Teaching our children can be a profession: Column by Joel Klein
Published in USA Today on November 17, 2014
"We need a new approach to recruiting teachers."
- Recruit from the top third of our graduates
- Require a supervised internship for one to three years
- "national teacher examination" that tests mastery of pedagogy and content knowledge, akin to the entry exams now required for lawyers and doctors.
- establish standards/ provide mechanisms to remove incompetent teachers
- seniority should not matter
Recruiting from the top third of our graduates is a good idea. This guarantees that children in our society are being taught by the best. This will not only greatly influence the outcome from classroom and students but also increase college students desire to do better. With this in place, college students will strive to be the best and, simply, with that the outcome of graduates is the best.
Requiring a supervised internship of one to three years ensures that potential teachers are well equipped with the knowledge and experience with what it takes within a classroom. This is a great way for potential teachers to obtain the proper amount of field experience. Requiring this one to the three internship allows supervisors to come to the conclusion if the potential teacher is fit for the job or not as well. However, I believe that it would be more realistic to only require a one year internship with pay.
I completely agree that seniority should not exist within schools. I know from my past there were plenty of teachers who have been at my school for years who felt they could do whatever because they had been there so long. This type of teacher is sadly only hurting the students' education. By rewarding teachers on how well they perform in the classroom is a wonderful way to determine who stays and who does not when cuts are to be made.
Two powerful statements found in Teaching our children can be a profession: Column:
"We must change how we reward teachers."
"Professionalizing teaching means that excellence would be the guiding hallmark.Everything from education-school admissions, to course work, to
compensation and other employment rules, to self-policing would have to be realigned to this core principle. Such a radical transformation would not only
benefit students, it would also benefit teachers, who would be more successful and command greater public trust"
Great post. I was a little confused with how you set it up to being with though. I guess it was a quote, then your points from that quote then two more quotes? It was a little hard to follow. But besides that good job. I totally agree with your points, excluding the internship. I'm okay with maybe one year, but two or three is a lot. It's a long time working without pay. I definitely agree with the seniority part though. Once teachers know they're in the safe zone, they can get lazy and unfair.
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