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The Value of Epiphanies

I teach high school English and journalism, and have for more than twenty years. The students in my journalism classes are among the highest achieving students in the school; traditionally more than half of the top ten students each year are in enrolled in my classes. During the summer and after school I teach remedial English skills to students who did not pass our state standardized test.

To evaluate and pay teachers according to student performance based on standardized test scores will not produce better teachers, or better students. If a teacher helps a non-reader to become a reader, if a teacher helps a student realize the value of knowing how to write well, if a teacher opens up just a small window for further learning to occur, he is a fine teacher. Extra pay is not given to teachers who provide epiphanies and a foundation for lifelong learning. How sad it would be to give extra pay to teachers who turn out top-notch standardized test-takers.

— Pamela

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Pay More for Science and Math

I’ve taught 9-12 gr math/physics at a public school for 12 years. Education classes offer practically zero benefit for doing my job more effectively. What we need are teachers who are much more competent in their subject areas! Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to pay more for people that actually know a significant amount about science and math. In our society, that is about as likely as getting Rush to support serious health care reform. Even after the last election, I am not too optimistic that our society has ‘evolved’ that much.

— Wayne Hild

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Special Ed Requires Special Skills

As a (retired) special education teacher, certified to teach students from toddler age to adults, I can’t imagine entering my field with no specialized education direction. My M.A. was concentrated in the special education field, as were the 30-plus credits I completed beyond it. However, the basic education skills I learned in undergraduate school were invaluable for preparing me to work with young people in general.

An understanding of the basic ‘ABC’s’ of what makes all children tick is absolutely necessary. I’ve seen many teachers ‘bomb’ over the years because they knew their subject matter, but not how to interact with, or be a role model for, children.

— Steve Martin

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Merit Pay for Cronies

I am a 21-year veteran teacher who took a whole boatload of education courses in furtherance of my BA and MS degrees. They were utterly useless. The only thing that actually prepared me for teaching was student teaching. All of the other courses taught theory, but nothing practical.

I am a very successful teacher, and parents and students alike have sought me out over my career. I make the same salary as another teacher who does nothing but shows movies in class all day. I spend my summers revising my work, creating new and interesting facets to the course. I make the same as the teacher who spends their summer not thinking one iota about the next school year.

Merit pay has some merit, it encourages certain behaviors and discourages others. What I am afraid of is that it will be used to reward the wrong people. If a teacher is mediocre, it is because they have been allowed to get away with it, their behavior empowered by administration. There is a great deal of cronyism in the business, and it skews the playing field. It has always been like that, and it likely always will be.

— Mark

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A Degree Predicts Nothing

I have taught for six years at a public high school in Brooklyn, and I have seen teachers come and go for many reasons. In my opinion, the effectiveness of a teacher is almost impossible to predict until you see them in the classroom for quite a while. Also, a person’s educational background and pre-selection (masters/no masters/Ph.D./Teach for America/Teaching Fellows) cannot predict how they will succeed in the classroom. Schools have to have more leeway in being able to select, retain, and let go of staff.

— Molly

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Intuitive Gifts That Can’t Be Taught

As a school psychologist for 20 years in a dozen different schools, I’ve observed hundreds of teachers. My experience has taught me that the very best teachers are those who are able to convey their deep curiosity about the world and their passion for learning. Above all else, they need to be EMPATHIC. Empathy is what enables a teacher (or any leader, in truth) to know, in every moment, what a child needs. They know when to call on a student and when not to, when a child has problems at home, when they need to raise the bar and when to lower it.

Watching a great teacher interact with students is as inspiring as watching an Olympic athlete. It’s an intuitive and emotional gift and it can’t be taught or instilled with any certification. The degrees mostly just enable educators to speak a common language — a necessary aspect of a profession.

— Claudia

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What About Class Size?

As a former teacher I find it interesting that all the focus is on teacher preparation. Nothing was said about class size or collaboration with other teachers. It is assumed that one teacher, in front of a class, is the answer. Nothing was said about the structure of schools and classrooms. These items are as important as the teacher in front of the class. This is a more difficult conversation, and would require a larger commitment of resources to accomplish the goal of educating students to reach their potential.

— Frank Walsh

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Practice by Teaching

As an alternatively certified teacher, I see great value in programs, such as the Teaching Fellows via New Teacher Project, that take motivated and skilled people and turn them into good teachers. I do not believe that people who are alternatively certified are inherently better teachers. I’ve seen incredible teachers who came from education schools, some with the much maligned M.Ed. degree.

I believe that the best preparation for teaching is a combination of pedagogy and a strong apprenticeship — a marriage of traditional preparatory and alternative certification programs. All new teachers would benefit from a year of full-time work in the classroom beside an experienced and effective teacher. We learn by practicing — even the best surgeon in the world is useless until he has proven his skill on the table.

That said, I have taken professional development coursework offered through local education schools that were absolutely laughable. Sitting through a 5 hour session that culminated in making a caterpillar from an egg carton is a waste of time. I went to learn how to produce higher rates of literacy in English Language Learners — not how to produce a cute craft of little practical value.

— Frustrated Early Childhood Teacher

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What Pedagogy Professors Know

I am a teacher in an urban school in Memphis, TN, and I can tell you that my MA Ed. (from a fairly well regarded institution) served only to increase my salary. Sadly, I now have student loans to pay back for the graduate school education. Pedagogy is fine and good when you’re in academia; however, most of the education school professors haven’t been in a classroom in 20 years and have no idea what works and what doesn’t.

