After reading about the Match “graduate school of education,” this reader shares the wisdom born of experience:
As a high school classroom teacher with over fifteen years experience, this type of graduate preparation is ludicrous! There is nothing more important, especially in the HS classroom, than a teacher who is an expert in his/her respective field. The “tricks of the trade” are second nature for those truly called to this noble profession. A teacher needs passion and patience, but more than anything else she needs to know what she’s talking about. That is what gives the teacher authority. Students can smell fear and detect a teacher without content confidence. This is where behavioral problems emerge. The students feel insulted, and rightfully so; they deserve our best.
I would add that I have known brilliant graduates of the best Ivy League classrooms who didn’t know how to translate what they know into terms their students could understand. The kids chewed them up and spit them out. It is one thing to shine in a seminar with other smart people but something else to communicate your knowledge in ways that students understand.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I disagree with the sentiment expressed by your reader.
First, it’s impractical to expect all teachers to be masters of their content. If we need 200,000 math teachers in the US, we aren’t going to find 200,000 math experts for those positions, unless we dramatically redefine what we mean by ‘expert’.
Second, content expertise is not the source of a teacher’s authority. Being a teacher is more about being a leader than being an authority, and leadership is earned through a combination of respect, effort, enthusiasm, caring, and expertise.
Lastly, subject content delivery is one aspect of teaching that can obviously be streamlined by technology. As education evolves, we teachers need to make our case by emphasizing the variety of other tools and expertise we bring to students, not just content.
I believe your first argument is rather irrelevant. The question is not how to improve math education in every classroom and for every student, or whether it is possible. What you said probably shows that it is highly unlikely that all the all-encompassing initiatives, like NCLB are a priori bound to fail.
I have doubts about your second argument. While projecting and maintaining authority is an important part of teacher/student interface, a teacher’s primary task is to educate students. It’s hard to accomplish it without authority, but entirely impossible without content knowledge.
…gotta support and affirm Alexander on this one…he nailed it
It’s entirely impossible to have every teacher to have well defined content knowledge in their area. Every teacher has their flaws in terms of “being an expert at one topic versus another”. Even someone with a Ph D. in their field isn’t comfortable teaching EVERY topic in that course. What we need to focus about is the relationship that is built between students and teachers. The teacher becomes the student, as they constantly become atone to the material the teacher teaches. They may pick up new, fun creative ideas brought by the students. The student becomes the teacher, as not only do they receive an enriching learning experience, but an increase in character, maturity, and responsibility.
The best way for a teacher to truly understand the subject material is through experience. As the teacher continuously teaches the subject, content expertise ceases to be a concern. For example, Finland has an amazing quality in teachers, as not only do they need to be the top of their class, but also need several YEARS of practice (teaching classes and meaningful evaluations). Expert teachers will evaluate prospective teachers by providing meaningful feedback .This compares to the few months of student teaching that most teacher receive in the United States, and lack of feedback.
The issue with authority is that it restricts the student’s ability to be open about themselves and their ideas. The student will NEVER be able to reach THEIR full potential, if the teacher makes authority the first priority in the classroom.
I would argue that the ability of a teacher to foster a relationship, and understand the background and abilities (given the current crisis of child poverty) of U.S. students, is the number one feature that makes a successful teacher.
Content mastery is important, but comes in second place.
I have seen many “Einsteins” that fell completely on their face as teachers.
Mindful of your reader’s expertise, respectful of her/his opinion, and sympathetic to your shared take on the hoo-hah perpetrated by Match, I worry when I hear the claim that a teacher “being expert in his/her respective field…is what give the teacher authority.” Perhaps a student’s “behavioral problems emerge” when a student doubts a teacher’s confidence, but I don’t agree–with an equivalently long history of classroom experience–that this is tied to a question of a teacher’s content or subject-area mastery.
Behavioral problems emerge–when they are in any way tied to a child’s volition–when a teacher fails meaningfully to engage and to support a student in her/his learning. This can be just as much a function of a teacher’s failure to leverage clear and consistent management strategies, a teacher’s failure to provide sufficient voice and self-direction to the student, a teacher’s failure to be culturally competent–or, for that matter, a teacher’s Faustian obligations to teaching to the loony expectations of a high-stakes test, in a school or system that hinges ‘everything’ upon that so-called ‘achievement.’
I would hate to see our field of K-12 education reduced again to the idea of fractured and discrete disciplines, the idea of the teacher as the ‘sage on the stage,’ or the idea of a student as a child with little moral character or sound ethical judgment, who waits eagerly to scrutinize the ‘street cred’–or, in this case, the ‘geek cred’–of a teacher. A child, as Dewey told us eleventy-seven years ago, is “not a mental or moral whole that awaits filling” with the fruits of our conventionally academic labors.
