Second of a Five-Article Series on Creating the Model School District: Teacher Training

Teachers are abominably trained.


After an initial discussion of the current state of teacher training I detail in this article my program for teacher training at the level of the locally centralized school district as represented by the Minneapolis Pubic Schools.


The most important features of that program include the following:


1) >>>>> Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades K-5 level will earn a Masters of Liberal Arts degree organized by officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools. This will involve a 34-week intensive course of study during one full academic year, followed by a summer of research, writing, and defense of a master’s thesis.


2) >>>>> Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels will earn field-specific, non- education master’s degrees giving them expert knowledge relevant to the classes that they will teach.


3) >>>>> Teachers aspiring to teach at all grades (K-5, 6-8, and 9-12) will serve a full year of internship before gaining consideration for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.


Thus, all teachers aspiring to teach in the Minneapolis Public Schools will earn a master’s degree in a rigorous academic program and then serve one full year of internship.


Before proceeding to further discussion of my program for teacher training, I give here a summary of prevailing teacher training programs:


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


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 K-5 teachers to earn bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines (e. g., mathematics, chemistry, history, economics, English, fine arts). At most other institutions, teachers aspiring to teach at grades K-5 get a degree in elementary education. For such a degree, students take courses that include Educational Psychology, Diversity and Education, Theory to Practice, Schools and Society, and Exceptionality.


The only meek nod to subject area specificity is in courses such as Social Studies, Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science Instruction in the Elementary Grades. Education professors, not subject area experts, teach these courses.


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).


The Need to Retrain Teachers at the Level of the Locally Centralized School District


Teacher training programs are cash cows for colleges and universities:


Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education are academically insubstantial but huge revenue generators for institutions of putative higher learning. The ruse pulled by the University of Minnesota in requiring both of these empty degrees for certification constitutes irresponsible philistinism of the worst sort.


Over the long haul, we need to dissolve our departments, colleges, and schools of education and come to a consensus on a new approach to training teachers:


In the September 2014 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, I detail my full program for the training and certification of primary and secondary teachers of substantive intellect and exemplary pedagogical skill. The vision that I convey projects an approach that would transform teacher training throughout the United States. The approach to be implemented nationally follows logically from the program of teacher training that I assert to be ideal for the Minneapolis Public Schools.


The transformation nationally will require much time to confront entrenched interests of the many adults in the education establishment who benefit from the current system that is so deleterious to the interests of excellent teachers and students waiting to receive a substantive education. The program designed for the Minneapolis Publics Schools could be implemented immediately, given full focus and dedication to the task, before that time when we can expect to dismantle departments, schools, and colleges of education. The immediate task is to retrain teachers newly certified after participating in current, useless programs of teacher preparation.


As to veteran teachers, my abiding estimate is that no more than 10% of the teachers presently on staff in the Minneapolis Public Schools are truly excellent; 15% are so terrible that they never should have been allowed in a classroom; and the remainder fall in the broad 75% that are intolerably mediocre. The terrible teachers in that 15% category will most likely always be terrible and in almost all cases will have to be jettisoned. Most teachers in the 75% category of mediocrity should be given the option to retrain and prove their mettle for retention.


For those already operating at levels of true excellence, incentives should be put in place for them to retrain according to processes detailed in the September 2014 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota and summarized in this article, but a flexible approach may be utilized for those already manifesting abundant knowledge and high-level performance.


In my program for retraining teachers of the Minneapolis Pubic Schools, teachers aspiring to teach at the K-5 level will have to undergo an intensive full year of weekly, all-day training leading to a high-quality Masters of Liberal Arts degree;  followed by a full academic year internship.


The Masters of Liberal Arts Degree for Aspiring Minneapolis Public Schools Teachers at Grades K-5


Teachers at level K-5 should be broadly and deeply knowledgeable scholars, at home in the intellectual worlds of mathematics, natural science, history, literature, and the fine arts. The key components of the academic program leading to this degree are described below. It is expected that the courses taken for the Masters of Liberal Arts will be taken intensively, five days a week, during one full school year, from late August until early June. Over the summer, the aspiring teacher studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will write her or his master’s thesis, then the remaining months of the master’s program will be spent as a classroom intern undergoing a full academic year of classroom observation and teaching under the guidance of a teacher identified as highly competent.


