An Educator's Rant

So. To bring everyone up to speed, I moved to NY last Sunday after getting word I was hired by a prestigious charter school of documentary fame. All aboard? Let's go.

Between Te*ach4America and NY Fell.ows, I just wonder how many actual educators we have in the System (my pseudonym for the...network of schools I now work for). Seeing how TFA is el negro nuevo or the new law school, I feel like my profession is being flooded with trust fund babies who majored in existential russian literature at sarah law.rence or ceramics at uc*la. For instance, my assistant majored in publishing...








Publishing.










PUBLISHING.



And after graduation two years ago, went to live in france for two years to learn the language. After two years of cafe conversations, she "felt a pull to do more with her life" and that brought her to the System. And now she's in my classroom as an assistant but more like a co-teacher. And b/c she worked at the System during summer school, I can already tell she thinks she knows more than me abt teaching. For my HU people, she's like the students who went to pre-college. Shut.up. You were here for a full 4 weeks before us, you cut your summer short, dummy.

Now I'm not saying the only people who should be teachers should have majored in education, I'm def not saying that b/c there are TONS of people who missed their calling, who were coerced into a certain major (hello? I'm "supposed" to be a pharmacist and then a pediatrician??). As a matter of fact, Jam's cousin was a business major at FAM and he wo teacher of the year a number of times. That's all fine. But more often than not, I feel like people get into education cause they feel like it's a last resort. Maybe their major didn't pan out; it was harder than they thought, whatever. We've all had that teacher who knew their subject BUT COULD NOT TEACH. I remember a math teacher at SHS. He was a mathematician. He was not a teacher. He knew math upside down and inside out. But since he didn't major in secondary education with a math emphasis, he didn't know how to TEACH. He didn't take pedagogy, foundations, development, etc. You know I actually took classes that TAUGHT me how to TEACH each subject? (Of course you know.)

I'm all for teaching and people wanting to be teachers. The profession and the country needs more teachers. What we don't need are bry.nma.wr grads thinking they are doing the world a favor by "trying this teaching thing out". In three or four years, when you're "over" working in Harlem and there's a sudden shortage of teachers b/c it's "on to the next one", then what?