I remember the principal coming in to observe even way back when I was in elementary and I somehow understood that they were evaluating the teacher. Performance appraisals are part of any job. We always behaved perfectly when the principal was in the room though! He was scary.

That was done long before NCLB. Principals have always had to do evaluations.

We were always well-behaved when the principal was in the room, too. But he wasn't scary... he was my dad. :p

My proof? Just look around at the school systems. I can speak from experience in my own state, and I'm sure people in other states can attest to the same thing. What the federal government says is a high quality teacher is someone who has the right credentials on paper. Anyone can go through certification requirements if they pay the money and enroll in the classes. That is NOT what makes someone a good teacher. It takes years of dedication and working to hone skills before someone really becomes a quality teacher.

I know teachers who have the proper certification and can't teach worth a d@#$. They don't know how to do proper lesson plans. They don't know anything about pacing guides. They stand up and lecture for the entire class period with little involvement or interaction from the students. I could go on.

And it is interesting to me that despite the NCLB laws, they STILL push TFA.

This reminds me of our elementary school principal...he was so tall his head scraped the tops of the doorways. He was such a nice man. Awww, happy memory :)

This is all true. Anecdotally speaking, watching my wife attend education classes, it was truly befuddling how easy this profession was to enter. Really -- there were classes on how to do things like operate copy machines and overhead projectors.

If the teaching profession wants to survive as a viable profession rather than a simple vocation which anyone qualified in whatever subject matter can enter, it probably needs to reinvent itself, both in terms of training and maintaining good teachers and in terms of rewarding success in the classroom.

I know some universities are looking at reinventing their training processes into something more resembling apprenticeships. (I want to say I heard about NCSU doing this) I'm interested to see how that turns out.

Wouldn't student teaching be considered an apprenticeship?

I'm shocked by some of the people I went to high school with who are now teachers. But then again, they might be able to teach the material better than they were at doing the material 10 or so years ago.

I just remembered my junior year of high school we got a teacher in trouble for her teaching habits. No one understood her and when we'd ask questions she would get frustrated. Students who had the other teacher the first semester and then her were really confused. We had her students from 9-12 sign a petition and one by one got called down to our principals office. (our Vice Principal is the one who always dealt with problems, so you knew it was serious if you were going to the principal). We had to give our reasoning for signing the petition. It was kind of scary, but with the amount of students who signed, they actually took it seriously. I'm not sure if she's teaching somewhere else now, but possibly the same evaluations the students take in college classes could help in high school?

Yes, but some of these new programs are focusing on getting these teacher candidates into the classroom much faster and for a much longer period of time before they're off on their own.

That is awesome. And it is even more awesome that your administration paid attention. My experience has always been that those situations were unwinnable, thus were battles not worth fighting. Did you by any chance go to a school where teachers weren't tenured? I do think tenure is a blight on our education system (at least in the K-12 context) and needs to go. Before we can even talk about holding administrators accountable, we have to let them be able to hire and fire so that they can get the people they want so that they can implement their strategies for success. It's all about making education more focused on the students than on the employees and institutions which deliver it.

In my case, that would be even MORE scary! But, our elementary principal was really tall and really big. He was completely bald and had a mole right on top of his head. He was scary looking. I don't think I ever saw him smile. He walked slightly hunched, kind of like a woman with osteoporosis. I can picture his walk in my head. Lumbering is the word that comes to mind. He would lumber down the hall with a scowl on his face and kids would just scatter as far away from him as they could.

Don't quote my posts when you spout your crap. It implies that I'm on the same page as you and I most certainly am not.

I think that's what they do with the Early Childhood majors. They do an internship in the beginning, and then the student teaching at the end. I know UMD does that, but I'm not sure about other schools.



I'm not sure if our teachers had tenure back then. I know we got stuck with a HORRIBLE professor that was pretty suspect and they couldn't let him go cuz of his tenure. Boo on that.

As far as principals, our elementary one was loved by everyone. He made the school fun: we had a black cat named Angelo as a mascot. They let him roam the halls. He was Irish, so every St Patrick's Day he had this HUGE rock brought in and told us it was the Blarney Stone, so every year we'd go down and take pictures by it. He was really cool. I got along great iwth my high school VP and I was his assistant one year. I got along with my counselor too but I was the kid who liked being in school. I'd go back to HS in a second and do it all over again.

My dad's tall, big, and bald, but smiley, no mole, doesn't lumber.

Plus, the kids loved him. Every day he'd stand out in the lobby and greet the kids coming in, and they all gave him hugs. He also set fun goals for them. If the kids in first grade read X number of books in a time period, he'd wear a chicken costume to school when it was done. Another time he did something similar, but for math, and since the school was only two stories (at that time) he conducted business from the roof (no children were sent to his "office" that day) where all the kids could see him when they were on recess. He also (and this is the benefit of being in a small, rural school) knew each child by first, last, and often middle name, knew their parents names, and knew where most of them lived. He would take a lot of kids home if they missed their busses.

I realize I'm a little biased, but my dad was like the best elementary school principal ever. It was really really hard for him to let go and retire, but with all the sadness that happened in our family the year he retired and the realization that things really had changed since he started, he made the right move by retiring. Better to go out on top while everyone loves you than to hold on too long and become the old crotchety principal that everyone hates.

ETA: My MOM (God rest her soul and you know how I feel about her) was the one to be afraid of if we got into trouble at school. For me, at least, my dad is a total pushover. I'm pretty sure I could get him to sign the deed of his house over to me if I asked nicely enough. He wasn't that way for all kids (here comes the preferential treatment part) so whenever I got into trouble and got sent to his office, he had to call mom who would come in and punish me.

YEESSS! I was thinking the SAME thing.

Honestly back in the day in my school system, issues like this were addressed.

Now? Even if the students were diligent about how they approached poor teaching, they would still be "ignored." Allowing teachers to attain career (tenure) status in the public school system can be helpful, but when teachers are attaining career status in spite of their obviously poor performance in the classroom, then there will continue to be a problem.

Student teaching is an apprenticeship, but it really isn't always adequate. If the student teacher gets paired with a piss-poor teacher, the cycle will just continue.

And Kevin is right... many of these "training" programs? Yeah right.

Yes, there are probably certification programs that you can just pay money and get certified, but that doesn't mean that those people are gonna be piss poor teachers. Yes, not all teachers are gonna be "high" quality teachers, but you can't base that on anything except the person. And the teachers you mentioned probably came waay before NCLB. Like I said, NCLB didn't lower the bar on 'quality.'

And as to Kevin's argument that certification programs are turning them out as fast as they can, that is also not always true. I have to stay in my certification program for at least 18 months, and then do an "internship" for a whole year after. Not necessarily what you would consider 'fast.'