I wasn’t taught how to be a teacher. I took all of the teaching classes sure, and my diploma says that I have a teaching degree but being a teacher isn’t something you can be taught in today’s university. All of the educational classes on reading, math, and science provided me with background knowledge and a dabble in what it might be like as a teacher. Lesson plans were written with fictitious students hand-selected by our imagination. I liked to keep things harder so I always had a student with less attention or limited English proficiency, you know just to spice things up. And amazingly every one one of those lesson plans was a hit with my professors. My fictitious students ran home to their parents and heralded me as the best teacher ever. And yet inside, I knew I was not ready to teach.
I walked the stage at graduation already with a long-term sub position I had gotten at my school. I had been inducted into that job through on the job training and yet the entire time I just swam to stay afloat. I was not a teacher then either. I got my own classroom and on that first day I looked at those students and knew that I had not been prepared for this. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel prepared; my education degree had not equipped me with the tools I needed to be a teacher. So when we discuss education reform today and we throw around harsh lines about the quality of teachers, I think we need to refocus and aim our glances at the universities and colleges preparing the next generation of teachers. How are they reforming to create capable teachers?
No amount of papers, lesson plans, or discussion can truly prepare you to to the amazing and exhausting job of teaching so why is it we hide our future teachers in college classrooms rather than set them free in schools? To be a teacher, we need to be in the classrooms because that is where we learn how to be effective, reflective and creative. This is where we face the true audience, the true measure of whether students have learned or not. So disband teacher educations, or at the very least the last two years and replace it with on the job training with a certified experienced teacher. Imagine the benefit for not just the wannabe teacher but also those students that get the luxury of having two adults in the room. If there are bad teachers out there, or ineffective as the new term goes, then we must look at how those teachers were prepared. Until our teaching education is changed, real reform will not be accomplished.
Pernille Ripp 
I agree the system needs to change. There are too many new teachers that can't find their way and end up leaving. I often reflect on my first years of teaching where I was so bad and did not know it.
The university I went to had a teacher education program that stuck teachers in the classroom as early as freshman year for observations and then hands-on student-teaching starting in their junior year. I think this was really effective. It weeded out those who weren't ready for the kind of lifestyle a teacher truly lives. Of course, I wasn't a part of it.I really appreciate your experiences. I never had a teacher education class; they aren't required (ironically) to teach at the university level. I arrived at all of my "teacher education" much the same way you did, on-the-job learning.I feel like connecting teacher ed. students with teachers' blogs would be an interesting way to start training.
Oh, Mrs. Ripp! I've been having this conversation repeatedly with teachers the last few weeks as I started applying to grad school. "Did you learn that in teacher school?" "No, I had to figure it out on my own." "Well, what about this?" "No, not that either. I really came into my first classroom not knowing how to teach a real class of students." I'm thinking….. really? As an adult learner, I think it's beyond insane that I would pay $25K for a Master's Degree in Education and not leave that program fully prepared to teach. I'm not willing to make that kind of investment.And get this- the program I had decided on has both a MAT with Licensure and a regular MAT. Since I am pursuing alternative licensure during this process as well, I asked if I did get hired and gained my teacher certification through the alternative program, would they count that as my student teaching and allow me to complete my Masters. The answer? No, of course. Never mind that the whole point of student teaching is to give you experience and enable the state to grant you licensure… ugh.Now, I am left with a critical decision. Two roads diverged in a wood and all that. I can either gamble that someone in my District will be willing to take a chance on me as an alternative teacher candidate, OR I can start down the MAT with licensure road. My instinct tells me that the former will make me a better teacher in the long run. But, until the system reforms, I'm afraid that's not likely to happen. The real kicker? I'm in an instructional position right now where I teach technology to K-5 students. Why can't someone out there in teacher certification land see the value in the hands-on training and experiential learning and give me credit for THAT? Why can't my instructional coach be my mentor, and allow me to continue in my position and gain student teaching credit? I shudder at the thought of leaving my computer classroom just to spend thousands to learn theoretical things… how much would I be missing in order to have that piece of paper stamped?
Absolutely agree. I wrote a post on this very issue a few days ago.http://passionateteaching.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/teacher-training-fails-us/No training prepares us for the classroom.