Responsibility and Discretion in the Classroom
The amount of resources being dedicated to recruiting and training enough teachers to fill classrooms across states is certainly money and time well spent. While state governments and school systems have almost unanimously agreed that the relevant credentials and experience requirements need to be consistently applied across states, their respective paths to securing a more qualified and capable teacher corps are showing mixed results. Those states that tend to have a highly educated labor pool seem to be able to hire sufficient numbers of teaching professionals, whereas states in other regions of the country are not filling vacant slots as easily, sometimes due to the competitiveness of other career choices. Teacher parity across states and school districts will not be solved even with the increased focus on teacher quality nationwide. The equalizers will have to be the provision of hiring incentives that will attract teaching candidates to schools in parts of the country that are perhaps not as appealing as others. Salary increases, student loan forgiveness programs, and reduced work week are the types of incentives that are showing some degree of success.
One can only hope that as states redouble their efforts to improve the quality of classroom teaching they are paying more attention to the professional development aspects of instruction. In the absence of adequate teacher training and development in many districts, we’ve watched teacher professionalism decline in ways unimaginable just a couple of decades ago. The lack of professional responsibility and discretion being exhibited by teachers is one of the biggest failures in far too many public schools. The negative effects of poor teacher discretion and irresponsible teacher language and conduct on student morale and self-confidence have not been adequately accounted for in the debate surrounding nonperforming students and schools. We’ve seen and heard the stories about teachers who openly embarrass or belittle students in front of their peers. Most of us know a child who has been told by her teacher that she can never excel in a certain subject area. My sense is that given the proper professional training, we can rid our classrooms of the personal biases and ignorance that too many ill-prepared instructors bring to the classroom. The renewed push toward higher professional standards in teaching will go a long way toward removing teachers who lower student expectations and destroy their dreams.
One can only hope that as states redouble their efforts to improve the quality of classroom teaching they are paying more attention to the professional development aspects of instruction. In the absence of adequate teacher training and development in many districts, we’ve watched teacher professionalism decline in ways unimaginable just a couple of decades ago. The lack of professional responsibility and discretion being exhibited by teachers is one of the biggest failures in far too many public schools. The negative effects of poor teacher discretion and irresponsible teacher language and conduct on student morale and self-confidence have not been adequately accounted for in the debate surrounding nonperforming students and schools. We’ve seen and heard the stories about teachers who openly embarrass or belittle students in front of their peers. Most of us know a child who has been told by her teacher that she can never excel in a certain subject area. My sense is that given the proper professional training, we can rid our classrooms of the personal biases and ignorance that too many ill-prepared instructors bring to the classroom. The renewed push toward higher professional standards in teaching will go a long way toward removing teachers who lower student expectations and destroy their dreams.
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