<p>Does anyone else think that the lack of top notch talent going into the educational field + the lack of challenging college curriculum is a MAJOR and underrated issue?</p>
<p>Why do you ask? There are plenty of very bright people entering education. Most states require a content area major for those wishing to become teachers. There are plenty of programs that offer challenging content area majors for those wishing to enter education as a career.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s the stress of finals week, but my classes have been very fluff and my classmates aren’t exactly academic superstars.</p>
<p>If we valued teachers, we would pay them more. Then programs would become more competitive. S, who was an NMS, is in his 4th year of teaching. He loves it, but barely makes a living. There are always some very bright people going into teaching, but in general, it is considered a “soft” field.</p>
<p>The pay is low for young and non-tenured teachersas the system has to balance the salaries to tenured teachers and other deadwood. </p>
<p>Rewarding the more educated is a part of the solution, but it will take a long time to clear the underbrush. Making the profession massively more selective and paying competitive salaries is a long term solution. But one that requires gutting the establishment and the CBAs. </p>
<p>Accordingly, the system will continue to scrape the bottom of the academic barrels produced by the garbage programs of education at both UG and master level.</p>
<p>The bright people will continue to leave as they can earn more in exchange of dropping the superior benefits of working 180 days a year.</p>
<p>Not sure what a CBA is?
I also know many who work in careers that pay much lower than education, & I cant imagine them changing.
Professional musicians and artists for example.</p>
<p>In New York, public school teaching jobs are competitive and well-paid, with job security and great union benefits (especially retirement), and teachers either have to have an MA to get hired or earn one in a certain period of time. Unless you’re special ed or ESL or some other in demand teacher it is very hard to find a job. I know lots of people who majored in elementary education that have given up trying to find a job.</p>
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<p>In NYS, you can get your initial certification/ Transitional B certificate (which is the certification given to people not in teacher ed programs- Teaching Fellows/TFA) and get hired to teach with your bachelors. You must obtain your masters within 5 years of getting your initial certification as part of getting your professional certificate.</p>
<p>You are correct, that there is a glut of common branch (elementary ed teachers). Since NYC teachers have been without a contract for the past 4 years, there may be some movement, depending on the next chancellor and the next contract.</p>
<p>My youngest d recently began her first year as a 4th grade special education teacher in the DC Metro area. She graduated magna cum laude from a competitive university (W&M) with a degree in history, began her masters-level work as a senior, and received a Masters in Special Education the following year with a 3.97 GPA. </p>
<p>Mindful of the many CC threads that are critical of teacher training, I was curious about her classwork and asked her to show it to me occasionally. To me, it seemed relevant and necessary for teacher preparation, as well as intellectually appropriate to a well-respected university. Certainly she was working many hours per week as a graduate student, just as she is now working many hours per week as a first-year teacher, leaving her classroom at 6 PM most nights.
I realize that this is a major source of irritation for many. (In my daughter’s school system, teachers work a minimum of 194 days per year, because mandatory teacher training and administrative days are included as days worked.) My daughter is plenty bright but did not become a teacher because she was attracted by the “superior benefits of working 180 days a year.” Teaching is her profession, not some sinecure. Even in our troubled public school system, there are many who teach because they love children, and teaching. These professionals deserve respect. They have mine.</p>
<p>I don’t know anywhere that upper level teachers don’t have to have a degree in their content area. It seems to be only elementary and early childhood education where education majors come into play at all. My daughter is also plenty bright, has a degree in history with excellent grades and a master’s in special education. She teaches now 7th grade special education, including Saturday school from November through April. The time and effort she puts into her lesson planning is enormous and her kids get great benefit from her creativity and knowledge. I’m not sure what the answer is with regard to teaching younger kids, unless we want to separate out each teacher into content area in the early grades. I’m not sure that would be a good thing, but for most educated people, third grade content is pretty fluffy. If you thought it was hard, beachlover, then you wouldn’t be smart enough to teach it, and if the material was challenging to you, it would be entirely too much for a third grader. I find it very interesting how often you bash your classmates and your program. You are obviously too elite for it and them. Perhaps a change is in order because teaching can be very collaborative and if you don’t have the ability to handle that, then you are probably in the wrong field. Excellent teaching is a heck of a lot more than doing well on tests in your own classes. Much of it is attitude, creativity, problem solving, compassion. I wonder if you possess those skills.</p>
<p>In my state ALL teachers, regardless of grade level, MUST have a content area major. This includes primary and all other elementary school teachers.</p>
<p>OP, I urge you to read carefully what zoosermom wrote. You don’t strike me as someone who has much respect for teachers-which makes me wonder why that’s what you’ve decided to become. A teacher could come from the most elite program anywhere but be rather poor at relating to others, children especially, and she will NOT be a good teacher! It’s about, as ZM says, far more than grades and “rigor”.</p>
<p>My niece was 2nd in her large HS class, graduated at the top of her LAC class with a triple major. While I’m sure some of her ed classes were not especially challenging for her, she has gone on to became the kind of teachers people think of decades after they’re done with school. Her kids take out ads in the yearbook to thank her; parents write letters to the paper praising her. But it’s not because she’s bright-it’s because she understands middle and HS kids and knows how to reach them.</p>
<p>FWIW, neither she nor any other teacher I know work 180 days a year. They are in the classroom at least a week before school starts and a week or so after it closes for the summer. Those half days and “teacher prep days” are not days off for teachers. And many of them either take classes or TEACH classes all summer. I also don’t know any who skip on home at 3 p.m. They are there at their desks sometimes later than 9-5 employees in traditional jobs.</p>
<p>I take exception to the comment that third-grade material is “pretty fluffy.” It’s kids who haven’t mastered basic reading and math in third grade who are in trouble down the road. Also, in my state, third grade is the first year of “high-stakes” testing, which brings its own set of pressures and expectations.</p>
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Please read the context. It is “fluffy” to the adults who teach it or they shouldn’t be teaching at all. If a college graduate is expecting to be challenged by elementary school work, they are in the wrong field.</p>
<p>I’ll just drop it. :D</p>
<p>Why? I don’t see the problem. Explain it to me?</p>
<p>If a teacher candidate is challenged by the content of elementary school work, wouldn’t that be a problem? Alternatively, someone earning a degree in a content area would be required to take high level classes in the subject area and could/should be challenged by them. I don’t think it is an insult to say that a teacher candidate should have mastered elementary school material long before getting a license.</p>
<p>Yeah, never said I was challenged by the content…</p>
<p>Any curriculum is what the individual makes of it…generally you can make it as difficult and challenging or not. Back in “my” day at a selective LAC you only needed to take 2 classes to get your teacher certification in addition to a teachable major. But it wasn’t any “easier” to get the math major or the history or the science major completed for the kids that were going to take the classes to get the teaching certificate so I’m now sure what all is different now that would make it “easier”.</p>
<p>Exactly, beachlover. You said the content was fluffy, which is what it is supposed to be when you are an educated adult learning elementary school content. You are supposed to learn how to teach it, not actually learn it for knowledge. Hopefully, that happened years ago.</p>
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I think the OP is talking about education classes, rather than content. Content is content is content. Upper level content will be much harder than elementary school or early childhood content. Education classes are, exactly as you said, what the student makes of them.</p>