Teacher Certification

In my humble opinion, we will not have an effective public education system in the U.S until we, as a country, take some pride in the teaching profession. The phrase that I heard over and over after telling people that I was goign to teach in Baltimore was "Those who can, do and those who can't, teach!" The funny thing is that if I told them I was joining Teach For America the reaction was quite the opposite. I would hear soemthing along the lines of "wow, I hear that is a really selective program, congratulations."

It shouldn't matter if I became a teacher through traditional means or an alternative certification program like TFA, ultimately I had signed up for the same job as every other teacher in Baltimore. Why then was the reaction so different?

Because, as a society, we value competition and accomplishment. People are proud to say that they are a doctor or a lawyer or a neuroscientist because we accept that those fields are competitive and only the most competent individuals succeed in them. This is simply not the case for teaching. The perception throughout our society is that the most capable people stay away from teaching, and the only way it is acceptable to become a teacher if you have other options is to join a program like TFA. TFA essentially provides a stamp of approval that says, "this candidate has succeeded in school and could be doing a lot of different things, they chose to teach for at least two years as part of their growth as an individual and in hopes of helping our country's youth." Without this stamp, would TFA get the level of highly competent corps members that it is so proud to hire?

So teacher certification and training and everything else that accompanies the current practice of preparing a teacher does not matter until we make being a teacher more prestigious than being a doctor or a lawyer or a neuroscientist.