hi everybody
ok, an update... (apologies in advance as this will sound very me, me, me)
I moved approximately 400 kms south and started my first teaching job about 16 months ago, as a Humanities and English secondary teacher. Within 6 months I was also the Middle Years Coordinator with the additional responsibility of investigating and implementing a Year 9 program. This year, in addition to the Middle Years position, I have been teaching Home Economics and Politics and was also selected by our regional division of the Education Department to reform our school's curriculum and to lead the rest of the staff through the process of upgrading their teaching practices. And now, starting next term (in 3 weeks), I have been promoted to the Cluster Coordinator & Educator, responsible for leading change and reform in the schools within our cluster, 3 primary schools plus the secondary college.
Needless to say, the past 16 months or so have been insanely busy.
I don't know how the teaching scale works over there but down here it generally goes from graduate teacher (4 levels/years, grad1 through to grad4) to accomplished teacher (5 levels/years, acc1 through to acc5) to expert teacher (3 levles/years, exp1 through to exp 3) and then to leading teacher (2 levels). Now you don't necessarily have to go through every level, you can seek promotion and skip a few levels on the way but if you just plod your way through gaining your incremental pay increases each year of service then that's the path that you would follow. Not me though, I've gone from graduate teacher level 2 to leading teacher level1 and managed to skip 10 levels in between. It's pretty amazing.
anyway that's more than enough talking about me for now