The bureaucratic teaching game ...

Now, one would like to think that two undergraduate degrees, a Masters degree just a whisker away, eight years experience in three different countries and membership to several professional organisations would be enough to gain certification to teach in Canada.  But, no.  One must complete a six month (and $1500 cash upfront) course in Canadian history.  I'm still not really sure how learning about the domesticity of women in British Columbia in the 1880s is going to help me to teach.  

source

At the moment, all my spare time is being taken up with study.  Not just the Canadian history unit, but also with the ethics application for my Masters thesis in gifted education.  Now, you tell me what is going to improve my teaching ability ... a knowledge of Canadian women in the 1880s or a knowledge of gifted children in a classroom?  It seems quite ironic that I'm having to put my teaching work aside to complete a totally unrelated course just so that I can become a teacher in a different country.  It's enough to make a girl want to leave the profession.  Which, is exactly what I'm thinking of doing.  Don't get me wrong, I love teaching.  More than love it, I thrive off it, I love working with a classroom full of different personalities and helping them to learn and love to learn.  But, when my only job prospect in Calgary will involve ten hours a week in the car (more in winter), a class of 30+ children, limited resources and a salary less than I've ever had before, I'm not sure.  I think that I love my sanity and life more than teaching when it comes to that situation.  Which saddens me because I love what I do and I know I'm good at it.  But, I'm not alone.  There are many studies in the US that show that teachers are leaving the profession at an astonishing rate, with some studies showing that a third of new teachers leave the profession within their first four years in the classroom.  That number is staggering.  I'm sure it's not because they don't like what they do.  Perhaps they, like me, are fed up with the constant bureaucracy, unhelpful criticism from the community, lack of respect for a teacher's professionalism and low salary.  I find all of this incredibly sad because the ones who are really losing out are the children.  It's time for teachers to receive the credit they deserve and society to value them as the professionals who are educating the next generation. 

source

But for now, let me put down my reading about how to differentiate learning in the classroom for gifted students and find that article I'm meant to be reading, '"Not Gainfully Employed": Women on the Iowa Frontier, 1833-1870', because, apparently it's going to make me a better teacher.