How can teachers help students grapple with the chaos surrounding us?
Too many aspiring teachers lack sufficient knowledge and preparation to guide students through these tough times
No matter whether elementary teachers return to physical or virtual classrooms, this will be a year for the history books. Even kindergartners have plenty of questions about the presidential election, the pandemic and the movement to end systemic racism.
What’s less clear is how prepared elementary school teachers are to put these seismic events into context.
More aspiring elementary teachers failtheir professional entry exams on the first attempt than pass them, a rate unheard of in other professions. The rate of failure for aspiring Black and Latinx teachers is even higher than for aspiring white teachers, making lack of content knowledge preparation yet another obstacle to the diversification the teaching profession so dearly needs.
This problem has been created in large part by institutions’ failing to acknowledge that elementary teachers need to acquire specialized content knowledge — not just professional coursework — to be effective.
Many working on an elementary education degree are given free rein to take whatever general education course interests them, and one called The Sexual Revolution of the 1960sno doubt proves more compelling to the average college student than a course entitled From the American Revolution to the Civil War.
A look at the courses required by teacher preparation programs reveals scant attention to the broad social studies knowledge aspiring elementary teachers need to provide essential context to world events. At most of these institutions, the deficiency is not about a lack of sufficient credit hours. Instead, it’s a failure, first, to diagnose knowledge gaps at the point of admission to a teacher preparation program, and second, to narrow choices available to aspiring teachers with demonstrable gaps in their knowledge.
Not until the end of their preparation, with most of their coursework under their belts, do most aspiring teachers find out what they don’t know — a rude awakening when they get back the results of their state’s licensing tests.
Some teacher educators have pushed back at me on this point, asserting CONTINUE READING: Are teachers ready to help students navigate chaos?
