Restore teaching as a respected profession
By Lynn Stoddard, Standard-Examiner
Fri, 08/30/2013 - 11:43am
Why do half of all teachers leave the profession within the first five years of its starting? When a new teacher is thrown into a room full of 20 to 40 lively youngsters, s/he gets hit in the face with reality and responsibility. As days go by, the burden begins to accumulate. Some of the students are there only because they are required to take the class to get credit for graduation. Many of these know how to play the game and get good grades but don’t learn very much. Others are there only to have fun disrupting and calling attention to themselves. The new teacher soon begins to wonder if s/he has chosen the right profession.
Most people don’t realize how difficult it is to teach school. Only a small part of what teachers know and can do is obtained in colleges of education. Most of their competence is a result of years of experience working with children who are totally different from each other — different personalities, different abilities, and different needs. If a teacher survives the first five years, the chances of staying on are much better.
It takes at least 10 years for a teacher to start assimilating the subtle nuances of interacting with a great variety of students and at least another 10 years for one to attain the skills of a master teacher. Then with added love, great teaching becomes extraordinary.
This raises another question: Does experience as a student qualify one as an authority on teaching? Do some legislators and school board members qualify as expert educators by virtue of having attended public schools for thirteen or more years as students?
How can these pseudo educators, with straight faces, make edicts such as this: “We will deny funding to