Maximizing our qualifications

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sdakota

Maximizing our qualifications

Post by sdakota »

Hi all,

I would like to ask you all a question about how my husband and I should maximize our qualifications so that when we recruit in the next few years, we will have a good shot at a great school.

Bit about us:

* We are both Americans.
* Both early 30's.
* No kids.
* My husband has an undergraduate degree in Political Science, a PGCE in Education, an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction, and is licensed to teach secondary English and Social Studies/Humanities in America.
* He has 3 years of experience teaching English. Two years teaching common core curriculum at another international school, and one year at our current school where he teaches MYP Language and Literature, English B, and TOK.
* He's been to a DP English B category 2 workshop.
* He is concerned that his undergraduate degree is not in English though his C&I degree was focused on secondary literacy.

* I have an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts, a PGCE in Education, and I'm licensed to teach Elementary Education and K-12 Visual Arts in America.
* I have 4 years of experience teaching lower elementary school, and 1 year of experience teaching elementary school art.
* This year I am very fortunate to be moving into a DP Visual Arts position where I will also get training.
* I would like to stay teaching Art in the future, either at the elementary, middle, or secondary levels.

My questions:
1. Should my husband take some graduate courses in English or will his certifications, experience, education, and training be enough for us to be competitive for top schools in the future?
2. Should I pursue a Masters degree in Art? They are all very expensive, but I would do it if it were worth it.
3. Anything else we should do to make our qualifications stronger?

We like our school and will stay at least two or three more years or more. Just planning for the future. Thanks for any and all inputs!
fine dude
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Re: Maximizing our qualifications

Post by fine dude »

You both should focus on getting more DP teaching experience. Your husband should teach more DP English, History or even economics (has higher demand).
There is a growing demand for visual arts teachers both at MYP and DP levels. Parallelly, you both could pursue an inexpensive master's online from one of the public universities, but DP experience is paramount. Open University in the UK offers Master's for GBP 10K. To further gain an advantage, you'd try to apply for DP Examiner positions in the next 3-5 years.
PsyGuy
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Location: Northern Europe

Response

Post by PsyGuy »

In direct reply to your inquiry:

1) Some graduate (or undergraduate) courses in literature arent going to matter, anything short of a confirmed degree in the field isnt really worth anything. ISs mainly consult the transcript to determine conferral of the degree, if its not listed as a major or potentially a minor in some circumstances they arent going to do a course by course audit. There are three components that comprise an ITs marketability what they can teach (degrees, credentials, qualifications, etc.), what they have taught (experience exam scores, etc) and special skills. Of those experience is king. Unless your spouse wants to complete a major for a second undergraduate degree or complete a graduate degree in literature, they wont be improving their marketability with some random coursework. If however they still want to pursue coursework on the cheap, edX offers a range of courses from some Ivy Unis a well as notable Unis, the AP 3 part series is free but certificates for the three would be less than USD$150.
http://www.edx.org/course/subject/literature

2) No. You dont need a Masters in art and yes they tend to be expensive (though UK degrees tend to be more affordable than US degrees). You would benefit however from some type of masters simply because your leaving coin on the table by not qualifying for Masters band salary. UPe (University of the People) offers an M.Ed for USD$2600 for the entire program.

3) Your spouse would benefit marketability wise shifting now while still early in his career to humanities/social studies into individuals and societies (history and economics mainly) to take utility advantage of his undergraduate degree. Your interested in top ISs and your preparing to recruit in a couple years which puts you at 5 years in experience when recruiting which is on the low end for elite tier ISs, where you really need everything to lineup since your going to be in an applicant pool with hundreds of applications where reducing that pile of applications to something manageable for a short list means discarding applicants for trivial things such as a PoliSci degree for a literature IT.

While youre both IB ITs and continuing with that experience is going to be beneficial, you also need to start looking at AP and A*/IGCSE, most elite tir ISs are not classic IBWS, they have IB DIP as an option at SLL, but otherwise they are NC ISs.
You would benefit finding a whole IS art appointment, as you have a lower secondary gap in your experience.
I would apply for examiner positions at your earliest convenience, and partially one of the reasons your spouse should transition too individuals and societies as you need a degree and 1 year experience teaching the subject, and your spouses qualifications and experience are not in alignment. You need not wait years to apply howevr, and examiner experience isnt critically important.
Heliotrope
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Re: Maximizing our qualifications

Post by Heliotrope »

PsyGuy wrote:
> While youre both IB ITs and continuing with that experience is going to be
> beneficial, you also need to start looking at AP and A*/IGCSE, most elite
> tir ISs are not classic IBWS, they have IB DIP as an option at SLL, but
> otherwise they are NC ISs.


