Deflated
Months ago, I talked to someone at the BC College of Teachers who told me that a GTP (on-the-job teaching certification program) was most likely transferrable for teaching qualification in British Columbia. I would only have to get an outline of the program from the university to which I was applying and have the course pre-approved.The happy news: I got accepted into my Number One choice of university!!! I'm scheduled to start the Graduate Teaching Program at the University of Warwick (one of the two top universities for education programs in the whole UK!!!) in September. YAY me!
No good thing, it seems, can exist without a nice dose of reality.
The crap news: I called the BC College of Teachers back to get information on where we should forward the abovementioned documentation for approval and was kindly informed that whomever I had previously spoken to was misinformed. In fact, the GTP is 100% non-transferrable to Canada. Nice.
What's more, even the PGCE (or university-based teaching certification program) is not transferrable. Granted, I wouldn't have to do a full re-do if I took this route, only several upgrading courses (superfun! supertime-consuming! superexpensive! superdegrating-for-someone-whose-been-teaching-for-years-already!), but things could never be as easy as simply transferring the documentation to Canada and taking a teaching position upon arrival.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. All this F$%§ing bureaucracy is driving me mental!!! Just get one thing sorted and then something else pops up.
So the thing that makes me the most angry: where the hell does Canada get off thinking that they have a right to be snobby bitches about accepting qualifications from the UK. The UK is our goddamn founding father! I mean, really! As far as I remember, the teachers in my highschools were nothing to write home about anyway. When I asked flat-out whether the board that decides whether or not a qualification is transferrable even glances at quality of teaching, I was promptly informed that that might be something I would take up with them if I am going through the process, but that no, they currently do not. Pretentious assholes.
Oh, and when I mentioned that yes, it was rather inconvenient for me to come back and take the program in Canada, especially considering that the program here is FREE, it was mentioned that that, in fact, is part of the reason they so strictly do NOT accept qualifications transferred from the UK. Apparently, Canada, and BC in particular, want to keep the monopoly they've got on university placements for Bachelor of Education students. Basically, it's not about people's lives at all, but rather about keeping money in the pockets of bigwigs. Same old song and dance.
So, what am I doing here?
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