Okay, maybe the word whore is a bit strong, but that’s essentially what I’ve become. You see, in education, the only way you can get a raise is by getting something called Continuing Education Units (CEU), or by accomplishing a higher degree. It’s basically me paying so I can continue teaching so others can get paid for teaching me so others can teach them… on an on until there is a huge bureaucracy of people taking classes from each other and leeching off the government as much as possible. Or something like that.
Well, I can’t get a raise or move up to the next level unless I have enough units. Doesn’t matter how good of a teacher I am. Just how many units I have. Well, I don’t want to take really hard classes that require lots of homework. I want the credits! I want them cheap and I want them fast with very little effort. I know that sounds sad… I mean, I want to grow as an individual as well. But, for those of you in education, you know that education classes are generally the place for hoop jumping – for discussing something you’ve discussed a million times before, but participating nonetheless so you can just get the credit. They are not the place to go to experience personal growth. The whole thing makes me a little ill to be honest.
I found out that the fastest and cheapest way for me to earn CEUs is to go to conferences, usually over a weekend, and pay for units through a local university. So, this weekend I’m going to the MacWorld Educators Symposium in San Francisco, immediately followed by a Reader’s Conference in Asilomar. I went to the Art Education Conference in November (which is actually a useful conference for me). I’m also going to the iCUE Conference in February and the Northern California Art Education conference at the end of February.
All said and done, I will have earned enough cheap & quick units to earn me a nice little raise. Sometimes I wish I could just get rewarded for being a good teacher so I could have my evenings and weekends to… I don’t know… do non-teaching related things. That would be way cool.
Steph Lewis's Blog
Honey, we all know that teachers are magical creatures who exist only to teach, and that they only exist inside the walls of the school! That’s why teacher sightings at non-school locations are so rare and confusing.
After all the students have left in the afternoon, all the teachers go to the front of their rooms, stand in front of their blackboards (or whiteboards), take the appropriate writing utensil in hand, and vanish in a wisp of smoke. They come back into this plane of existence just before the bell rings the next day.