Winner Of $1 Million Teaching Prize Has Some Depressing Thoughts About The State Of Education
Nancie Atwell, who over the weekend won a $1 million award for her accomplishments in education, has been a teacher for more than four decades -- but she said she would not advise her students to go down the same career path.
After Atwell was awarded the first Global Teacher Prize from the Varkey Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to improving education for underprivileged students, she told The Associated Press that she feels "validated every day just by the experiences I have with children in the classroom."
However, in a subsequent interview with CNN, she said that she would not advise kids to become teachers.
"Honestly, right now, I encourage them to look in the private sector," she said during an appearance on "New Day." "Public school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core Standards and the tests that are developed to monitor what teachers are doing with them. It's a movement that's turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners."
"If you're a creative, smart young person," she continued, "I don't think this is the time to go into teaching."
Depressing words -- especially coming from someone who has been in the field for 42 years.
The Common Core State Standards are a set of math and English standards that have been adopted in a majority of states in an effort to make sure students around the country are being held to the same learning benchmarks. In theory, Common Core issupposed to give teachers freedom over what is taught in their classrooms on a day-to-day basis. Some teachers, however, echo Atwell's complaints and say the standards actually limit them.
Atwell beat out 1,300 applicants from 127 countries to receive the prize, which the Varkey Foundation describes as the "Nobel Prize of teaching," Education Week reports. Atwell currently works at The Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb, Maine, a school she founded in 1990. She has said that she plans to donateWinner Of $1 Million Teaching Prize Has Some Depressing Thoughts About The State Of Education:
