

ISC is also a private school.

Ive seen experienced primary teachers who cant wrap their heads around PYP. We have one teacher whos been trained since last year, who 'gets it' academically, but you just dont 'see it' in her classroom. I get the feeling she goes through the motions, but internally shes fighting it (I think coming from a grade 6, elementary background, may have something to do with it). The concepts, behind PYP arent really that complex or hard, but internalizing it is the key difference, and thats why many recruiters want to see actual successful PYP experience in teachers.

Sydney and Hong Kong are not really competitive fairs. they are where Search sounds newbies, who would be frustrated with their outcomes in BK. Get into the earliest "super fair" (In order, Bangkok, Cambridge, London) that you can. Your just more likely to do better and have more options the earlier in the year you can get yourself in front of the most recruiters, when the largest pool of vacancies is available.

The smaller "regional fairs like Sydney, Hong Kong, Dubai, etc just offer convenience to those more localized. They are smaller, and are more weighted towards lower tier schools then the elite schools. Of course if you dont have to travel there is little reason not to go. If you live in Hong Kong, going to the Hong Kong fair requires little more then the $50 fee, you dont have to book airfare or a hotel room. Many people I met at the Sydney fair where actually from Sydney. If your seriously looking for a job though you really need to plan at being at one of the three super fairs though.

The same applies to the schools when it comes to the smaller regional fairs, you see a stronger representation of them among the recruiters because their attendance is convenient for them.

I posted (and cited that post in this thread) a while back asking for help, because even i didnt understand why they were sending us to Sydney (and i really still dont, we have 2 definite vacancies at this point). Ive been told that really June is just too late to "start" any type of recruiting effort and expect to get good candidates.

So when i was leaving italy for here, I realized that the "pool of anonymity" was going to shrink and shrink a lot. When your a teacher its pretty easy to conceal yourself in the numbers. Even a moderate sized school is easily going to have a 100 or more staff. So even 5 or 6 schools in a city creates a pretty sizable pool of which you could be anyone.

Being an admin changes those numbers a great deal. A moderate sized school only has a handful of administrators. We have 6 (not counting the counselor and librarian), so when you take those kinds of numbers (single digits vs triple digits) for the same 5 or 6 schools and you get a "pool of anonymity" amounting to a couple dozen. Thats a lot more difficult to hide in, add any description of what you do at a certain school and that pool gets even smaller. You cant really expect to remain anonymous under those conditions, you just cant hide in a fishbowl.

That creates a dilemma, especially in a forum such as this (you cant reconcile the credibility of anonymous sources). Readers deserve context and background on the source of where information is coming from. On the other side of that argument is the source wanting to maintain their anonymity, and with such a small sub group you cant really say anything about who you are, what you do or where you are, without easily revealing your identity.

I cant say i made the right or the best choice, i cant even say there arent better choices out there, but I choose to obfuscate my identity, because like mostly everyone on this forum I value the anonymity. I and many people on this forum would not be able to participate on this forum, or even this site (such as the ISR reviews section) if it were not anonymous. Id lose my job, and would probably never find a job again. If you had to post and submit reviews under your own identity, recruiters would just check to see if youd ever said anything negative about a school, or were just simply a contributor. The sharing of information would just vanish.

It might be hard for us to remember, especially when interacting with long time personalities and veterans but when we participate in an anonymous forum, we are inherently accepting some level of deception not just from others but in our selves. With few exception when we join, and then contribute and consume information on this forum, we are not doing so under our own and actual names, but under personas, avatars, pen names, cover identities, call them what you will, but we fabricated them and constructed the backgrounds for them. We all (mostly) stepped into this community telling a lie, to conceal who we really are, because we needed too.

YAY, YAY, congratulations, you should be feeling very proud. A lot of people would be right to feel jealous of you. Your going to have a great experience.

I dont know, I switched to California when my certificate was about to expire, before they changed the administrator certificate requirements, when all you needed was to take the SLLA, and I havent taught ESL for 6 years or so, but this guy doesnt even sound like a teacher.

People talk about what they know and what they do. We talk about our students, our jobs, administrators, our coworkers, because thats what we do all day. I dont get how this guy can be a teacher all day, and not have anything to say about teaching? I do some consulting over the summers, but i almost never talk about it because its such a small part of what i do professionally. All this guy talks about is his consulting work, at that kind of level of involvement its got to be all he really does. Theres an easy difference that you can see between soldiers in the field (real teachers) and the - and pencil pushers back at HQ (consultants). They both talk their own talk, and this guy isnt talking like a teacher.

Im guessing but based on his writing personality and views id guess he was a sales rep, and just saying he was a teacher, because i dont see anything in this guys writing that speaks to anything about teaching or education.

The middle east always seems to be hiring (at least to some degree), of course music/choir positions arent the most in demand, and if your solely focused on "the american" school they tend to close up hiring sooner rather then later.