Going through my belongings I brought from Guyana 4 years and 364 days ago, I came across my teacher certification. Sad to say it did nothing for me in New York.
All those years I toiled…going to classes after work and coming home late at nights, crammed in minibuses in the hot afternoon sun going up the Corentyne — 5 days a week, all those pedagogical courses, content courses, countless assignments, presentations, and exams that you had to write pages and pages to explain your answer….
The Government had good intentions, but if you are teaching in Guyana and want to migrate to the USA in the long term, think carefully what you are doing in Guyana in terms of studies, because it’s a different ballgame when you come here.
The Cyril Potter College of Education is doing the Associate Degree in Education today along with the programme I graduated from in 2006. You show this document to NY State Dept of Education and it means nothing to enter the system here. It’s as cheap as the paper the college gives you.
This just shows how broken the Education system of Guyana is, and how much work it would need to fix it. Guyana is not preparing teachers for world-class and first-world-class teaching.
