Does working in an IB school but as a teachers aid count?

PsyGuy
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

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Post by PsyGuy »

@Cherrypop

No thats the rule no amount of training equals any amount of experience. Your not asking about training equaling experience though. Your issue is how would training augment your upcoming IB experience.

A lot of this is again going to depend on how you spin this and what your principal will say in your reference. The issue is how do you define
"teacher", withn the context of what is an IB teacher. Tradionally youd have a very rigid definition: A teacher is the educator of record responsible for the creation, implementation, delivery and assessment of instructional content. That definition works in the majority of cases, but if we look at LS (Learning Support) in an inclusion environment. Your shadowing a student or number of students you dont create lesson plans, you aid in implementation of another teachers lessons, you dont do assessment, yet the vast majority of educators would still consider that a teacher. Depending on what you do as an "aid", your tasking may be very similar to that description. In that case it might be very easy to spin that experience as an IB teacher despite the aid title. However, if your duties are mainly clerical and assistant type duties then it would be much harder to spin that as an IB teacher experience.

My apologies I didnt clarify. The OCC is the IB Online Curriculum Center. Its a web resource for IB teachers that contain a wide variety of documents and resources from pedagogy and methodology to specific course outlines, marking schemes (grading policies) and the other documents and resources a teacher needs to design a course, and lesson plans and how to assess students. It is not free training. IB teachers are trained through a series of workshops rated 1 (introductory) to 3 (Advance). A level 1 workshop is typically for teachers without IB experience, and without OCC access. These level 1 workshops basically cover what you would be able to access and learn on the OCC. While OCC access doesnt give you a certificate it would: 1) Allow you to talk intelligently about the IB and its philosophy, methods and strategies which you could demonstrate to recruiters and admins, and combined with your IB related experience would give you an edge over other entry level ITs that your competing with. 2) When you do pursue training you will be able to skip the level one workshop and go into a more marketable level 2 workshop. Most of them are the same workshop depending on if you have OCC access and already have some rudimentary understanding.

IB is everything.
The peak in recruiting is in the middle of the academic year (January-February), you will only have 1/2 a year experience at that time on your resume.
You generally need 2 years experience to even enter the IT profession. Having half a year experience as a full time teacher with a year overall isnt going to mean anything. Whats going to make your limited experience special and give you an edge that few others will have is the IB experience. If you can maximize the spin on that experience you can leverage that into an entry level position especially at PYP. A year of PYP experience with a certification would make you competitive for low tier IB schools.
Cherrypop
Posts: 45
Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2013 6:43 pm

Post by Cherrypop »

PsyGuy,

Thank you for taking out the time to write that very detailed response! It was exactly what I was looking for in terms of how to spin my limited credentials. Now I know my new plan of action.

I believe half of my job description will be somewhat secretarial and the other is tutoring/teaching the students. I'm also to be in charge of the In School Suspension classroom, and would essentially be helping the students with their work in there as well. My principal said I'll be doing something different everyday so who knows what that means. Anyway, thank you so much again!! I really appreciate your time!
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