Schools for Tomorrow Blog

This is my first blog for this site. A bit about myself: I am 50 years old, and I have been a teacher for 14 years.  When I first got out of high school, in a suburb of Chicago, I had every intention of going to college. But instead I took a job as an apprentice truck mechanic for Ford (this is where I learned about the need for organized labor).
After finding myself reeking of diesel fuel and yearning for a more cerebral experience, I went to professional photography school and become a commercial photographer. I moved to Denver (where I was born) and took a job with May D&F, a retail store, which was later consumed by Foleys and now Macys, as their director of advertising photography (this is where I learned about the “free market”).

Disillusioned with trying to coax customers into changing their wardrobes every six weeks through advertisements, I finally went to college and got my teaching certificate. It was inevitable for me to enter the profession. My dad was a high school teacher for 30-odd years; my sister is a medical doctor teaching in the State University of New York system; and my youngest sister is an assistant principal at a West Slope high school. As you can see, I’ve dabbled in a few different areas of work. I think this gives me an excellent vantage point from which to pontificate.  

    
Fifteen years ago, as I was making my way through the teacher certification process in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Colorado at Denver, I was struck by one of the portfolio requirements. The portfolio was to represent my body of work in the school, and I needed to show evidence for the five or so topics in the portfolio. One of the topics was “Teacher as Professional.”

I was struck by this, because I thought teaching was all about being a professional. Doesn’t it go without saying? Or is it a bit like when Nixon said, “I am not a crook” when he was under fire for Watergate? Didn’t that go without saying? One of my hopes in this blog is to call attention to the lack of professionalism given to and expected by teachers.
This came to mind when I was reading a blog about a teacher who had a conversation with a friend of hers who was going into the nursing profession. She was attracted to nursing in New York City because, in an attempt to attract more people to the profession, the starting pay had been increased to around $55,000. “How do we attract new teachers to our profession?” the teacher asked. One of the ways the government currently tries to attract teachers is through the Teacher Corps–where we place anyone, as long as they are not pedophiles, into the classroom, and then train them as they go!

Huh? I am not aware of any other profession that would allow this. Would you want a nurse, with zero experience, taking your vitals, administering life-saving drugs? Or how about a person with no experience or training—or, for that matter, education–designing a highway bridge? Why do we do this with wannabe teachers (especially in inner city schools)?
It is because we as a society do not view or treat teachers as professionals. If only I had a nickel for every time someone confessed to me that they too wanted to be a teacher, but it just wasn’t worth their time salary-wise–as if the only thing keeping me from being a doctor was all of that school stuff. Not everyone can be a doctor, nurse or architect.

Most of society sees teachers as passionate souls fighting the good fight. This is a bit analogous to a nun or priest, who’s certainly not doing it for the money. But higher salaries are not going to make professionals out of teachers. My contention is that until teachers are treated–and here’s the big one—and act like professionals, it will be difficult to improve student achievement.  What will it take for teachers to be treated and to behave like professionals? What does it mean to be a professional?  And where does accountability fit into the discussion?  Give me your thoughts.  

 

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 9:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.