Boston Globe: A higher bar for future teachers

Allmusic · October 31, 2006, 2:11pm

I think that public schools are so bogged down in beaurocracy, red tape, legal ramifications, PCness, and lack of funding, that poor teaching is just a very bad icing on a very bad cake.

I know students in teacher training. It is really very frightening to me, to see young people, many of whom are completely incompetent writers themselvs, for example, aspiring to teach. I have been aghast for years, at the spelling and grammatical mistakes I have seen from my own children’s elementary school teachers. The math issues are a whole other story.

The public schools are broken, teacher training is broken. I don’t quite know what will fix it,but we need change in American education.

zoosermom · October 31, 2006, 2:29pm

I really do begin to understand why so many educators have tried to dissuade my daughter from becoming a teacher. She is bright and talented with a good research background, so I think she would be an excellent teacher. But she would hate (and I would hate for her) to be thought of as some second-rate, can’t-do-anything-else person.

marite · October 31, 2006, 3:19pm

With two kids going through public schools, I have seen some incompetent teachers protected by unions, and some excellent teachers who were very active union members. I have seen some horrible principals as well as stellar ones; some school board members with great ideas and some with silly ones; some great superintendents and some not so great. I have also seen some heads of teachers’ union who were hell bent on protecting their members and some who have been very good at working with principals and parents to get rid of the incompetent teachers.

It’s tough to be a teacher. Many terrific young people with great credentials go into teaching. It’s not just the second-rate can’t do anything else people who become teachers. But many burn out before five years are up. Among those I know who burnt out: an MIT graduate and a Swarthmore graduate. Not exactly second-raters. The MIT graduate was teaching in an urban school; the Swarthmore graduate in an affluent suburb. The former was far too inexperienced with how to deliver curriculum and was probably spending 12 hours a day at school, plus several more in the evening. The latter cited discipline issue as the reason she left teaching.
Many critics of American teachers’ education cite the focus on pedagogy at the expense of content knowledge. I do, too. But I can understand why education schools spend so much time on topics such as classroom management at the expense of topic such as teaching fractions or grammar.

goaliedad · October 31, 2006, 3:56pm

Getting back to some of the other concepts the article in the original post asked about how we train teachers whether it is like a profession (law/medicine) or a craft (journalism), I look at teaching more like law and medicine, than craft like journalism. Teachers, like lawyers and doctors, work primarily with people and their product are the outcomes of those people, their success and happiness.

Journalism and other craft (as the author called it) professions deal with things, and create things (writings, etc) that while they affect people, they are not wholly a part of the person such as their education, legal situaion or health.

Medicine as the professions go, probably does a better job than law in preparing its practioners for the “real” work (what you actually spend your time doing" with people through residency requirements and such.

Teaching generally requires some “student teaching” in most places (often 1 semester in a place they never end up working at), but every student teacher, I’ve run across (I had one 1 year as a kid and have seen a couple during my kids upbringing) has generally ended up being an over-glorified gopher.

Unfortunately, the system does not integrate the student teaching into the hiring process very well as districts don’t take seriously the development mandate of student teachers.

So, when they get their credential, they are pushed out into the sink or swim world with their own set of 25-35 kids. After 5 or so years, they tend to finally get into a rythm for their last 25 years, that is if they survive and don’t burn out, get denied tenure, etc.

Of course, during those 5 years, they may have had YOUR kid in their class. And YOUR kid may have been the one shortchanged by this teachers lack of adequate mentoring.

At least with medicine, you have a longer time with somebody supervising you while you actually do the work. I’d trust a doctor right out of residency to get it right more than a teacher right out of school. Granted, some young teachers truly have the talent to wing it on their own. But why bet a critical first or second grade year on it?

alwaysamom · October 31, 2006, 4:17pm

goaliedad, I think that the issue of student teaching is an important one and is another way which, in my opinion, the Canadian model is a better one. During my D’s one year of the B.Ed. (after her B.A.), the students were placed in a classroom from the first week. They spent two full days every week for the entire year in a classroom for their practicum. The other three days of the week were full days of classes. During the practicum, she got to actually teach, progressively more each week, and twice each semester, she had three week teaching blocks where she was the primary teacher for all subjects each day. There were many requirements for gaining experience teaching various units and different subject matter. It was definitely not a glorified ‘gopher’ type of experience. She participated in the preparation of lessons and marking, as well as the professional development which took place at the school while she was there. The school board where she had her practicum was in a joint partnership type arrangement with her college program and there were six student teachers placed in several schools within the district. The school board covers 30+ elementary schools and about a dozen high schools. Many of these student teachers were hired by the board for this year, including my D. New teachers are assigned a ‘mentor’ teacher in the school, and they ‘team teach’, which basically means doing their prep together, discussing what works and what doesn’t, as well as just being there as a sounding board for the new teachers, in the event of particular challenges, or to offer feedback on the positives as well. It seems to be a good system.

goaliedad · October 31, 2006, 4:30pm

alwaysamom,

Glad to hear that there seems to be more structure in the student teaching program north of the boarder.

