Teacher Preparation and Mastery

When I studied to be a teacher I majored in education and was not required to declare an academic major. The courses I took were in the philosophy of education and methods, not in content. I already had a bachelor's degree (major in psychology—minor in German) when I entered teacher preparation. After one year, a year that included a summer and one semester of practice teaching, I received a masters degree in education (Ed.M.) and was certified to teach grades K-8, any and all subjects from music to social studies, history to reading, English to mathematics.

I think our children deserve better. In my case, mathematics and history were the weakest links. I had studied algebra and geometry but had taken no courses in mathematics beyond high school, except for statistics. My grasp of history is now and was then nothing short of abominable.

After I left graduate school, I dabbled in teaching by job-sharing with a special education teacher for students aged 8 to 12. On the side, I taught flute lessons and played in a professional orchestra. My background and experience as a musician qualified me to help young people learn to play the flute. I had limitations there, too, without college courses in theory and harmony. Nevertheless, I had received excellent teaching from accomplished musicians and was able to pass on that knowledge to my students. In many cases students came to me with bad habits learned from incompetent teachers, habits that were very hard for them to unlearn. That's one of the dangers of teaching neophytes from an inadequate knowledge base.

The same thing happened to my son. He studied math in kindergarten through third grade with teachers who knew very little about the subject. When we moved to another community where transfer students were tested in each subject to determine their placement, huge gaps were uncovered in his understanding of math concepts and mastery of skills. For the next two years, in grades four and five, he studied with a teacher who had majored in mathematics in college. She pre-tested each student at the beginning of every chapter, taught them what they didn't know and then post-tested them. Whatever they hadn't mastered, she taught them again until they could apply the material accurately. By the end of the fifth grade my son's math knowledge and skills were rock solid.

Perhaps you wonder what podunk university prepared me to be a teacher. It wasn't exactly podunk. The program I attended enjoyed a credible reputation for training teachers in the late 60s. I earned my masters degree in education from Harvard.

Things have changed for the better in teacher preparation at Harvard and elsewhere. Nevertheless, dozens of graduate schools still offer teaching certificates to their graduates without requiring them to have first majored in an academic discipline. Teacher shortage or not, I think elementary and middle school teachers need a strong knowledge base in the subjects they teach. They should be considered "junior" teachers or apprentice teachers until they gain that knowledge, be it in the university classroom or on the job, under the tutelage and supervision of master teachers. Master teachers need to know their subjects thoroughly and be required to expand that knowledge in their areas of expertise in order to keep their certification.

Connecticut's five-year professional certification is a step in that direction. However, I don't think there is an ongoing testing program in place to measure teacher competency in their subject areas. In most professions, once a professional has passed the exam required to enter a profession, they only need take workshops to maintain their certification. No one tests their knowledge after that. We test our students nearly every year. Maybe our teachers should be tested annually too. I like to think they could pass content tests, but I'm not at all certain that the majority of them could.

According to an article by Diane Ravitch, published in The Washington Post (March 1, 1998), "There is a widely accepted notion that people who teach little children don't need to know much other than pedagogical methods and child psychology: that is wrong. Teachers of little children need to be well-educated and should love learning as much as they love children... even elementary school teachers should have a academic major."

Gordon Bruno, former chairman of the Department of Education at Manhattanville College, says, "My bias is to eliminate the undergraduate major in education altogether. In my opinion, we should require all prospective teachers to have an academic major as undergraduates; then train people to become teachers at the graduate level, like other professions do."

Note about teacher preparation in Connecticut: According to a reader just trained to teach in CT, "As a new teacher I had to have a B.A. in English and a M.S. in Education before anyone would consider even giving me a job. After that, I entered a two year BEST program where I had to complete three 1-hour video tapes of my teaching and a portfolio that was 83 pages when I was finished. All of this was on top of being observed twice by my administrator and once by my department head each year. My experience is not unique to new teachers... I hope you (and readers) will research the BEST project more, so that the many parents who read your articles will get the correct information."

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