Posted by Cliff Higgins on September 08, 2002 at 13:57:15:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Why should we have to defend teachers? posted by Marc on September 07, 2002 at 20:19:10:
The warm body" phenomenon DOES fly. At least here in Georgia. We call it the Teach for GEorgia program. Yes, a person has to have a bachelor's dgree, but even that requirement is worked around. My state is in a bad way for teachers. The governor decided that giving 4 weeks worth of training was enough to make a teacher. I not suggesting that he is wrong because this program is too new to have any real impact, but Georgia is 50th in SAT scores. SAT scores are not great overall indicators of student achievement, but they are one way. At the risk of butting in to your business, I am curious how a PH.D would disqualify you from teaching. Or did I mis-construe(?) your post... You may mean that a PH.D doesn't AUTOMATICALLY qualify you teach (at the HS level)? Having a Ph.D shows a level of mastery of content, but it doesn't guarantee that good teaching and student learning will take place. Just like, having a teaching certificate doesn't. Plenty of certified teachers are terrible. I know of many non-college graduates who would probably be excellent teachers. I would recommend that colleges put potential teacher's in the classroom more way before student teaching, this way student's who think they want to teach will find out earlier in their course of study. I know of music teachers who found during their last semester of a 4-5 year program that they didn't like it, or were bad at it. These people had the choice of going back to school and re-tooling or getting a job. Those who get a job are often miserable (and so are the students)
Cliff Higgins