Yesterday I received an email confirming I am now officially proficient at teaching high school maths. I decided to take the plunge into high school teaching in August 2020 (inspired by the plight of teachers back in the dark days of the Pandemic), so receiving this email has been over 4 years in the making. What better time than now to reflect on the journey it’s been.
If you’re currently pondering a career change into high school maths teaching and wondering what’s involved, here’s the hurdles you’ll have to jump:
Do a pure or applied maths degree (or an actuarial studies degree and endure the associated bureaucratic death loop to convince the admin boffins that you are good enough at maths to teach it).
Get accepted into a Masters of Teaching program (which should be a simple process assuming you fit neatly into all their boxes). At this point you magically become a pre-service teacher.
Pass 16 (or so) university subjects, which will largely involve working out what the people marking your assessments think so that you can echo it back to them. I learned this the hard way after failing one of my assignments, although in hindsight I should have known better since this was the exact lesson I had already learned from my law degree. In both instances they told me they valued unique ideas. How naïve I was to believe them.
Achieve a grade on the LANTITE exams that places you in the top 30% of adults.
Survive two teaching practicums and an internship, convincing each of your supervisors that you meet the AITSL teaching standards at the graduate level. Survive being the key word here. These were genuinely difficult and at many points I was not sure I was going to make it.
Whilst enduring the final internship, somehow find the time and energy to satisfactorily complete the Assessment for Graduate Teaching, which is the capstone Teaching Performance Assessment of choice for Sydney University.
Pass a series of suitability assessments, which are cognitive and emotional intelligence assessments run by the NSW Department of Education.
Successfully complete an online interview with the NSW Department of Education, which involves answering questions about various aspects of your pedagogy (a word which you probably had never heard of prior to step 1, but by this step know more than you care to admit).
Congratulations, you are provisionally accredited and can apply for teaching gigs. Successfully get one of these gigs and don't abandon ship.
Within 3 years, collect evidence from your teaching practice that proves you meet the AITSL teaching standards at the proficient level. If you miss the deadline, return to step 2.
At this point you are now ready to apply to be accredited as a proficient teacher. I submitted my application literally on the last day of term 4 last year, and about 3 weeks later I’d received my confirmation.
There are also a bunch of other mini-hurdles not in the above list (mostly involving more bureaucratic death loops to get registered on various antiquated systems and prove you are safe to work with children), but hopefully this list gives you the broad picture of what you’re in for to become a “legit” teacher. If I had known about all these hurdles way back when I initially decided to become a high school maths teacher, would I still have taken the plunge?
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