Today I had my BTSA mid evaluation.
You're thinking, "Huh?"
BTSA defined: It's not enough to get a 4 year degree + your teaching credential + pass 4 (maybe it was 5) state tests + successfully complete student teaching + write/pass 4 TPAs (teacher performance assessments each 25+ pages long). Nope. That's not enough. Once you get a job or close to a job (me: instructional assistant) you get to do BTSA. The above mentioned just gets you a "preliminary" credential. Now, I get to earn my "clear" credential. If you don't earn your "clear" credential within five years after you've earned your "preliminary" credential, then you're in big trouble. You have to do more work + tests to re-earn your preliminary so that you can move on to earn your clear. Get all that?
One of the super amazing bonuses God snuck in when he signed me up for the instructional position was that in Irvine district, they opened BTSA to not just new teachers but also to instructional assistants. That's me! It is a two year program that costs $3,000 for basically a couple hoops and a lot of signatures. Maybe that's a little dramatic but unfortunately not too far off. The goal of BTSA is to support new teachers because teaching is hard and you need help. Nice idea but it manifests itself in silly assignments and monthly meetings that take time and prep.
At first, I was terrified of this four letter word, I mean, acronym. It was a big mysterious bubble that no one explained to me and since I didn't have a support provider, I couldn't ask questions. How does it work if I'm a fake teacher that floats around all day and you want everything but the social security numbers of my "students". Well, a teacher volunteered to loan me her class for my BTSA stuff. So according to BTSA, I am a first grade teacher with 29 students and I teach health lessons regularly. I set up my classroom in a functional way so I may monitor the students by traveling easily about the room. Get my point? I have to make up stuff so I can fit the BTSA mold. Don't worry, they told me to make it up so I could complete the tasks.
Back to today. There are 21 objectives that need to be met over the two year BTSA course. You meet with a head BTSA person twice a year (the eval) and by the end, all the objectives need to be met. No problem. All the objectives should take place on a weekly bases in your classroom. Well, I don't have one of those. I have a small piece of 6 classes throughout the day. When I walked into my eval, I needed to have chosen 5+ objectives and have physical documentation scanned into my computer of how I met those objectives. At first this seemed impossible and I had a mild freak out. Then I sat down and thought about it for 5 minutes. Before I knew it I had documentation for 7. Bam. I was feelin' pretty good about myself.
Yesterday, Peter made me feel VERY loved by helping me scan all my documents, label them correctly, and put them on my BTSA flash drive so I would be all ready to go today. This gift was even better than the bookshelf!
My objectives + proof.
Utilizes academic content standards, performance levels, frameworks and instructional materials in their context. I scanned in my health lesson plan that was based off standards and at their level.
Plan and differentiate instruction based on assessed needs. I scanned in our RTI schedule. For RTI (response to instruction) the students are grouped by reading levels. We then plan based on the needs of each group.
Create and maintain well-managed classrooms. When I was being observed for my lesson, the lady documented me walking all around the room. I scanned in that diagram.
Promote respect, value differences, and mediate conflicts. I scanned in the playground rules and told how I mediate conflict on the playground- especially when it comes to handball. I thought this one was pretty clever.
There are three more but you get the idea. I pulled my evidence from my RTI instruction, in-services I have been to, my recess duty responsibilities, my fake first grade classroom and my after school programs. These eval meetings are scheduled to take a half hour. I had it all organized (thanks to hubby) and ready to go and it only took 12 minutes! She said, "Wow! That was fast! You have hard evidence. You're my favorite so far!" I walked out higher than a kite. I beat this BTSA thing! It's not scary! It's easy! I worked hard to suppress any feelings of stress the last few weeks and trusted it would all work out. It did and I rocked it! I am so thankful God gave me this job so that while I don't have my own classroom, I can pretend and clear my credential! Whooo!
Congratulations on surviving my teacher jargon blog post!
xo, p&l
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