To Be a Teacher in the USA

The overarching failure is in the system itself, it can't be attributed to just one specific part of the learning process.

I've gone to public schools my entire life, and my experience has always been the same since I moved from uber wealthy San Mateo to broke ass Daly City/San Francisco; lack of funding and emphasis on test results leads to ridiculously crowded classrooms and uninspired or restricted teachers, which leads to only the upper echelon of students getting any attention and inspiration while the mid-range and lower students fall through the cracks and either stop caring and just drop out/fail or they get lower grades, or, in the case of my High School, they'd freakin' deport them to another High School... So it's like, as a result of having dumbass laws and low funding, you've got teachers who don't care, and then as a result you've got Kids who don't care.

I dunno. That's how the experience was at my High School anyway. We had 1800 students with a racial make-up of 71% assorted asian and 29% other. So if you were a Filipino with a 3.0 GPA all the teacher's loved you and would give you breaks, and if you were anything else that was just too bad.

I remember that when I graduated I was one out of three black students graduating in a senior class of 600 students. 😂

Well in really simple terms the problem comes from two angles.

First of all public schools aren't allowed to turn down any children. This is undeniably a good thing, everyone deserves a chance at an education.
Secondly programs like No Child Left Behind require that everyone succeed. While this sounds like a noble goal it happens to be impossible; the kid with Down Syndrome isn't going to as good at math as I am no matter how much people try to help, neither is kid who lives alone with his crack-head grandmother.

Schools scramble to get good test scores for the standardized tests that decide if they get funding. When they "fail" parents with means try to get their kids into private school and the smart ones make it leaving the public schools with an even more difficult task.

Private schools are of great value, of course, they can give the best possible resources to high achieving kids. But they do this without passing state tests and have the opportunity to pick their students.

My mother has a (probably apocryphal) story about a businessman who was brought in to help a school improve. His thing is blueberries, some of the best in the world. They sit him down and ask him what he does to make his product so consistently good.

He says: "Well the shipment of berries comes in and I sift through to find the best ones."

A teacher stops him: "But we have to take all the blueberries."

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
My mother has a (probably apocryphal) story about a businessman who was brought in to help a school improve. His thing is blueberries, some of the best in the world. They sit him down and ask him what he does to make his product so consistently good.

He says: "Well the shipment of berries comes in and I sift through to find the best ones."

A teacher stops him: "But we have to take all the blueberries."

like i said in the 1st page.. its all about private/charter schools

A few things off the top of my head:

-If you have to go through the degree program to get a degree in education again (you might), there is indeed a period where you have to student teach, or "intern" as was mentioned earlier, and the teacher you do this for will evaluate you. If you do have to go though the degree program all over again, do some research first. Try to find the universities that started off as a "normal school." Despite the unappealing name, that was the name given to institutions that specialized in training teachers. Not surprisingly, those universities tend to be renowned for their teaching programs, and some are actually fairly inexpensive (I'm attending NAU, personally. Before it was called Northern Arizona University, it was founded as a normal school).

-Being CONVICTED of a felony will get you fired. Being accused will likely result only in a suspension until your guilt or innocence is proven in court. REPEATED accusations for the same crime, however, will likely get you fired because it's bad for the school's image. Just like if you worked for Microsoft and repeatedly mentioned to customers on the phone how you thought Microsoft's products were utter shit and that they'd be better off with Apple. It may not technically be a crime, but it's bad for the organization.

-Bachelor's degree will allow you to teach at the pre-school, elementary, and high school levels. Master's degree is required for college / university teaching.

-Becoming a state certified teacher, despite the implications of the title, is optional. It does, however, bump your salary up significantly.

-Depending on where you plan to teach, and at what level, there may be additional and varying requirements. You should also research where you want to teach: inner cities tend to pay more than isolated communities, but generally speaking you can think of it as "hazard pay."

-You can also apply through the US Department of Defense for their teaching program. A minimum of a 2 year committment is required, your pay is based on a military pay grade, but they'll usually provide you with transportation to the base you'll be teaching at (you'll be teaching the kids of enlisted men and women) and occasionally housing. This is also an -excellent- way to see the world.

-Teaching on a reservation is risky, because although the pay tends to be great (it's a federal job), the contract can include a provision that lets the government fire you at any time. From what my EDU 205 professor told me (who taught on a reservation at a private school, though some of her friends weren't so fortunate), that provision can and will be enforced without hesitation.

Originally posted by Seth Wynd
-Bachelor's degree will allow you to teach at the pre-school, elementary, and high school levels. Master's degree is required for college / university teaching.

-Becoming a state certified teacher, despite the implications of the title, is optional. It does, however, bump your salary up significantly.

In some places having a Masters degree or certification can prevent you from getting hired due to them having to pay you more, it's can be better to go in without either. On the one hand, that's a problem created by the unions but on the other hand it also says that people don't give a damn about educating their kids. So...

Originally posted by inimalist
no.....