One situation (I had with 2 experienced teachers) that I thought would make a good model for apprentice elementary teachers (the first 2 or 3 years out of school) would be to pair them up with a mentor teacher and have them split days between 2 classes (one teacher taking reading, spelling, etc with the other taking math science, etc), so the experienced teacher can see the results of the other’s work with regards to how the children adjust to the classroom environment.

I’m sure there are other ideas out there, but I thought I’d talk about one shortcoming that is rarely addressed in the education debate.

alwaysamom · October 31, 2006, 4:37pm

I think your idea is similar to how the ‘team teaching’ works, in some respects. There are situations where the two classes are combined for various activities and the teaching is divided between the two teachers. I think the result of the more experienced teacher actually ‘seeing’ the new teacher is the same. Teaching is unlike many other jobs in this respect. The actual supervision of teachers, new or old, is limited, simply by the mechanics of running a classroom. Observation by the principal, which happens on an occasional basis, isn’t enough, in my opinion. You’re right that new teachers are often ‘thrown into the deep end’, so to speak.

marite · October 31, 2006, 4:51pm

we found that little things matter a lot. In my kids’ k-8 school, grades were combined, and there were 3 of each combined class, with homeroom teachers. For grades 1-4, the homeroom teacher was in sole charge of his/her class but had constant consultations with the other teachers to assure consistency in assignment, curricular pace, etc… In grades 5-8, there were homeroom teachers, but they were selected more on the basis of strength in particular areas and served as specialists as well. They, too, worked closely together. In one case, geography turned out to be crucial. The school was on two levels, and one new teacher was alone on the ground floor whereas the two veteran teachers were already in adjoining rooms on the second floor. As a result the new teacher was not able to informally consult with the other teachers. It was a very stressful situation and contributed greatly to her feeling burned out. That, and the fact that she came straight out of college, had to learn all about curriculum for 5th and 6th grades and had no experience managing kids on a daily basis.

Allmusic · October 31, 2006, 5:12pm

We moved our daughter from a traditional single teacher (whom you either loved or hated) classroom setting, with all its issues, to a multi-age team taught setting, with a combination of newer and veteran teachers in a single large classroom setting. It is just fantastic. I can’t rave enough about the difference with three age levels, and the different personalities of different teachers.

marite · October 31, 2006, 5:18pm

Allmusic:

With the exception of that one case I described, the multi-age, team taught approach worked extremely well for our kids, too!

OpiefromMayberry · October 31, 2006, 6:11pm

I think goaliedad and always have ideas with some merit. However, find a budget that can support it somewhere. That’s the difficult part. What you see (and I agree with) as a good idea in mentoring would be seen by others as a waste of taxpayers dollars. Been through that phase.

The other aspect of asking a senior teacher to mentor or team teach you have to remember teaching is a job that never really gets easier. Every year the class changes out and a great class can easily be followed by the 666 kids. Class from hell.

The senior teacher still has their own work to do. My spouse has been asked before to do this job and basically it becomes a pile on situation with no compensation. Not only does she do her own classwork but ends up spending additional time going over someone else’s. Without extra time or a break from some of her own duties we just burn out the senior educator. So I don’t disagree with the idea, I’ve just found the execution to be lacking consideration.

My spouse just had her multiage shut down after a decade of team teaching because it doesn’t flow with NCLB. As districts scramble to teach to that test, flexibility falls by the wayside. Her district wants every teacher at grade level teaching the same subject at the same time in the same way and even on the same page. So much for individual skills or creativity.

StickerShock · October 31, 2006, 6:21pm

Opie, you are quite amusing. You disagree with my points but can’t refute them. You just claim I know nothing about the subject. You couldn’t be more wrong. Your example of how a merit based system works is too ridiculous to discuss.

Perhaps you could be more objective about the mess our schools are in if you weren’t married to a teacher. It is probably the only field where many who are in it want to be unionized, but considered professionals. All the while exempted from accountability with a tenure system.

I believe, as an earlier poster stated, that teaching is an art. There are far too few of those artists out there. Too many school systems function as a jobs program for teachers rather than an educational system.

