I'm sure many of us would agree with you, Clare, but in education in particular the notion of valuing and rewarding talent over officious qualifications just never seems to get anything close to a toehold.
As I finish up a fiendishly busy first term this year, I've looked back over my blog (and my blog reading) and noted with some chagrin that this has been the least active/productive period for me in more than six years of blogging.
This has basically been something along the lines of the silence of the paper trail, as I make 2012 the year I spend copious amounts of time, money and energy attaining the essential pieces of paper that convince people who will never watch me teach or meet me face to face that I can actually teach, and that I perhaps ought to be paid a bit more than the newest kid on the block who has a dozen or so less years of teaching and curriculum development experience.
Pieces of paper that just might help eradicate the baffling Australian assumption that my ten years teaching in Asia (and twenty textbooks produced with the world's biggest educational publisher) weren't just some mysterious hole in time and space.
The first part of this journey to recognition is done: a Certificate IV TAE (Training and Assessment). The second part is also underway in the form of a Masters Degree in Professional Education and Training.
It's all very interesting, and as Neil Finn points out 'Everything is good for you', but I've come to miss the blogosphere mightily and wish my PD wasn't so dependent on regurgitating faceless experts' white coat brigade antics as evidence of my commitment to be(com)ing a better educator.
But it could very well be worse... I could be walking into class and not actually have a goddam clue what I'm doing, despite a veritable mantle of paper power draped over a chair in the staff room.
Yes, that would be infinitely worse!
;-)