The latter teacher will be chosen for manifesting as much excellence as we dare hope, given current realities with regard to teacher quality. Officials in the Minneapolis Public Schools should embrace these components and set about establishing a program in conjunction with one of the universities in the Twin Cities. Those representing the Minneapolis Public Schools should articulate exactly what they want from the degree-granting institution. From the degree-granting university, this will mean embracing the details of the program given below, providing the professorial expertise required, and following through on the administrative aspects leading to the granting of the Masters of Liberal Arts to the K-5 teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools.


The program and requirements for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree for prospective teachers at levels K-5 are given as follows:


Mathematics


During the full academic year of retraining of teachers at Grades K-5, professors of mathematics should be brought in by decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to give educators of the very young a thorough overview of mathematics up through calculus. Teachers at Grades K-5 need a fundamental readjustment of the way that they view themselves. They must regard themselves as capable learners and practitioners in the full range of human knowledge. We cannot abide the level of math phobia that often abides in the hearts of many current K-5 teachers. The way for an aspiring teacher to overcome mathematical phobia and prepare to launch the young student on the K-12 mathematical experience is for everyone involved to know what is ahead on this exciting quest for numerical, algebraic, geometric, trigonometric, and statistical knowledge--- pursued to that final (third) semester of calculus that their students will take in the substantive curriculum summarized in the immediate prior article on this blog and given in detail in Volume I, No. 2, August 2014 of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  


Mathematics Professor Jonathon Rogness has commented to me, “It is always advisable that a teacher have knowledge far beyond the concepts immediately covered.”


If teachers themselves had a substantive education in either high school or as undergraduates at a college or university, then reviewing previously learned mathematical concepts will not be difficult: Much of the information is either lying latent for reawakening or, even more happily, is actually operating nearer the surface to be pulled upward into the brightness of mental reflection, ready for application. But for those teachers who have done what our K-12 schools and universities too often encourage, somehow muddling through math courses without really understanding for lack of teachers capable of giving them clarity, then the process will be more arduous.


And since we want them to be teachers who most certainly never themselves abet the muddling through approach to mathematical education, we want them to have confidence as capable mathematicians.


Over the course of ten (10) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for mathematics:


Week #1 >>>>> Fundamental Math


Week #2 >>>>> Algebra I


Week #3 >>>>> Geometry


Weeks #4 and #5 >>>>> Algebra II .


Weeks #6 and #7 >>>>> Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry (FST)


Weeks #8, #9 , and #10  >>>>> Calculus (corresponding to a full year of college-level calculus)




Natural Science


Prospective teachers at K-5 should also be highly confident in themselves as students of natural science, one of the five key subject areas emphasized during the K-5 years. The three natural science fields that should dominate their own study en route to the Masters of Liberal Arts degree are biology, chemistry, and physics. Professors in these fields should teach compact courses of about two weeks each, during which the prospective K-5 teachers review (ideally) or learn well for the first time (as too often will be the case) the most important concepts pertinent to these important fields of natural science.


Over the course of six (6) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for natural science:


Week #1 and Week #2 >>>>>  Biology


Week #3 and Week #4 >>>>>  Chemistry


Week #5 and Week #6 >>>>>  Physics


History


Teaching for all subjects in our current system of K-12 education is mediocre. Knowledge of history is particularly unskillfully imparted to students. And what is true generally is especially true at the K-5 level. In our K-5 schools, history is subsumed under an amalgamation known as “social studies,” in an innervated curricular approach that is entirely consistent with the “constructivist” precepts under which teachers have been trained. There is a great deal of focus on the lives of the students, in which they are asked to reflect about their own families and community, in the absence of any social scientific context in which to compare their own family mores and structures with others that prevail in the general society. Nothing is learned of any substance in the way of sociology, psychology, economics, and government--- and certainly nothing very coherent in the way of history.


