With the great debate going on that has polarized the education world with the mentality of “us” vs. “them,” it is important to be honest about who many of our teachers are.  I know right now that this post is going to ruffle some feathers, but I speak from personal experience in many ways.  I was and still am a teacher.  This isn’t the voice of an outsider.

A larger percentage of students in teacher education programs are C students.  Most A and B students don’t go into education.  They just don’t.  There I said it.  Teacher colleges (aside from the elite schools) are filled with mediocre students.  I notice this in the work I do with student teachers and pre-service teachers. I know this from the work I do as an NCATE reviewer for English Education programs.  I know this because I was a teacher.  Who we are as teachers is how we see our students.  It is how we judge our students and compare them to others.  When teachers see students who are trying as hard as they can and are still only achieving at the average level–that level becomes the A level.  I know there are those teachers of you out there saying “no,” “why not reward growth?”  Well I am here to call you out.  Really you don’t do that?  If you don’t do it now, didn’t you do it in the beginning?  I will admit that I did.  I would see students grow and change and put in so much effort without real gain and I would empathize with them.  I would want to reward them for their hard work.  All I was doing was making myself feel better and setting them up for failure.  It took me a year of teaching and researching to realize what I was doing and that it wasn’t about rigor or good education.

Most teacher prep programs have a required GPA of 2.5.  Really?  That is so low.  I know it’s okay to have a C student as president, but I certainly don’t want one as my doctor nor as my child’s teacher.  Shouldn’t our classrooms be staffed with the brightest teachers we can get?  I really think this is why TFA (Teach for America) has been so successful.  While many of their corps members don’t teach a subject they have a degree in, they are smart.  Smart is important.  Smart is what creates ideas.  Smart is what challenges beliefs and the status quo.  Our educational system (public) was not created to build intellectual capacity of the citizens in America.  If it was, uneducated women (no offense) wouldn’t have been the first teachers in public education.  I have always felt that our teacher education admission requirements were too low.  If we have low standards for our teachers, how can we expect them to have high standards for their own?

Education for too long has accepted mediocrity and perpetuated it.  I’m not sure how to change it or fix it.  I do  know that we should let just anyone who wants to be a teacher be one.  I’m sorry if that is politically incorrect, but it’s true.  We don’t let anyone who wants to be a doctor be one.  We should have high standards.  If a person wants to work hard and is smart enough then of course let’s train them to be a teacher.  These are our kids lives at stake.  Three years of having a bad teacher increase exponentially the chance that child won’t finish school.  Aren’t our children worth the demands and rigor?  I know that mine are.  I know that everyone’s are.  It’s time for a change and it has to be systemic.  If we want our children to succeed we have to have teachers who know how to succeed–not just get by.