A FIVE WEEK TRAINING COURSE TRUMPS A FOUR-YEAR TEACHING DEGREE

How odd! NOT. I got first class results for the High School kids I taught and I have not had ONE SECOND of teacher training. Teaching degrees are horse dung, to put it politely. I didn't even have a degree in the subject-matter I taught. But I knew enough

This spring on many college campuses, something absolutely remarkable happened: Talented young people lined up by the scores to teach lower-income kids in urban and rural public schools. In years past, investment banks like Goldman Sachs were the recruiting powerhouses at top campuses; this year, they were joined by Teach for America, a program that expresses the fresh idealism and social values of this new generation.

At Yale, no fewer than 12 percent of the graduating seniors--nearly 1 out of every 8--applied. At Dartmouth and Amherst, some 11 percent did; at Harvard and Princeton, 8 percent. Hundreds more signed up at Northwestern, Boston College, the University of Texas, and the University of California-Los Angeles. Altogether, over 17,000 seniors applied for 2,100 openings.

A few words of background: Sixteen years ago, Teach for America was merely an idea in a thesis by a Princeton senior, Wendy Kopp. She thought the country needed an organization modeled after the Peace Corps that would attract top college graduates into classrooms with poor kids. With thesis in hand, she bravely ventured out to raise money, find recruits, and find school superintendents who would hire them. Kopp experienced the bumps and detours of every new start-up, but a year later, she had 500 recruits.

This summer, the newest class of teachers will enroll in a five-week training institute to prepare them for the classroom. In the fall, they will report for work at some of the toughest public schools in America, classified by the federal government as "high need." Some 95 percent of their students will be minorities. Each member of the program is committed to two years of teaching, paid by the local school systems at the same rate as other starting teachers; at the end of their service, they may qualify for a $9,500 scholarship for graduate study.

As you can imagine, skeptics have popped up all along the way: professors at schools of education scoffing that college graduates who haven't enrolled in formal teacher education will never succeed in the classroom; cynics who say that these are a just bunch of elitist kids punching their tickets to make it into law or business school who will then turn their backs on social reform. Well, the doubters just don't get this young generation.

A year ago, Mathematica Policy Research found that students of Teach for America recruits got better results in math and the same gains in reading as did those of other teachers, including veteran instructors. In math, the TFA students made a month more progress than other students.

More here






A REAL HISTORY EDUCATION -- FROM A HUNGARIAN

Excerpt from the comments thread on Joanne Jacobs's site

My 17 year old recently told me kids in her history class were not getting the point that communism was not Utopia. I contacted her teacher and asked if he would be willing to have a guest speaker talk about Communism from a person that lived through it first hand. I could write a book on what I heard in the four classes my friend spoke to. To spare some eye strain, I'll try to summarize his story:

Age 12: Lived through his first air-raid and described the horror of humans being blown to pieces and the sounds of exploding bombs and flying shrapnel and dying men. He could not hear again for three days.
Age 13: Stacked the bodies of dead Russians and Germans in his home town. It was too cold to dig graves.
Late Teens: After winning the Stalinist Workers Award, had to denounce his "class enemy" parents to go to college. His dad was a civil engineer -- that was too much for his Comrades.
Age 24: Watched the first shots fired in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. A Mother and child were gunned down by an overzealous secret police officer. He was only a few feet away.
Age 24: He was the sole survivor of machine gun fire that killed six of his friends and fellow freedom fighters. He was severely wounded in the right knee.
Age 24: Crawled, on his stomach, through the snow, between two Russian tanks to escape to Austria.

On December 31, 1956, at precisely midnight, his cattle boat dropped anchor in New York Harbor. He had tears in his eyes when he described how beautiful New York Harbor was all lit up with colored Christmas lights.

One girl's question brought a response that shut down every sound in the classroom. Even the teacher was stunned to silence. The question was simple and was not asked sarcastically. "What's the difference between Communism and what we have now?" I watched a 73 year old man, in obvious pain after standing for nearly four hours -- bad knee, hip-replacement and the wear and tear of war -- stand straight up and with a stern , heavy Hungarian accent say something that I think astounded everyone in the room "YOU were BORN with your freedom. I fought and nearly died for mine. You will NEVER understand the difference until you lose your freedom and have to fight for your life to regain it."

To break the silence the he jokingly added that Fascism and Communism were basically the same if she wanted a comparison, however, the Germans were more humane than the Russians.

On the way home from the event, with my daughter in the car, said his only regret was that he and his fellow freedom fighters chose not to be like the communists and shoot the secret police. They took prisoners and the prisoners were treated well. When the Russians brought in tanks and freed the captives, they immediately turned in names of everyone that was involved in their capture. Every one of the Hungarians named was executed on sight. My friend was on the hit list and had to run. He said it hurt leaving, but he knew, wounded, he could no longer help.

I could not help but think of Guantanamo Bay when my friend said one final thing: "We should have killed every one of those bastards."

My daughter will never have a better history teacher the rest of her life.

(HT to Marc Miyake)

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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