Program for Minneapolis Public Schools Retraining of Secondary (Grades 6-12) Teachers

The Challenge of Earning a Terminal Master’s Degree in a Legitimate Academic Discipline


The chair of the Department of History at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) looked away for a moment, searching her memory bank.


 “No, I can’t think of any in the last ten years or so.”


This answer came in response to my question, “Can you think of any graduate students who aspire to be K-12 teachers who have been in your program in recent memory?”


In the case of the history department, her answer was fully anticipated. For at least ten years, the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) Department of History has had no terminal master’s degree. This means that all graduate students in history enroll with the intention of seeking the Ph. D., typically for the purpose of gaining the expertise expected for one teaching at universities or four-year colleges. If these aspirants have their programs interrupted for some reason, and have studied sufficiently into their programs, professors in the department may agree to grant such a student a master’s degree. But no graduate student in the history department starts out seeking the master’s.


This is now a common situation at the University of Minnesota.


The same essential situation prevailing for history applies to the departments of political science, sociology, and chemistry. The departments of biological sciences, economics, physics, and English do have terminal master’s degrees, but no one connected to graduate studies in the those departments remembers any student in recent memory who was aspiring to, or proceeded to, teach in a K-12 system.


The math department has a master’s program for teachers that does prepare participants as rigorously as those who intend to go forward to the Ph. D. But this sort of program is a rare exception, and it only attracts two to four students a year; overwhelmingly, aspiring teachers opt for the far, far less rigorous program in the College of Education and Human Development.


Given the rarity of legitimate master’s degrees these days, officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools will need to work with area colleges and universities to reestablish terminal master’s degrees of the desired academic weight. Such a relationship will be abetted by the efforts needed to get the Masters of Liberal Arts established for aspiring K-5 teachers. Great benefit will accrue to both college/university programs and to the teacher training initiative of the Minneapolis Public Schools.


The seriousness of scholarship at the level of the master’s degree will intensify once a major school district communicates that its leaders will tolerate meaningless graduate degrees no longer.


Full Training Requirements for Teachers of Grades 6-12 Students in the Minneapolis Public Schools


>>>>>  Academic Requirements


Reestablishing the legitimate academic master’s degree will be important, because the attainment of such a degree will be necessary to secure employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools. What we have seen to be the case for teachers of students at Grades K-5 who earn a specially designed Masters of Liberal Arts degree of the highest academic caliber, will be true for teachers of students at Grades 6-12: They, too, will have to prove their academic mettle before assuming the teacher’s position.


Since there have historically been terminal master’s degrees offered at universities, and most departments still grant these for doctoral (Ph. D.) candidates who for one reason or another cannot continue past the point at which a master’s would be granted, the reinstitution of these degrees should be easily accomplished once decision-makers in departments such as history and chemistry become convinced that viable candidates in sufficient numbers are requesting programs culminating in the granting of the legitimate academic Masters of Arts or Masters of Science.


Thus, prospective teachers at the 6-12 level must have a legitimate, field-specific master’s degree.


Teachers at the high school (9-12) level will be further encouraged to study through to the Ph. D. in a field-specific discipline and to be fully prepared to teach Advanced Placement (AP) courses and courses for college or university credit.


>>>>>   Year of Internship


Once applicants have been accepted for consideration as teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools, having earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees with strong academic records, they then will spend a year internship under the guidance of a teaching mentor of the highest caliber possible.


Such an internship will involve observation, tutoring and teacher’s aide responsibility, and several weeks of full responsibility for day-to-day teaching under the observation and with ample advice of the teaching mentor. Administrative evaluation of this teacher aspiring for a position in a Grade 6, 7, or 8 classroom will then determine if the candidate is performing at a high enough level to be assigned full teacher status.


In the event that legislation making theoretically possible alternative routes into teaching becomes reality, the rigorous subject area and pedagogical training described above will obviate the necessity of a Grades 6-12 teacher candidate having to endure the misery of taking education courses in traditional teacher preparation programs.


Until alternative routes do become reality, though, teacher candidates at the Grades 6-12 level will have to make room for ineffective education courses in order to meet official stipulations for certification. Over time, though, observers in many quarters should come to understand that the real training is coming with study for the master’s degree and the year of internship provided by the teacher preparation program within the Minneapolis Public Schools.


Officials of the school district should aggressively pursue the idea of an alternative program such as that worked out between Teach for America and the University of Minnesota; properly conceived, this will allow aspiring teachers to avoid wasting time in conventional education courses, and the alternative program should meld easily with the program of internship and evaluation put in place by officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools.


Professionalization and Remuneration of the Secondary (Grades 6-12) Teacher


As with K-5 teachers who undergo the rigorous in-house Masters of Liberal Arts degree program, complete with master's thesis and followed by a year's internship, secondary (Grades 6-12) teachers who undergo the given program will emerge as experts with training comparable to those in the true professions.


They should be expected to deliver a knowledge-intensive curriculum in the field of specialty, remunerated and evaluated accordingly.