I am certain that I am overreacting to the comment with this rant, for which I apologize in case of any offense–but I think statements like “Students can smell fear” belong perhaps more in the arena of Scared Straight or DARE programs, and less in the discourse on education.
Uh, teachers don’t memorize what they learned in college for their “content mastery.” They still have to prepare and plan lessons, and, as you note, Diane, teachers have to be able to present them in ways kids can understand. This means knowing HOW to teach, not just WHAT to teach, and knowing a thing or two about child development. I’d also argue just because somebody went to the Ivy League, that doesn’t automatically confer “genius.” All people are really getting from the Ivy League is the ability to get connections, which are certainly important. But it’s a myth, a lie, to say Ivy League students are the “best” when the vast majority of college students regardless of ability or connections don’t bother applying at those schools.
Diane,
I am a professor of educational administration and I’m struck by how little content area knowledge is required to become a principal or superintendent. Standards related to administrator certification seldom (if ever) include anything related to the need for developing even a basic understanding of math, science, reading, etc. Most preparation programs do not include any instruction at all in this area, and are instead committed to an organizational perspective rooted in a very specific kind of business-thinking that emphasizes efficiency and equality over a sensitivity to difference and equity.
This makes administrators particularly susceptible to the sirens of standardized “accountability” because focusing on the “bottom line” of student achievement “shows them” who is a “good or bad teacher” and they can avoid completely the difficult work of learning that leadership and instruction can and should look different in a high school science lab, a Kindergarten classroom or a middle school composition course. Also, since the reformers use leaderlingo like all children can learn, a shared vision, we must change for our students’ sake, let’s focus on the bottom line, they are speaking in a language they understand. Unfortunately it isn’t the language of schools or the language of learning.
I would love to see administrators taught that content areas matter and that each is supported differently. I would love to see them taught that both processes and outcomes are equally important. I would love to see them taught that excellence in education has never been standardized because everything is dynamic–content areas change, students’ needs and talents evolve, teachers improve and develop new skills and expertise, family situations fluctuate, etc.
I guess what I’m saying is that the standardization of education in the form of some kind of ostensibly objective and measurable outcome sees flawed at the core as a way of thinking about (and forming policy for) schools. It is out-of-touch with the dynamic world in which we live and the dynamic schools in which our teachers work. The diversity in US public schools, coupled with the high level of expertise among our teachers, makes them among the richest educational environments in the world. They shouldn’t be the same because they can’t be the same. I would love to see us developing new ways of thinking about schools that are more grounded in what we know about various content areas while also acknowledging that there simply is no one best way to teach, only best practices, research-based practices that necessarily need to evolve. Standardization moves us, unfortunately, in the opposite direction–toward a vision of the world and of teaching that is static.
Jeff-
Thanks for sharing your insight. I will begin graduate work in Ed. Leadership this fall and you have so clearly articulated my concerns in choosing this field of study.
I don’t argue that lesson planning and developing relationships are essential to making an effective teacher, but a student-teacher relationship with nothing to teach is meaningless, and the best plans will fall flat if the content isn’t there. I would never suggest that any expert would make a good teacher, but we are more than performers in a dog and pony show, and all the education courses will not turn a student into a math or English teacher if he/she can’t add or read.
One has to know the material. But even expert knowledge is insufficient to be a successful teacher.
On has to know the students, and then have the skill set to help the students connect with the content knowledge. This is pedagogy, and it is not merely being able to follow a script or perform certain behaviors. Anyone who thinks canned curricula and scripted lessons are going to be effect knows little about real teaching and learning.
Very true, Ken. I have also found that students appreciate a culture of learning in the classroom. They also love to be challenged and treated as though they can exceed and excel.
I’m a college teacher and know the environment is dramatically different, but I cannot believe some of these comments! Here’s some feedback from a current classroom, including two students who “walked” in their high school graduation during the 1st week of their first college summer classes: 1) their school experiences were too easy – many said they felt as though teachers treated them like they were stupid and expected too little. Bad teachers made a vivid impression on many students. Few were able to give examples of great teachers, even when I gave examples from my own school experience and from students in other classes. Please do not give up. Please keep working and know that great teachers do make a difference! And for the “crisis in child poverty” people – has it occurred to you that while the students are in YOUR classroom, you can treat them as the precious and gifted children that they are? Because you CAN and should. They deserve it, want it, and require it.
