Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Bermuda's Educators Council- Is Big Brother Watching?


Today we had on Mr A. Richardson, and Mrs. T. Richardson (no relation) members of the Bermuda Educators Council. There were many questions and comments emailed to us in preparation to this show. Here are some:

- Are teachers involved in these decisions? If not, we need to be. It seems, the reason for the demise of the Education System according to the last report done, is in fact that the department keeps making decisions for us instead of letting us get on with it. Teachers, I think, feel, like they are on a merry go round, head spinning, trying to make sense of all the top down decisions, workshop after workshop of the latest craze. When can we just teach?


- I need to get the forms.

-
Will there be an annual certification fee and how much professional development is required at each level to remain certified annually?


Many of our members were a little bit concerned as to the nature of this council. The two representatives that we had on the show cleared up a lot of these misconceptions. They explained it all, in essence as an attempt to provide the best in teaching to our young scholars. It makes sense! This will help to sort out those who may not need to be in the classroom, and ensures, not only that qualified educators are in position to help, but ensures that they keep their "tools" sharpened with professional development.

This and other initiatives makes the Talking Teacher think that this is a rather interesting time to be a teacher. There are so many new developments on the horizon, what will the future hold? Only time will tell. One thing that we can be sure of though, is that the Bermuda Educator's Council is trying to do their part to make sure teachers say on top. Want to see their site and find out more information about them? click here.





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am very concerned that this is another control control control mechanism for teachers, 40 hours of PD a year are they for real????
Most realistic and professional organisations require a three year cycle to ensure there is adequate time and the PD is meaningful. I heard a comment from a colleague that " we just make it up" that is not the intention, the intention is to ensure we educators stay current with our fields.
So control is not the way it is ensuring it is realistic and meaningful.
The other thing is we pay for a license we did not ask for, we have to submit our PD and then they ask us to submit articles for a "newsletter" that will be censored if it does not follow the BEC propaganda. What are they trying to pull?