Professional Development Terminated in Favor of Rigorous Teacher Training Under the Leadership of Alternate Universe Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Gary Marvin Davison

Professional Development, as that weak feature of locally centralized schools district has been known, is now terminated under my (Gary Marvin Davison) leadership as Alternate Universe Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).

 

In accord with my five-point program to bring excellent education to the Minneapolis Public Schools, we will now acknowledge that the training received by prospective teachers in departments, schools, and colleges of education is woefully inadequate.  We recognize that K-5 teachers arrive severely unprepared to deliver knowledge-intensive curriculum to MPS students.  We further observe that teachers of students in grades 6-8 and 9-12 lack the necessary field specialization to impart knowledge-intensive curriculum at the secondary level, so that requirements for teachers at those levels have been greatly upgraded.

 

Under my leadership, we will be delivering the same curriculum to all students during the K-5 years, also providing during those years daily hour-long sessions giving opportunities to explore personal interests and to meet personal needs via academic enrichment and remediation (tutoring) as appropriate.  During their K-5 years, students will amass strong knowledge sets in the liberal arts areas of mathematics, natural science, history, economics, psychology, high quality literature across the world and of many ethnicities, and fine arts across a similar human spectrum.  All K-5 students will equitably be the beneficiaries of the same rigorous curriculum while also having the opportunities provided in daily hour-long sessions for exploring personal interests and to meet personal needs via academic enrichment and remediation (tutoring) as appropriate.   Curriculum pertaining to the K-5 years will logically extend into the grades 6-8 and 9-12 years, with expanding opportunities for specialized knowledge and skill acquisition in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts.

 

This rigorous curriculum will require knowledgeable teaching contingents at all levels. 

 

Master’s degrees in departments, colleges, and schools of education will no longer be accepted. 

 

Instead, K-5 teachers will now all be required to earn a Masters of Liberal Arts degree articulated and overseen by myself and my staff in the Alternate Universe Minneapolis Public Schools.  We will invite professors in the fields of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, political science, psychology, literature, music, and visual arts to provide one full academic year of instruction to all teachers aspiring to teach K-5 students.  Sessions for each subject are will last two to six weeks, depending on the temporal demand for field mastery.  Prospective K-5 teachers will master fundamental college level biology, chemistry, physics, world history, American (by definition including general and ethnically specific) history, English and world literature, music theory and history, visual art practice and history, and mathematics through calculus.

 

Prospective K-5 teachers will thus devote an entire academic year running 33 weeks of actual instructional time (allowing for holidays and short breaks), at the end of which they will be tested for mastery in the given fields.  Upon successful completion of exams, prospective K-5 teachers will then research and write a 50-page or more master’s thesis on a topic in a field of their option, under the guidance of an appropriate professorial expert.  Upon successful completion of the master’s degree, all K-5 teachers will then serve a full academic year internship working under the best experienced teachers available;  realistically, not all professionals under whom prospective K-5 teachers serve will be master teachers, but I and my staff will be making frequent observations in all classrooms and offering advice and resources for maximizing the quality of the internship experience.

 

As in the case of prospective K-5 teachers, master’s degrees in departments, colleges, and schools of education will no longer be accepted for teachers proposing to teach at the grades 6-8 and grades 9-12 levels.  Teachers at these levels must earn a field-appropriate master’s degree in a college or university department such as mathematics, economics, English, music, or fine arts.   Prospective grades 6-8 and grades 9-12 teachers will upon earning their field-specific master’s degree then serve a full academic year internship in the manner of prospective K-5 teachers.

 

Only after successful completion of these rigorous master’s degree programs and a full academic year of internship will prospective teachers be evaluated for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

The newly academically professionalized teaching force of the Minneapolis Public Schools will thenceforth be given sabbatical and research opportunities in the manner of college and university professors, along with temporal space to meet with colleagues for discussion of matters pertinent to subject area knowledge and pedagogy.

 

The new Alternate Minneapolis Public Schools system of teacher training will be introduced during this academic year of 2017-2018, with requirements applying to all prospective teachers from academic year 2018-2017 forward.

 

In time, we will bring this professionalized teacher training program into the conventional universe of the Minneapolis Public Schools, via the force of the K-12 Revolution.