Excellent commentary. I heartily concur.
You can have all the “book learning” there is and still have no common sense. I think teaching involves a great deal of common sense.
Who will define mastery? In Indiana our esteemed leaders of education define student mastery as 80% on their end of course assessment. Are you telling me that is the level of mastery I must obtain? As previous comments have stated I would take the ability to relate to students, pedagogical strategies, and the ability to construct a curriculum over the content knowledge I have gained through my MS or my pending PhD.
Content mastery, or being a content expert doesn’t just mean “book learning” or going to college and getting a grade…I will grant all of you that. But what US high school students need are teachers who are truly content masters and truly know, understand and “dominate” the content. What we see today are schools of education graduating students who have lots of theory (while doing no work on proper assessment practices, grading, formative assessment, summative assessment, creating valid assessments…) but have been given math teaching degrees but can’t teach higher level math, art teachers who have no background with computer graphics, English teachers who have never been asked to assess writing and make it better, Business teachers who have been given a degree in business education but don’t know basic accounting practices themselves….the list is endless. We need content masters/experts who have had such deep undergrad experiences in their chosen field that all of their “electives” were used in content areas. Interviewing high-quality teaching candidates for positions in our schools who can build programs and create the kind of educational environment our kids deserve is vey very difficult.
Please don’t take my comments to mean there isn’t a gift to teaching. I believe their IS a gifting and a CALLING on those who teach…but the problem is we have many folks in the classroom who are not lifelong learners themselves…and the kids can sniff that out in minutes.
I was in a workshop today(yes, during my summer vacation), and all the teachers at my table agreed, “Teaching is an art!” You can not just stick a body in a room, and make them a teacher!
I agree with you! In the thirty years of teaching, I have learned more while creating my lesson plans and searching resources than I ever learned in my B.A., either of my M.A., or my Ed.D. My education was focused more on how to teach, not what to teach.
My friends, who don’t teach, always say, I don’t know you do it, especially teaching such young children (I teach kindergarten). To me teaching is not “just a job”, it’s so much more. I teach, I learn. My students bring so much into my classroom. They inspire me to reach for the stars as I teach, I learn. It’s not easy, it’s complex and it is so much more then the 3Rs. Thanks Diane for giving us this forum to share our thoughts.
Just like everything else that is healthy… Moderation is the key. To be a truly successful teacher, you need to know your content inside and out. A teacher needs to be able to explain and teach a skill in multiple ways and also needs to know how the teaching/learning in one area connects to the other areas within the curriculum and in the real world. Beyond knowing the content, teachers must also have the ability to form real, meaningful relationships with their students. You will have the one or two kids in class that would learn in spite of what teacher was in front of them but for the majority, your content is not their passion. Many of them would rather be doing something else than learning whatever lesson you have planned for the day. However, the teacher who has the ability to relate to kids, who takes the time to listen, who cares and respects the students will usually get the same in return. When this happens, students will naturally be more engaged, more invested and more willing to do what it takes to not disappoint their teacher whom they have developed a relationship with that expects nothing less than the best.
What I am afraid of is that because of the increased pressures, accountability and APPR looming overhead, teachers and administrators will become so focused on the assessment results that they might forget that they are working with young, impressionable students who often need strong adult role-models in their lives who they can count on every day. Don’t forget why we went into this very rewarding and exciting field… Keep working hard and take pride in the daily work that you do to make better men and women of tomorrow!
after reading the above article i strongly believe that tomorrows world future is in the hands of today’s children and its teachers duty to mold them like a good citizens of country.. by guiding them not only by teaching the subjects and also tell them how to lead a good life in future
Reblogged this on Laura A. Diaz ~ Books and Beyond and commented:
As a high school classroom teacher with over fifteen years experience, this type of graduate preparation is ludicrous! There is nothing more important, especially in the HS classroom, than a teacher who is an expert in his/her respective field. The “tricks of the trade” are second nature for those truly called to this noble profession. A teacher needs passion and patience, but more than anything else she needs to know what she’s talking about. That is what gives the teacher authority. Students can smell fear and detect a teacher without content confidence. This is where behavioral problems emerge. The students feel insulted, and rightfully so; they deserve our best.
I would add that I have known brilliant graduates of the best Ivy League classrooms who didn’t know how to translate what they know into terms their students could understand. The kids chewed them up and spit them out. It is one thing to shine in a seminar with other smart people but something else to communicate your knowledge in ways that students understand.
PLease read the rest of this article and other posts from this talented education blogger.