I’m betting that as you read this, your first thought is about how painfully obvious this statement is—and you’d be right. I mean, c’mon—whenever was learning about something in theory ever exactly like the practical application of that same thing in reality? Never, that’s when. Theory can never completely encompass or predict reality. If it could, I’d refuse to leave my apartment before reading “The Universal Guide to Adult Life” from front to back.
Why do I specifically nitpick on studying to teach versus actively teaching? This is half due to the fact that I’m currently mired in that quagmire myself. I graduated with my degree in English Education back in May, and I’m still in the process of fully adjusting to the teaching job that I started less than a month ago. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t regret it in the slightest. I was fully aware of the tiring hours and low pay long before I even started college. Growing up a teacher’s kid makes you privy to those truths from a pretty early age. I expected the difficulties of the job, I was ready for them, and I’m actively handling them—still tired and still underpaid, but handling them.
This also half due to the fact that even after graduating months ago, I cannot shake the fact that learning to be a teacher is so vastly different from actually working and living as a teacher. Too different, in fact. Without getting into boring specifics, what I observed is that college classes and programs on becoming a teacher focus too much on the technical and bureaucratic aspects of teaching and far too little on the practical aspects. This is particularly heinous in light of the fact that practical experience and training is what teachers-in-training truly need. Sure, teach them about how to decipher a report on a particular student’s impairment, but don’t leave them hanging there! Keep it going! Teach them how to handle that disability in various scenarios! Run them through drill after drill that are all modeled after basic situations that they might encounter in the classroom! Give them simulations, dangit!
Also, can I just say?—You don’t know how exhausting it is for a college student to, in the middle of classes for which they have paid so much, hear that there is only so much that they can learn about teaching in the classroom. You don’t know how aggravating it is to so constantly hear, from so many people, that you can only truly learn to be a teacher while immersed in the classroom as a teacher.
Ok, so maybe that’s true! But doesn’t that beg the simple solution of immersing teachers-in-training in even more classroom experience, beyond what they already have? Because clearly, practicum classes and student teaching aren’t enough. There’s too much of a disconnect between the classes based on theory and the limited field experience sessions that are made available.
If I had to suggest a step in the right direction towards fixing this, I would start with this: have the teachers-in-training in a classroom with their college professors, watching as another teacher instructs a class, while the professors make live comments and observations on the methods being used and the scenarios occurring in the classroom as they happen. Let the teachers-in-training see excellence in teaching be actively pointed out to them as it happens, so they can mark it and remember for their own benefit in the future.
And that’s my soapbox moment for this week. Teachers-in-training are getting a bit of a raw deal, and I really feel that it needs to change. Safety and love to you all, friends and readers.