— Jason Fernandes

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A Profession, Like Any Other

Teachers are professionals just like lawyers and doctors. The profession mandates a degree to insure that certain standards are met and done so consistently throughout the educational system. A degree gives you the theory and some initial hands-on experience. It does not guarantee that the graduating teacher, doctor or lawyer will perform well; for that rests on the effort of the individual. Every other profession receives financial compensation for their degree because of the money, time and effort that went into it. Why should teaching be different?

— ama

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Why I Stopped Teaching

I received my masters from Teachers College, worked in an education think tank at Stanford, and taught in a small public school in Harlem. The full-time education degree was so easy that I was able to work full time and spend a long weekend once a month in New England. I graduated early. I never spent more than 5 hours a week on homework. I received only A’s and A+’s.

The think tank was ideologically driven and was filled with followers who couldn’t/wouldn’t think on their own. The woman they were following had a scheduler, an administrative assistant, and an office manager. She worked from home almost every day in her school-funded mansion and talked incessantly about how she was saving the poor kids in the slums of East Palo Alto and New York.

The small public school in Harlem was nothing new — a messed up school in a messed up system, with a bunch of great kids and a few great teachers. Most of the kids dropped out in middle school. The principal and counselor wouldn’t intervene when I pointed out a relationship between one of my 11-year old 7th graders and a 17-year old senior — she was pregnant by the end of the school year.

I left the field because I couldn’t stand this version of corruption, where everyone tries to do the easiest thing instead of the right thing.

— Former teacher

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Bring in Real-Life Experiences

I was voted as “Teacher of the Year” at the High School I teach at, and I have never taken an Education course. I have a Master’s degree in Engineering. After 20 years in industry, I became a Math and Physics teacher through the alternate route to certification here in Vermont. I have written a published article comparing the difficulties and joys of teaching with those in industry (For the Love of Kids).

After teaching for 15 years, I have come to the conclusion that an Education degree for teachers and especially for administrators is a detriment to the education of students, not an asset. How much better to bring real life experience to the classroom than the rote prescriptions taught in the Education classes. In my opinion, rather than spend summers pursuing a Masters of Education degree (and the salary increase that goes with it), teachers should be given comparable credits for spending the summer interning for an NGO or a business.

— Arnie Gundersen

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Education Classes Demand Little

After an Ivy League education and a 20+ year career in business, I will now begin my 4th year as a teacher. In the very first week of teaching, I proposed throwing out the traditional business program being taught and was given the privilege of creating an entirely new program. I essentially teach high school students the core courses of an Ivy League MBA.

When I was applying for teaching jobs, I could barely get an interview. I was told that in almost all districts, schools are not allowed to even consider someone with an “alternate route” certificate unless not a single person with a standard certificate had applied. This means that almost all schools would rather have a student right out of college with a teaching major and no real world experience than someone who has 20+ years of working in the real world.

The education courses I was required to take were set up to be non-rigorous. They did not begin to compare to the effort required of my undergraduate (Wellesley) or graduate degrees (Columbia). At the end of the alternate route program, the college sent someone to try and convince us to continue on for a masters or doctorate in education. The entire sales pitch stemmed from a promise of how little work one would have to do to get an advanced degree. It made me sick. I consider it degrading to list that certificate on my resume alongside my “real” degrees.

— Norina Sfeir

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Regaining My Love of Teaching

By the end of my fifth year of teaching high school straight after getting my bachelors degree, I knew I was sliding into mediocrity. I knew how to write a lesson plan, write curriculum, choose highly-challenging and engaging materials and activities for students to learn… I wasn’t the best at classroom management, but then I wasn’t so terrible at it either. I was turning into an automaton, and just as alarmingly, my students were too.

I applied to grad school because my brain felt like it was starting to atrophy. Overall, I loved my M.A. experience. To be clear, it’s not to say that I saw immediate value in everything I studied in those courses, but I trusted that somewhere further down in life, I would eventually realize the utility or value of what I initially believed to be obscure facts about linguistics, statistics, ethics or educational philosophy. Having returned to full-time teaching, this has already happened several times.

— j.w.w.

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Why Good Teachers Struggle

I am a 6th grade teacher in a southern California public school. I have a 4 year BA in literature and a 5th year teaching credential, both from U.C. Berkeley. I also have a CLAD certificate for working with second language learners. I am qualified by CA standards.

The issue for me these days, as I begin my 14th year, is classroom behavior. I used to have one student a year who lacked civility or any interest in attending to anything. Last year I had 6 such students, who each had a family story, of prison or abuse or alcohol or drugs or whatever, but the bottom line, my class was so much more difficult to teach, because several parents were not doing their jobs at home. Add to that issue, the 8 students from another country who did not have English as a first language, who have lived in this country for more than 5 years and still cannot read or write on grade level and who are living in several different homes with no particular interest in their studies or the value of their education.

I have never worked so hard to teach and review and tutor, etc. and yet many of us teachers, good teachers, are having a struggle fighting this tide of behavior issues and indifference. Believe me, we attend the workshops, earnestly work in our classes, talk with the parents, struggle with the kids, and still, it is not always enough.