Article #2
Teacher Training
Teachers are abominably
trained.
Teachers presently employed by
the Minneapolis Public Schools do not have the information bases necessary to
impart the knowledge-intensive curriculum summarized in the next article as you
scroll on down this blog.
In the September 2014 edition of
this Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota, I lay out a comprehensive program for teacher training, the key
points of which are a follows:
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.
The need for rigorous training
of teachers to impart a knowledge-intensive curriculum is particularly critical
for teachers at the grades K-5 level.
The training that they receive in departments, schools, and colleges of
education occurs in the context of the least rigorous program on any college or
university campus.
The Currently Abysmal Training of Prospective Teachers for Grades K-5
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, are strongly
encouraged to get a master’s degree. Students in the College of Education and
Human Development 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
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 conferring both of these empty degrees for certification upon
prospective teachers 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:
The vision that I convey for the
training of teachers 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
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 next article as you scroll on down this blog.
Mathematics Professor Jonathon
Rogness has commented to me, “It is always advisable that a teacher have
knowledge far beyond the concepts that he or she immediately covers in class.”
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
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
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 in 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
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 next article as you scroll on down this blog
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 germane to the liberal arts.
Hence, history is key to full understanding of all subjects germane 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 #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
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;
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
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, which adopts a
chronological approach for presenting the history of the visual arts,
architecture, and music:
Week #1 >>>>> The Prehistoric World (Beginnings to 3,000 B. C);
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.);
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
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
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
Requirements for Prospective Teachers at Grades K-5
Teachers aspiring to teach at
grades K-5 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 in this program
for achieving academic excellence, of necessity be first-rate scholars
possessing broad and deep knowledge of the subject areas that they will teach.
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.
Additional
Requirements for Prospective Teachers at Grades K-5
Teachers aspiring to teach at
grades K-5 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment