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Post by shaggaz on Aug 28, 2008 17:18:52 GMT 10
VIT sent me a letter today.
Apparently, I have to REAPPLY for my 'Permission To Teach', because my five years is up! WTF?!
I have taught in over 8 secondary schools, 5 primary schools and 2 universities, but I don't have a Dip Ed, so I could lose my permission to teach groups of up to 3 students the bloody trombone.
The gentleman on the phone also had the audacity to inform me that if the school could find someone more qualified for the job, they had to take them instead of me!
They are a fucking useless organisation and I group their employees in the same category as Metcard inspectors.
I hope you are all having a better day than me! :-)
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Post by ironguts on Aug 28, 2008 18:01:11 GMT 10
That totally sucks but doesn't surprise me. Soon you'll need at least a PHD to get into primary school.
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Post by timothystevens on Aug 28, 2008 18:21:29 GMT 10
The VIT is the most disgraceful, inexcusable waste of money, space, resources, oxygen, you name it – I back you Shan in your disgust at its pettiness, and offer the following email exchange from a couple of years back:
To vit@vit.vic.edu.au
Hello.
Is there any way I can persuade you not to send me your vacuous and wasteful newsletter? I am only a member of this organisation under sufferance, and as an emblem of what is being done to education by governments with a deficit of imagination, it frankly makes my blood boil. Never is my annual fee more keenly resented than when this piffling publication appears in the mailbox. I consider the costs incurred by its production and dissemination to be, at least in my case, a waste. I shall stay a member, because I have to. I feel certain you will not omit to remind me when I have to pay up (second-most resented moment of the year). Can we leave it at that?
Many thanks
Timothy Stevens
From VIT:
Dear Mr Stevens,
Since the establishment of the Victorian Institute of Teaching in January 2003, registration has been a condition of employment of a teacher in any Victorian school. All teachers are required by law to be registered. In carrying out its functions under the Victorian Institute of Teaching Act 2001, the Institute is required to communicate with teachers in relation to teacher registration and other professional matters. The Institute does this primarily through the Institute's official newsletter iteach.
Kind regards [etc.]
To: vit@vit.vic.edu.au
Well that’s pretty much the response I would have expected from such a doctrinaire, box-ticking, form-observing festival of bureaucratic mediocrity as the VIT, but thanks anyway, I guess it’s always worth asking.
Happy days
Tim
Isn't it magnificent: you've got a musician like Shannon Barnett on the books and you quibble over a Dip Ed. If (as they say) the parking inspector is the failed police officer, the Metcard inspector is the failed parking inspector, and the VIT drone a failed Metcard inspector.
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Post by ironguts on Aug 28, 2008 18:55:44 GMT 10
beautifully put Tim, what a way with word'''s you have.
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Post by bodgey on Aug 28, 2008 21:17:52 GMT 10
I'm right behind you Shan, Tim and Guts.
It beggars belief that schools, and more importantly the bloody-minded VIT, don't recognise how lucky they are to have actual musicians (i.e. people who can play at an extremely high level) teaching for them.
I wonder how long it will be before musicians without a Dip.Ed. get the arse to be replaced by the maths teacher who is deemed 'qualified' enough to teach music becuase he once played the piano to AMEB level 3 AND HAS A FUCKING DIP ED!
Just because you have a bit of paper from a uni doesn't mean you can actually do what it says on the paper.
It really gets under my skin. In my year at a certain conservatorium we were a class of about 25. 4 or 5 of us went on to become musicians, while another 4 or 5 just scraped over the line and, concluding correctly that they just didn't have the skills or knowledge, went merrily down to the education faculty, picked up a Dip.Ed. and now the fucking education departments country wide will take one of those no-playing motherfuckers over someone who can play and most likely teach more effectively. Grrrr.
Having said that, there were a couple of good musicians who went on to become great teachers, and more power to them, but by and large it's the exception rather than the rule.
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Post by bodgey on Aug 28, 2008 21:18:15 GMT 10
....and Tim - I wish I could write like that!
Superb.
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Post by captain on Aug 29, 2008 6:31:39 GMT 10
yeah Tim yeah!!
cunts.
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Post by ironguts on Aug 29, 2008 8:02:52 GMT 10
I like your writing skills bodgey, "now the fucking education departments country wide will take one of those no-playing motherfuckers over someone who can play,,,," sounds like me.
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gator
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Post by gator on Aug 29, 2008 11:03:57 GMT 10
Add to this what a Dip. Ed actually stands for in real terms...The perpetuation of an outmoded and by and large, disfunctional system of teaching both teachers and in turn , secondary students: as anyone with a hint of imagination that has a Dip Ed can attest to.
The problem with musicians for both the VIT and the Federal education system is that their independence as learners and thinkers collides directly with the enforcement of highly questionable collective standards - the kind of standards that are supposedly representative of the 'broadening' of ones education rather than based on the wisdom that one achieves through working really hard at something they love....unless of course it happens to be sport-but thats another issue.
I vividly remember witnessing in a certain High school staff room two teacher trainees struggling badly with the content of a VCE Aural exam that they were supposed to be teaching to year 12's! How fucking stupid is that! The syllabus is crap - and the system that generates it is dodgy, and I know that an alarming number of teachers who are teaching it -cant do it...
Having said that, there are some great teachers out there in the schools, and Ive seen Shan teach - she is definitely one of them as well as being a great player.
