water water everywhere...

Not many people want to teach high school biology. I happen to be one of them. I also happen to get straight A's, have damn good GRE scores, and will have 3 or 4 publications come out of my master's thesis. But according to most schools, I am unqualified to teach the Krebs cycle to ninth graders. I realize there are programs out there for people like me, like this one and this one. The thing is, with a spouse in school and a baby on the way, they don't make a lot of sense right now.

Although I actually want to go into teaching, I don't see how I can possibly afford to pursue teacher certification. There is no way I can saddle any more student loans, especially if they will have to be repaid on a teacher's salary. So I've basically skipped high school teaching as a job possibility, at least in the near-term, and as a result I am going after a Ph.D. so I can teach at the college level instead.

Getting a Ph.D. actually pays the bills, you see. Free tuition. Health insurance. Subsidized child care. A paycheck. Until either a) teacher education programs start treating (and paying) their students like professionals, or b) an advanced degree carries more weight in the hiring process, I have a feeling I am not the only qualified grad student passing over high school teaching as a career option.

Sad, but true.

As though he were reading my mind, Nicholas Kristof had an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times today (well, really yesterday; that whole working on my thesis until the wee hours thing, you know...) on the dearth of qualified teachers in public schools. Here is a good chunk of it, which I have (totally illegally, most likely) reprinted, thanks to the Times' insistence on making us actually pay for (some of) their work:

Suppose Colin Powell tires of giving $100,000-a-pop speeches and wants to teach high school social studies. Suppose Meryl Streep has a hankering to teach drama.

Alas, they would be "unqualified" for a public school. Elite private schools would snap them up, of course, but public schools that are begging for teachers would have to turn them away because they don't have teacher certification.

A white paper from the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution urged, "Rather than dig further down in the pool of those willing to consider teacher certification programs or raise class sizes, we need to expand the pool of those eligible to teach."

In a new book called "Tough Love for Schools," Frederick Hess argues that applicants should be eligible for teaching jobs if they have graduated from a recognized college, have passed a competency test in their field and have passed a rigorous background check. Principals may prefer to hire graduates of teaching colleges, he writes, but they should have the option to hire other outstanding applicants as well.

That's the situation in some of America's most elite private high schools. Phillips Exeter Academy, for example, says that 85 percent of its faculty have advanced degrees but probably only a handful are certified. (Since it is private, it doesn't worry about certification or even keep track of which teachers are certified.)

At Exeter, for example, biology is taught by a former doctor. Japanese is taught by a former businessman who worked in Japan. And a history teacher arrived with no teaching experience but has published five books.

The idea behind teacher certification is that there are special skills that are picked up in teacher training courses — secret snake-charming skills to keep the little vipers calm. But there's no evidence this is so.

Granted, intellectual brilliance alone does not make a great teacher. When I think of my best teachers, like Juanita Trantina in the fifth grade, they didn't just teach us but also inspired us, humored us, tamed us and enchanted us. Maybe it helps to be brilliant and to have studied teaching, but mostly it is personality. Colin Powell, Meryl Streep and many anonymous others would dazzle the surliest student, so why continue to bar them at the schoolhouse door?

Amen, brother.

Comments

[posthipchick]

It's ridiculous, isn't it? The true disgrace in all of this is that the credential programs they make you go through are truly the saddest excuse of an "education" I have ever experienced. With high need areas like science, though, you may be able to get away without a credential for a few years... you could contact local districts & see what they say.

[Liz]

I know that this is totally after the fact and that yes, you do have a Master's already (congrats! and good luck on the PhD!) but I feel like sharing. I graduated from the University that you are currently attending twice (once with my BS and once with an MAT = Masters of Arts in Teaching). If you want to go into high school science ed you need to look up the MAT alternative certification program or if nothing else, take a science methods class or two with the two professors who are in charge. It will change your life. Seriously. And in a totally good way too!