How Do Teachers Learn to Teach?
How do teachers really learn to teach--to teach well, cooking on all disciplinary burners, deftly handling mini-crises of apathy and frustration, creating--on the fly--engaging new ways to absorb and apply important content and skills?
Is there a template for this process? Are there indispensible tools--like common standards, materials and assessments? Or is it an "every man for himself" sort of thing, a long sequence of trial and error and observation, fitting what works into a cohesive whole--building a profession? Is there a point at which teachers have "arrived"--mastered their craft, for an enduring future?
I ask this because there has been a flurry of pro-Common Core media recently, crediting the CCSS with being precisely the template and tool that will correct leaky, inadequate teaching and deficient, locally-created curricula. And, one presumes, send those internationally benchmarked scores rising like kites in the wind.
I don't pay much attention to Pearsonesque advertising about exciting new programs--exciting and expensive--that will re-shape education. Since I began teaching, in the 1970s, the Next Big Thing in education has emerged cyclically to great fanfare, left its mark, then faded. In a market-based education ecology, we can expect regular turnover in what is considered essential for a good education. It's how publishers, professional developers and non-profits stay alive.
What I have noticed lately is the entanglement of political ideas (civil rights and equity, the global economy, full employment, even national security) with public education. This isn't the first time this has happened--if you're as old as I am, you remember Johnny and Ivan--but the recent How Do Teachers Learn to Teach? - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:
