[quote=livinincali]
As for why I’m not a teacher or signing up for a job in those working conditions I don’t need to do that. I don’t have the patience to be a teacher and honestly I don’t think it would be the right kind of challenge to me. I think I’d be bored even if I was good at it and I don’t know that I would be good at it.
The reality is that teachers don’t come from the best and the brightest. They come from the average History or English major in college that gets out and realizes that one of the best career paths is teaching. Some have a passion for it. Some are great. Many are good but nothing special. Some are frankly terrible. Just like the typical bell curve.
As for a Masters or Ph.D tell me how a Ph.D in education increases your ability to teacher 3rd grade math. Why do a lot of teachers have Masters degrees? Because they get paid more for having one and it’s a fairly easy to do if you’re already getting your education credential. It’s maybe 1 extra year in school and some sort of relatively short dissertation. Honestly a Masters in education from National University that you did in your spare time probably isn’t helping you teach 6th graders English. It does get you a raise though.
I’ll agree that one of the biggest problem is the extremely weak leadership of the administrators. Most administrators are former teachers that really don’t have any management skills. Yeah they think they know what they’re doing but they’d run a private company into the ground in no time. It’s kind of silly that the teachers that run from the classroom because they can’t handle managing the kids are put in positions of leadership in school districts but that’s what happens. Play politics, kiss ass, and get promoted not because you’re good at what you do but because you played the game right.
The whole thing is a failure, but we must protect the status quo at all costs.[/quote]
There is a bell curve in every profession. Some teachers are Mensa (or even Triple Nine Society) material, and some are of average intellect. Very few are below-average because they all have college degrees, and most districts do look at college records and GPAs.
As for the Masters or PhD, some teachers have an advanced degree in their core teaching subject, especially at the secondary level. Others might have an advanced degree in education, with many of them specializing in a particular niche like curriculum and instruction (specializing in a particular subject like reading or math), special education, neuroscience/cognitive studies (especially how it relates to the learning process), technology in the classroom, administration, or school counseling (for those who want to move up and out of the classroom), etc.
What many people don’t understand is that how to teach is every bit as important as what to teach. A teacher with a Masters or PhD has studied different teaching methods and learned about the best ways to reach different types of students in different settings and situations.
