The Imperative of the Minneapolis Public Schools to Retrain K-5 Teachers

The Currently Abysmal Training of Prospective Teachers for Grades K-5


There is a rough similarity among the major teacher preparation programs offered by colleges and universities in the Twin Cities:


Programs that train large contingents of prospective teachers include the University of Minnesota/ Twin Cities, Augsburg College, and the Universities of Concordia, Hamline, St. Catherine, and St. Thomas. At most of these institutions, prospective Grades K-5 teachers major in elementary education.


Hamline is unique among the metro area institutions offering teacher preparation programs in requiring its aspiring Grades K-5 teachers to get a degree in a discipline other than education. At Hamline, both prospective Grades K-5 and Grades 6-12 teachers get majors in subjects such as economics, psychology, chemistry, math, or English literature while also getting a co-major in education. Required education courses for Grades K-5 teachers at Hamline include Educational Psychology, Diversity and Education, Theory to Practice, Schools and Society, and Exceptionality. Teachers aspiring to teach Grades K-5 additionally take courses in Teaching Social Studies [Mathematics, Science] in the Elementary School.


In the other institutions, any route similar to the one pursued at Hamline would come through the attainment of a double major, but this is not required. With regard to education courses, though, there is great similarity in the various teacher training programs:


Grades K-5 teacher aspirants at the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, for example, take courses called Social Studies [Language Arts, Mathematics, Science] Instruction in the Elementary Grades that parallel those given for Hamline. Courses at the University of Minnesota also include Schools and Society and those that incorporate matters of educational psychology, exceptionality [individual differences], and diversity. Teaching aspirants for Grades K-5 and Grades 6-12 both observe a semester of required student teaching, and in the course of their programs they spend additional hours in the field, visiting and assisting in classrooms.


Students at the University of Minnesota who aspire to teach, both at Grades K-5 and Grades 6-12, must get a master’s degree. Students in the college of education typically do their coursework during the summer and fall terms; they student teach in the spring, also taking two education courses online. The route to the Masters of Education degree takes just three semesters.


Once the college or university certification program is complete, prospective teachers must take exams that include a basic skills exam, a content-focused pedagogic exam, and a mathematics exam. Upon passing these exams, licensure is granted. The license is permanent, given the teacher’s ongoing demonstration of professional development through certified participation in teacher-in-service days, workshops, conferences, and the like; and with the option to pursue an advanced degree, typically a Masters of Education in teaching elementary education (remembering that a master’s degree is embedded in the program leading to teacher certification via the schedule of courses at the University of Minnesota.


Nothing in this training is designed to prepare scholars with a broad and deep knowledge of substantial liberal arts content matter in the subjects of mathematics, natural science, history, literature, and the fine arts. Education professors cling to the constructivist creed that includes the notion of teacher as “facilitator.” They also spout slogans such as “lifelong learning” and “critical thinking” that are consistent with the notion that education is about inspiring a student to engage in personal exploration, reflecting and commenting critically on select topics, and settling in for a lifetime in which any desired factual information can be looked up as the occasion requires.


This is vapid training of the worst sort, a smokescreen for intellectual laziness and professional procrastination. Teachers rarely follow up in challenging students to “think critically.” Indeed, students are hard-pressed to think critically when they have such a slim knowledge base on which to analyze subjects and engage in robust discussion. And there is little to suggest that students in our current K-5 schools have much ambition for lifelong learning when they haven’t been taught to respect knowledge, and when their fundamental skills are so underdeveloped. Teachers maintain an illusion of themselves as “facilitators” when in fact they facilitate very little except the maintenance of a status quo that gives our students very little to show for thirteen (13) years in the classroom.


We know from the ambitious and advanced curriculum presented in Volume I, No. 2, August 2014 of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, that there is a vastly better approach to curriculum than the one taken at the K-5 level now.


And so there is also a better approach to training the K-5 teacher. This is given in detail in Volume I, No. 3, September 2014 of this Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota and summarized below:


The Program for Training of Teachers for Grades K-5


Given the abysmal teacher training provided for prospective teachers at grades K-5, decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools must provide for the training of their own teachers. Decision-makers at the district should do the following


>>>>> First, assess the academic worthiness of prospective teachers, based on an academic history recorded in SAT or ACT scores and on all available high school and university transcripts.


>>>>> Second, request that all prospective teachers take the GRE to assess readiness for graduate study.


>>>>> Third, explain to prospective that the Minneapolis Public Schools will provide an in-house Masters of Liberal Arts program, taught by university professors and other highly qualified academic specialists, to include the following course of study:


>>>>> Mathematics (10 weeks)


This will be an intensive ten-week course of study that will include basic math, algebra, geometry, functions, statistics, trigonometry, and calculus.


>>>>> Natural Science (6 weeks)


This will be an intensive six-week course of study that will include biology, chemistry, and physics.


>>>>> History (8 weeks)


This will be an intensive eight-week course of study that will include six weeks of training in world history and two weeks of training in American history.


>>>>> Language Arts (6 weeks)


This will be an intensive six-week course of study that will include five weeks of training in great literature of classical, contemporary, and multi-ethnic content; and one week of training in English composition.


>>>>>  Fine Arts (4 weeks)


This will be an intensive four-week course of study that will include three weeks of training in the visual arts from across the ages of humanity and the places of human inhabitation; and one week of training in the musical arts of all major genres: European romantic, baroque, classical; classical and contemporary forms from across Asia, Africa, and Central and South America; and North American music, including popular music from across the decades, the work songs of the slaves, blues, jazz, country, rock, rhythm and blues, and hip-hop.


Thus, over the course of 34 weeks, essentially the equivalent of one academic year, prospective K-5 teachers will receive training of breadth and depth across a challenging liberal arts curriculum.


Prospective K-5 teachers will then have two more steps to complete:


>>>>> Master’s Thesis In the course of the summer following their intensive 34-week of training during the academic year, prospective K-5 teachers will complete a master’s thesis under the guidance of one of the experts who provided instruction at the master’s level, as appropriate for the topic selected.


>>>>>  One-Year Internship


Over course of a full academic year, the prospective K-5 teacher will serve as an intern, including a component comparable to student teaching, working under the best teacher currently teaching who can be located.


With this level of training, including the four-year undergraduate degree with which the prospective K-5 teacher came to the Minneapolis Public Schools; the program of teacher training and master’s degree; and the year of internship; the teacher will have that level of training comparable to those in the true professions.


Such teachers should then be remunerated at a truly professional level, with a high level of knowledge-intensive instruction to our K-5 students becoming the professional expectation for evaluation.