An enormously better approach to curriculum was summarized in the first article in this series;  and detailed in the August 2014 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.


Under this curriculum, history will be the subject identified for study at the K-12 level, giving the original “social studies” categorization much more focus. History as an appellation is used rather than “social studies,” because humankind’s experience over time has produced the life that we live today, and when we study history in depth, we also learn a great deal about sociology, psychology, economics, and government. For that matter, great discoveries in mathematics and natural science are contextualized in a study of history, and knowledge of the essence of those discoveries is gained.
Hence, history is key to full understanding of all subjects key to the liberal arts.


Over the course of eight (8) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for world and American history:


Week #1 >>>>>  Prehistory and Developments Through Earliest Civilizations (Beginnings to 700 B. C.)


Week #2 >>>>>  Classical Period (700 B. C to 500 A. D.)


Week #3 >>>>>  European Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Contemporaneous World Development (500 A. D. to 1500 A. D.)


Week #4  >>>>> The Rise of the Nation-State and the Importance of the European Enlightenment (1600 to 1800)


Week #5 >>>>>  Imperialism and the Industrial Revolution (1600 to 1900)


Week #6 >>>>>  Major Events of the 20th Century and Early 21st Century (1900 to 2016)


Week #7 >>>>>  American History through the 18th Century


Week #8 >>>>>  American History from 1800 through 2016




Language Arts


Over the course of six (6) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for language arts:


Week #1 and Week #2 >>>>>  Classical Greek and Roman Literature; Classics of World Literature; Premodern and Renaissance Classics of Europe; Shakespearean and Elizabethan Literature


Week #3 and Week #4 >>>>>  Modern and Contemporary British and American Literature


Week #5 >>>>>  African American Literature and the Literature of Other Major Ethnic Groups in the United States


Week #6 >>>>> English Grammar, Syntax, and Written Composition


Fine Arts


Over the course of four (4) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for fine arts:


Week #1 >>>>> The Prehistoric World (Beginnings to 3,000 B. C); The Ancient World (3,000 B C. to 700 B. C.)


Week #2 >>>>>  The Classical World (700 B. C. to 500 A. D.); The Medieval World (500 to 1500 A. D.)


Week #3 >>>>>  The First-Stage Modern World (1450 to 1750); The Second-Stage Modern World (1750 to 1945); The Contemporary World (1945-2016)


Week #4 >>>>>  Survey of Musical Forms and Composition: Composers and Music in the Western Classical Style;   Blues, Blues-Based, and Blues-Inspired Music in the United States;   Folk and Country Music; Musical Instruments


Additional Requiremens for Teacher Aspirants for Grades K-5


Teachers aspiring to teach at grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 will, after completing the above-given course of study during a full academic year, research, write, and defend a master’s thesis in the course of the following summer.


Then, during the succeeding academic year, aspiring K-5 teachers will serve a full year of internship before gaining consideration for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.




Revolutionizing Training for Teachers of Students in Grades 6-8 (Middle School) And Grades 9-12 High School


Teachers of students at grades 6-8 and at grades 9-12 will, in the revolutionized curriculum detailed in Volume I, No. 2, August 2014, of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, of necessity be first-rate scholars possessing broad and deep knowledge of the subject areas that they will teach and in detail will be trained as described in the September 2014 edition of the same journal.


As with teacher aspirants at the grades K-5 level, master’s degrees in education will not be recognized. Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels will earn degrees in departments relevant to their teaching fields (e.g., mathematics, physics, economics, world literature, Spanish).


As in the case of K-5 teachers, teacher aspirants at the secondary level (grades 6-8 or 9-12) will serve a full year of internship before undergoing evaluation for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.


Thus, for both teacher aspirants at the K-5 level and those at grades 6-8 and 9-12, the entire program in the aftermath of earning a bachelor’s degree will typically take three years.


Such teachers will thereby gain professional status via academic training as rigorous as programs in law and medicine. They should be paid accordingly, with median salaries rising to around $85,000 from the currently prevailing median of $64,000.