Unfortunately the government seems hell bent on worsening the situation by linking the funding of schools to performance - Rudd is good pals with Glyn Davis - and his 'dream large' mantra is just a pseudonym for 'teach broadly' a malaise which seems to be growing in proportion to the ever - increasing bureaucracy within the teaching systems in schools and universities.
One of my colleagues remarked recently in a staff meeting that if this same philosophy is carried over to say, medicine - we'll have surgeons who having done
brain surgery 101 will be able to take their 'practical' as an elective..
You might want to write to the teachers union Shan - I cant guarantee you'll get any sympathy but at least make your views and experience known - and its important that you voice your concern to the one body that is supposed to represent your interests.
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Post by aj on Aug 29, 2008 13:30:36 GMT 10
VIT sent me a letter today. Apparently, I have to REAPPLY for my 'Permission To Teach', because my five years is up! WTF?! Just think of it as a Parole Board hearing. |
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Post by timothystevens on Aug 29, 2008 14:06:34 GMT 10
Just think of it as a Parole Board hearing. That'll make it easier, right Shan? You're pretty well used to those? |
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Post by aj on Aug 29, 2008 15:56:02 GMT 10
Just think of it as a Parole Board hearing. That'll make it easier, right Shan? You're pretty well used to those? Well she IS a trombonist.  |
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Post by ironguts on Aug 29, 2008 16:31:41 GMT 10
Yes a trombonist, since when is it illegal to deliver pizzas?
Personally I think they should stop teaching music to anyone anyhow, there's already too many good players with no gigs. If the teachers were shit then no one could play so they wouldn't want gigs so then that might actually solve the problem of lack of gigs? I think I'm on to something here. It could go further. The worse the players were, then not only would they not do gigs but no one would want to hear them either, then everyone could stay home and watch tv. Maybe the history channel on cable could put on Ken Burns documentaries so people could see what it was like in the good old days when people could play and there was an audience. There could be more double degrees then too, with lawyers and doctors having music degrees too, at least then they could busk when there business goes broke, not that they'd make any money as they'd be shit, but then as if the punters would know anyhow, they all work for VIT or VicRail!!!!!! CUNTS
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Hezza
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Post by Hezza on Aug 29, 2008 17:07:42 GMT 10
This is the bullshit I encountered a few years ago and will again soon when my "5" years comes up. I spoke to some stupid vit bastard at length on the phone and he suggested the school should employ someone with proper qualifications. I asked him directly what the VIT do for instrumental teachers who are forced to pay an annual vit luncheon fee, (they supposedly provide mentoring for proper teachers?? ha!) and he stated "we do nothing for instrumental teachers". Interesting considering how regularly they piss us off. This VIT misrepresentation of instrumental staff is something that should be written about in the MCA journal. TIM?  Dick Letts should be addressing this issue and qualifying to the Education Department, all schools and the vit that dedicated and highly skilled musicians are by the nature of their years of experience qualified to teach. Teaching others, teaching ourselves, practicing and seeing other teachers working are the means of learning teaching skills. Four years of teaching psychology to "qualify" don't help this. Just of note: I'm currently doing a pedagogy masters but because it's in the music faculty I won't be fully qualified afterwards. Assessment criteria for teaching qualifications need to be seriously re-worked. I guess less paperwork/study doesn't make "education" institutions money. I am currently lucky enough to work in an ideal school. The principal encourages teachers to follow our passions in learning and take the students with us on the journey. Sounds a bit corny but is amazing news for a music program. Being music and an independent school - I currently have no curriculum restrictions - although I'm sure we'll all be dragged under that shitheap soon enough. There are possibilities open for inspired education- if people disobey the regs. I always hoped to work in the public system as an instrumental teacher to give back - (what I didn't have and all that...) No chance now with all of Rudd's grandstanding. I'm going to practice. Tim will you put an article in MCA or hassle Mr Letts! I don't have time this year with my unqualifying study! Hezzzzzza |
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Hezza
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Post by Hezza on Aug 29, 2008 17:39:20 GMT 10
 One other thing. From my rather extended time spent at universities studying music, they are becoming less and less relevant for aspiring musicians. There is so much red tape involved in getting through that time for real practice, listening, gigs and reading is limited. What about: superceding the uni and starting a professional musician training school. What VCA was originally set up to be before being eaten. Lessons could be in masterclass format so people can see others teaching/learning, and private lessons. Uni's are now all user-pay so there's no difference with this and it's a way to help skilled musicians assist the next generation of motivated students without the uni shit in between. (It also wouldn't be a pretend course like current "Bachelor of Music" - which from personal experience is a glamorised bachelor of arts that can't help you get a job as a greenie protester.) Technique, Practice, History, Philosophy and Theory would be taught together - depending on the teacher's areas of expertise. Classical schools have adopted this model time and time again. Teachers teach small masterclasses - get paid per student. All good in theory? Logistical nightmare and all that... I just have to make enough money to get a venue, then can hire all you bastards currently suffering the system...
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Dick Letts should be addressing this issue and qualifying to the Education Department, all schools and the vit that dedicated and highly skilled musicians are by the nature of their years of experience qualified to teach. Teaching others, teaching ourselves, practicing and seeing other teachers working are the means of learning teaching skills. Four years of teaching psychology to "qualify" don't help this.