This site has seen loads of opinion on the role of teachers in the classroom and how we prepare teachers for their profession. I believe we do not adequately prepare people to teach.
Most teaching programs set aside a semester or two of educational theory for candidates and then send them into the classroom for a semester of observation and then a semester of student-teaching. After the candidates pass flimsy state teacher placement exams they enter the fray.
States leave it up to individual districts to monitor and mentor new teachers. Research clearly shows that the number one variable in student success is the teacher, yet we fail to reflect this in our preparation of new teachers.
This June’s issue of Education Leadership has an insightful piece by Charlotte Danielson titled “A Framework for Learning to Teach.” She states:
Educational psychologist Lee Shulman (2004) illustrated the complexity of teaching by comparing the fields of teaching and medicine. He noted that teachers have classrooms of 25–35 students, whereas doctors treat only a single patient at a time. Even when working with a reading group of 6–8 students, teachers are overseeing the decoding skills, comprehension, word attack, performance, and engagement of those students while simultaneously keeping tabs on the learning of the other two dozen students in the room. “The only time a physician could possibly encounter a situation of comparable complexity,” Shulman pointed out, “would be in the emergency room of a hospital during or after a natural disaster” (p. 258). He concluded that classroom teaching “is perhaps the most complex, most challenging, and most demanding, subtle, nuanced, and frightening activity that our species has ever invented” (p. 504).
Most teachers would concur. No preservice preparation program, regardless of its quality, can adequately prepare teachers for all they need to know. The complexity of the craft requires ongoing teacher learning. Indeed, learning to teach is a career-long endeavor. The most experienced teachers acknowledge, frequently with pride, that they are still perfecting their craft.
Regardless of your views of charters, vouchers or non-charter public schools we should share a concern and sense of urgency when it comes to preparing people to become teachers.
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Mark Sass makes an excellent point in his last line. Time and again we hear that teacher quality is a primary factor in determining student success and yet teacher prep is an issue that often appears to be of secondary concern in the reform movement. This is disappointing especially when we consider that amongst the various stakeholders, this will be one of the less contentious battles to fight.
As far as specific change I would suggest to current teacher preparation, one key is differentiation. Educators are being told that not everyone learns the same and that instruction therefore needs to be differentiated to meet students’ needs. As Sass points out, teacher prep is “a career-long endeavor” of teacher learning, therefore making teachers students too. Don’t these “students” deserve the same differentiated approach to their learning?
When we talk seriously about recruiting and retaining top talent in the teaching field, we need to consider how to make candidates feel comfortable that they are learning content and skills they need to be great educators and not just being made to jump the same hoops that those before them had to. Differentiating teacher prep as we know it will go a long ways to ensuring that they receive this respect.
Recently, I was bemoaning some meaningless hoops required to become a teacher. For example, the flimsy tests Sass mentions are insulting. Anyone seeking a job with academic rigor would be discouraged from pursuing teaching after seeing the PLACE and PRAXIS tests. (Sometimes it seems the powers that be are plotting: “Let’s charge hundreds of dollars to make people prove their not idiots!”)
I’m not saying the tests should be harder, but that there should be other criteria to determine if candidates have the acumen to enter the teaching field.
In response to my lament, a law student friend said the reason there’s so much bureaucracy is because teachers work for the government. (Private school teachers excepted, obviously.)
So along with GreenCollar’s valid suggestion that the curriculum be differentiated to meet each student’s holistic needs, so should the criteria to enter a teacher prep program offer a more holistic representation of the candidate. Perhaps a portfolio, essays on former teaching experiences, examples of explaining a concept to an audience. I’m thinking graphics, video, text, the works. Teaching is an art. Why not follow the arts world and require a similar portfolio of exemplary work in the field?
I know there’s a shortage, but if we made the admissions process more rigorous and holistic, perhaps it would draw stronger candidates, increase the prestige of the field, thus increasing the number of applicants, and ending the shortage. Does this logic resound with anyone else?
I always cringe when someone brings up portfolios. My teacher prep included a portfolio which ended up being a series of hoops jumped through without any connection to the practice. I also cringe when people say that teaching is an art. Bob Marzano, I believe, presents teaching accurately: it is both art and science. (See Marzono’s book of the same title) Art is practiced when teachers have to make the “theory to practice” jump. Science enters when you use empirical data drive decisions.
I agree with GreenCollar that differentiation needs to be practiced. Especially in professional development.
One of the biggest issues that gets ignored in professional preparedness is cultural and community competency. Using the teacher/MD comparison that Mark Sass makes reference to from the Educational Leadership article is useful. Schools and hospitals serve communities and are all too often sorely lacking in professional staff/faculty that actually come from the communities they serve. In other words – teacher prep. as well as hiring decisions in schools need to be made on these factors and not just on technical and “content knowledge” and, therefore, the existence of a degree and license and some vague desire “to make a difference.” Teachers need to be change agents and community activists who come with the intimate understanding of the community they will serve as well as the problems that community faces that can only come from life experience in that community. Most of my colleagues have, at best, a vague or abstract idea of what day-to-day life is actually like for most of the students they teach.
In addition, I would say that teacher prep. must include much more understanding of political and pedagogical theory and it’s relationship to the role schools serve in solving community problems. That is ultimately what schools are – or should be about. There is no excuse for people to enter this profession with any illusions about the political nature of our work the absolute necessity of a clear foundation in theory. Thanks again to Mark for his insights.
As an instructor in a teacher preparation program, I believe that our program does a really good job of preparing teachers for the instructional aspect of teaching. After teaching in the program for three years, I realized that there was something missing. I also know that, as Sass mentions, a teacher preparation program cannot teach teachers everything they need to know. When do we teach teachers how to set up a classroom and organize themselves so that they can provide optimal instruction?
As I asked myself that question, I realized that I might have an answer. I have mentored new teachers for many, many years and I thought I might be able to help teachers with some of the pieces that cannot be included in a teacher preparation program.
Three years ago I developed a workshop that is designed to help all teachers, but especially new teachers, work through all of the intricate details of preparing for a school year. My thinking is that, if I can help them get started on the right foot, they will be able to do better throughout the year.
As it turns out, I have received great feedback from the teachers who have attended my workshop – many have said that colleagues have told them that they do not seem like first-year teachers. Scholastic has decided to publish the materials from this workshop and the book “Quick Tips: Make Your First Six Weeks a Success” will be released in April, 2010. I have had new and experienced teachers attend and all have said that they leave feeling better prepared for the school year.
My workshop is coming up on July 24th, two weeks from this Friday. If you know of any teachers, new or experienced, who might be interested, I’d love for you to pass along my website: http://www.BergmansBestTeaching.com.
I certainly do not claim to have all of the answers, but I think I can sure help new teachers get off on the right foot.
It’s nice to see teachers having a discussion on this blog because, with a couple of exceptions, it seems like teachers don’t often seem comfortable commenting here.