Here is an idea: Engineers for America. Five weeks of training and you too can design and build bridges. So what if the other engineers had years of education and practice? Experience is SO yesterday!
I mean, really, why shouldn’t young people have a chance? End LIFO in engineering! Embrace youth and enthusiasm. And good luck when you drive over a bridge!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
LIFO is what we get in education. I hope the engineers (and other sane folks) do FIFO! Although my favorite is still MEGO….My Eyes Glaze Over…..
I agree! We could also use some Doctors for America with 5 weeks training.The state and university run hospitals here in Louisiana that serve the uninsured and indigent have really bad outcomes for their patients. Lots of preemie babies, diabetes, heart disease, death, etc. It must be the doctors fault that their patients aren’t healthier. They must be doing something wrong since the more affluent hospitals have much better outcomes. We need to deform our hospitals as well. Change the doctors and the outcomes will improve, right? Oh wait, gov. Jindal already has them on his hit list…
This reminds me of the time I was in a doctor’s office on the Upper East Side after going through what was apparently some sort of panic attack.
I was complaining of how my heart rate went way up unexpectedly, and I had to take many deep breaths to calm down to one doctor and one younger guy who was interning with the doctor and in medical school.
The doctor asked me what I did for a living. I told her I was a teacher. She asked if I was in TFA. I shook my head. My body language must have communicated my distaste, because she then asked me what problem I had with the organization.
I said I thought TFA put a lot of untrained, unprepared, culturally incompetent people in front of students who needed great teachers the most. I said I thought it represented part of an effort to degrade teaching as a profession.
The doctor looked concerned. “Who else will teach those students then?” she asked.
“How about a capable, experienced professional?” I suggested. “I wouldn’t feel all that great if your intern was the only one in here treating me.”
She seemed unsatisfied – as if the pedagogical and medical professions were not on equal footing.
The rest of my appointment was a little awkward.
While it may have been awkward, perhaps you provoked her to think a bit more deeply about this issue.
This could be a new career option for me!! Thanks!! (note sarcasm)
There is a reason that people are told not to schedule medical procedures in July when all the new interns (and residents?) start.
Hah. This makes my day.
I have found that TFA is socially accepted in white collar social circles but teachers are considered grey almost blue collar and are accorded that status.
Considering how lauded some professional athletes who never finished their post high school education (no shame in that considering the job requirements), it is all about the benjamins and not the educational level. TFA attracts because it is understood to be a way station not a destination.
of course, the real issue here is that many in our society do not value teaching as a profession. the physician mentioned above clearly didn’t think that teachers were on a par with doctors, so was surprised at the analogy. as teachers, we don’t like to admit this, but we often don’t treat ourselves as a profession, or follow the traditions of other professions.
for example, professions police their own members: in law there is the bar, and physicians decide who can join their profession and punish one another for infractions, not some lay board.
in education, we’ve ceded the responsibility for teacher evaluation to administrators (more and more of whom never taught), and leave hiring and tenure decisions (in the rare places that still have tenure) to school board members who may know nothing about teaching.
we need to reclaim our responsibilities as professionals to evaluate one another in ways that make sense–not be using student scores on standardized tests–and by becoming politically active, a step that many teachers are loathe to take. in fact, many of us went into teaching precisely because we weren’t political creatures.
we are also a very diverse profession, and its important that we get as many teachers on the same page in terms of policy issues as possible. we are being destroyed from within as much as from the outside–which is part of the plan on the far right (destroy unions, play on the beliefs of some teachers regarding tenure, unions and benefits).
While I agree we need to take control over our profession, we cannot do so in the way law and medicine does. We have school boards and mayoral control that decide everything in education. We have wrestled a modicum of control through collective bargaining, and that is where it ends. Unfortunately, this meager amout of say has been curtailed in many places. We are not responsible for our colleagues behavior, nor should we be, because we do not evaluate, control, or devise the parameters of education.
Mitchell, I completely get what you are saying concerning teachers being loathe to become political, but what choice do we have? Look at the CTU and President Lewis, they are reminding us that we must actually fight for our profession. Again, what are the choices? Collaboration will never work, nor will “solution based unionism.”
To me the only solution is to end poverty.
Mitchell,
I brought up similar concerns here awhile back and was told I was totally wrong by people on here I agree with on many things. I still think that many of your comments are right on the money. Many teachers seem totally against peer review in any form. Perhaps teachers need to take themselves out from under the school boards and mayors and governors and establish a Teachers Board, like the healthcare licensing boards, some of what Finland does as far as teacher prep-every teachers has a Masters degree, and have a outside and independent evaluation entity like JCAHO. To “police” ourselves, and by this I mean to take control of the profession, collect our own data and do our own research, determine the standards of our profession, requirements for the different positions, what is effective and ineffective teaching etc… Some teachers would become mentors , some would move into positions of working to constantly improved teacher practice and others would be involved in research and the legal aspects of teaching. We have many highly respected educators specializing in all these areas and we need to accept and perform peer review as a formal way to internally and externally validate and establish our profession. Teachers should be the only ones evaluating teachers and these evaluators need extensive training and experience to do so.
I was a teacher aide for 3 years and I ceertainly do not feel qualified to be a teacher. Whoever came up with that idea is nuts.
Teaching IS common sense + classroom management. Neither one can be taught in college classes. A good teacher is one who can work with people and have a strong dose of common sense. The best teacher, I know of, is a single-father who has owned his own construction company until 2009. After the economy imploded, he transitioned into education. He loves his students, he calm under pressure and he loves education. Hands down, he beats his peers who went through regular teaching programs.
Side Note: I taught a bridge kindergarten program for ESL students. It was operated by a nonprofit, so I didn’t need a teacher’s license. All 16 of my students learn how to read, write sentences and add/subtract numbers. I had one super bright young man, who I taught to multiply and divide. The neighboring teacher had a degree. She was a teacher with 25 years experience, who closed her door and talked on her cell phone. The 1st grade teachers, the next year, stated that “Mrs. X’s students were a year behind the other students.” Question: Do you have a horrible teacher that does not educate her students or an “unqualified” teacher that loves students and ensure they master content?
I should not the teacher had a regular elementary certificate, and the program was operated in an urban public school.
Now that emphasis is being placed on STEM, I hope it doesn’t turn into an engineering mill like TFA.