DI: Why has there been criticism of teacher colleges lately?
HW: The problem is you have college educators who don’t believe in training teachers to be effective. They preach the ideology that teachers should inquire and be creative — whoopee! They also do not believe in standards, yet you can only be creative to a set of standards. When you build a house, you have to submit plans to the city. After the plans are checked to see if the standards are met, you can then be creative.
DI: How can teachers be more effective?
HW: After you learn how to manage a classroom, you must learn how to effectively instruct or deliver the academic subject matter. Just as a good sales person must know how to sell, a good teacher must know how to teach. Learning to be an effective teacher sounds like a no-brainer, but you have to understand that many new teachers come into the profession having been taught that they are not teachers, but facilitators of what the students want to study. So, they come in with their platitudes: “All I have to do is be their friends, make this class come alive, and learning should be fun, fun, fun.” Where do they pick this up? In many of their college classes.
We must have continued training for teacher effectiveness, beginning the first day they are in education and not stopping until they retire, just as they do in the business world.
— By Christina Asquith
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