I am going through the relicensing process this year. ow, I have no problem with documenting my professional learning; I have no problem with reflecting on it... I am looking back on my dissertation experience and connecting that with my work as an educator.
I do have a problem, however, with filling out paperwork BY HAND! Hey it's the 21st century, let's make a web site with the forms that are necessary... allow me to enter the information once and then copy it as necessary. Let's make the site check to be sure that I have entered information in all of the correct spaces and then allow me to print my forms so that our local board can review the contents.
This rant is not about the people on the board or the process... it is about the hypocrisy of educators' talking about how we are reinventing school for the 21st century, but we do not apply technology to a redundant task for which it is perfectly suited.
Let's do a little math... each teacher spends let's assume 8 hours getting relicensing paper work together... and in Vermont that is each 7 years... so let's estimate 1 hour per year doing relicensing paperwork. Let's assume an average teacher is paid $40,000 per year and that gives an hourly rate of about $31 (figure 184 days per year and 7 hours per day).
If we hired a goo web programmer (or even a hack like me) for a week (let's pay 'em $60 per hour for 40 hours-- $2400!) we could probably cut the paperwork time by 60%, and save everyone time and money!
Sorry for the rant... I need to get back to writing the name of my university on stacks of paper for the relicensing board to review next month.
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