OpiefromMayberry · October 31, 2006, 6:28pm

SS,

When your patient dies, are you a good or bad nurse?

StickerShock · October 31, 2006, 6:45pm

If my incompetence caused his death, I would lose my license, be fired, & face charges. If a teacher’s incompetence leaves kids with no chance of mastering the material, generations of kids file in & out of his classroom with no consequence to the teacher.

OpiefromMayberry · October 31, 2006, 7:13pm

SS you didn’t really answer my question either did you. I did not apply incompetence to the situation… you did. What happens when your not applying that and a patient dies… are you still a good nurse? Or do only patient die because of incompetence? Are you saying you can cure my cancer? You’re that good?

CITATION_X · October 31, 2006, 7:40pm

Nothing new about what Levine is saying; these issues has been discussed for many years

CITATION_X · October 31, 2006, 7:56pm

The problem is 9/10th culturally based (we live in a land with an excess of material goods and a excess of hedonism and kids have been demotivated to learn) - maybe 1/20 about teacher issues - and the rest other factors

Why for example with the bulk of 1st and 2nd generation asian kids -the “schools and teachers are a disaster” claim - is basically a non-issue.? These kids (in general) come from backgrounds where education is valued and hedonism generally is deferred to later in life

By the way, the same issues are starting to affect the parochial schools (sex, drugs, rock & roll in early teen years)- although kids in those schools tend to be still be ahead - and can in generally only be compared to honors students in public schools. However the trend is not good.

Once again, teachers are in effect forced to compete against a TIDAL WAVE of culturally based issues affecting young kids and teens in general

alwaysamom · October 31, 2006, 11:21pm

Opie, as I said earlier, the funding issue is important and is probably the main obstacle to ever instituting some of the ideas used here, across much of the U.S. The funding model here in Ontario is looked at differently by taxpayers (not that people do not complain about teachers and unions, they do!) but the actual funding is not determined by a vote of those same taxpayers each year. There is no vote. It’s determined provincially and then, contracts are negotiated between the individual school boards and the representative unions. The team teaching here is not exactly as you describe your wife’s experiences, if I’m reading you right. It’s more of a collaborative, cooperative process than a supervisory one. The ‘mentor’ is not responsible for checking over what the younger teacher does, nor is she/he responsible for what the new teacher is accomplishing in class. Team teaching is actually implemented in the schools, elementary schools anyway, for ALL teachers. All grades are team taught, regardless of the level of experience of the teachers. I don’t know enough about NCLB to comment on it but from everything I do know, it isn’t accomplishing what it hopes to, and, thankfully, we do not have anything similar here.

StickerShock · November 1, 2006, 9:47am

Opie, the question is a silly one if you do not examine the circumstances of the death. You can take it to extremes. What if while I’m taking a patient’s vital signs, a sniper fires a bullet & kills the patient. According to your rules, I will still be a bad nurse because the patient died under my care. Any sensible person would evaluate the circumstances and my actions. Did I summon help? Did I stop the bleeding? Administer CPR? Follow established protocol? Unless my competence is judged against reasonable expectations, you have posed a pointless argument & a pointless question. Mere sophistry.

If the issue of competence is not at the heart of the problems with education today, there is no further discussion needed. Just pick random people off the street to fill teacher slots if competence is not important. Competence MUST be considered in the context of any evaluation performed on anyone in any field. Why do you feel teachers should get an exemption?

marite · November 1, 2006, 11:36am

I agree that competence should be evaluated. The trick is what criteria should be used?

Take an AP-teacher in an affluent suburban school who gets most of the students to pass the AP exam and score high. Clearly that teacher is competent.
Take a 10th grade teacher in an inner city or remote rural area, with students who barely read at 6th grade level at the beginning of the year, may have poor discipline, family problems, etc… At the end of the year, the students are still not ready for 10th grade, but they have certainly made improvement; perhaps they now read at 8th grade level. Still on the state mandated test, they mostly flunk. Is the teacher competent? I’d say yes, and I’d say that teacher’s achievement is more impressive than that of the AP teacher. But would the powers-that-be agree with me?

This is not to suggest that we should all throw up our hands and refuse to evaluate teachers. It’s to say that there are no agreed-upon criteria to judge teachers’ performance.

Additionally,there are many districts that struggle to put teachers in front of classes, no matter how ill qualified these are. It’s too easy to say fire incompetent teachers. What happens after they’re fired? If you don’t like your boss, you can resign if you’re willing to risk unemployment for a length of time. But can school districts afford to leave entire classes without teachers?

Boston Globe: A higher bar for future teachers

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