I don't know if this is an accurate title for what I am about to type mostly because I feel a tangent laced rant of spiritually mythical proportions brewing beneath the surface of my strained visage.
I was discussing with a couple people today the shortcomings of a particular program installed by the California State Government as a requirement for all new teachers. Being that I am relatively new to the state I fall into the aforementioned category of "new teacher." I have no qualms with the label in and of itself, but it's the "standards" and requirements accompanying such a label that are proving to be the bane of my once somewhat simple life.
The program to which I am referring is the mess known throughout the California education system as BTSA.
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I have just now logged in in order to finish this post that I began a month or two ago. As the school year is coming to a timely close, and I have now fulfilled each requirement of the BTSA program set forth by the governing bodies that be I am struggling more and more to recreate the mindset from which the beginning of the post developed. I am a free man in a week, and what good comes of dwelling in the past.
With that said, I feel I would be remiss in failing to mention the unique turn in which the state has steered the future of the BTSA program. In the past, a new teacher was provided with the opportunity to spend 2 years mimicking and reproducing the work completed in their credentialing programs for free, but beginning this coming year that will all change as the state is requiring teachers to pay for the program in its entirety. If I was one of the teachers required to pay for this waste of resources, this would be a much longer and angrier post.