Without wanting to rehash this old debate, but for the OPs benefit, I'd like to point out that this is merely @PsyGuy's opinion.

A while ago I made a list of tier 1 schools, based on which international schools were mentioned multiple times by multiple people on this forum and elsewhere as being tier 1 (as there are no official criteria for the tiers, so all you can do is make a list that most ITs will agree upon for the most part). Of course it's by no means a perfect list, but open for debate on the paid forum to make it better.
Of the 66 tier 1 schools on this list:

- only 5 offer no IB programs at all
- 61 offer one or more IB programs (IB-PYP, IB-MYP, IB-DP, most of them DP)
- 28 offer all three programs (IB-PYP, IB-MYP & IB-DP)
- 6 offer 2 out of 3 programs (IB-DP and either IB-MYP or IB-PYP
- 27 offers 1 IB-program (IB-DP, at 8 schools AP is also offered alongside IB-DP)

So with 28 schools out of 66, PsyGuy is right that the majority isn't an IBWS, but as I imagine you're looking mostly at DP that's not exactly relevant. What is, is that the overwhelming majority of the schools on the list do have IBDP as the diploma route for the majority of their students. Therefore I'd argue, at most of them, experience with IBDP is much more important than any other curriculum experience.

@PsyGuy disagrees, and he has a different list of tier 1 schools (that nobody gets to see and therefore is hard to argue with but also easy to ignore), but of course he's entitled to his opinion. He'll most likely respond to this saying 'my' list (it's not my list, I just compiled it based on the opinions of others) is incorrect and he'll mention something about how most tier 1 ISs actually don't use IBDP as much, but we've had that debate already, so it's not productive to repeat. Nevertheless, I thought it useful to let you know there are other opinions as well.
PsyGuy
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Discussion

Post by PsyGuy »

@Heliotropes list is inaccurate, its over inflated the 1st tier with ISs that are second tier, and thats where the IB influence is coming from. Since the second tier has a high number of IB ISs, which is where the importance of IB to an ITs career progression becomes important as the second tier often bridges the third and first tier. You can make it through the second tier without IB but it often takes longer and your sitting in the third tier as opposed to the second tier as you attempt to move into the first tier.
Heliotrope
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Joined: Sun May 13, 2018 1:48 am

Re: Discussion

Post by Heliotrope »

PsyGuy wrote:
> @Heliotropes list is inaccurate, its over inflated the 1st tier with ISs
> that are second tier, and thats where the IB influence is coming from.
> Since the second tier has a high number of IB ISs, which is where the
> importance of IB to an ITs career progression becomes important as the
> second tier often bridges the third and first tier. You can make it through
> the second tier without IB but it often takes longer and your sitting in
> the third tier as opposed to the second tier as you attempt to move into
> the first tier.

It's not inflated, there are no official criteria, and the list is based on what schools are frequently mentioned by other ITs as being tier 1. The fact that @PsyGuy disagrees is because his criteria for tier 1 are different. That's his prerogative, as there are no official criteria for a tier 1 selection, only personal ones.
But based on what a large group of ITs have mentioned as tier 1 schools, almost all of those have IBDP as the diploma route for the majority of their students. A few also offer AP in addition to IBDP, and a few only offer AP, but that's a small minority. For the large majority of schools IBDP experience will be a plus when you apply there.
PsyGuy
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
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Discussion

Post by PsyGuy »

There are formal criteria.
@Heliotropes list in inaccurate and among other issues is over inflated as described above.
@Heliotrope ignores a number of NC programs at first tier ISs (IE.. A*, IGCSE, baccalauréat, abitur, etc.) The US NC and AP program are not the only NC SLL qualifications at first tier ISs.
Heliotrope
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Re: Discussion

Post by Heliotrope »

PsyGuy wrote:
> @Heliotrope ignores a number of NC programs at first tier ISs (IE.. A*,
> IGCSE, baccalauréat, abitur, etc.) The US NC and AP program are not the
> only NC SLL qualifications at first tier ISs.

Nope, haven't ignored them.
PsyGuy
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Comment

Post by PsyGuy »

@Heliotrope

We disagree.
Heliotrope
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Re: Comment

Post by Heliotrope »

PsyGuy wrote:
> We disagree.

Yep.
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