The new professional teacher is not the teacher of your youth or your mother’s or grandmother’s. The words “new” and “professional” are used with a reason; the teacher of tomorrow will be a new breed.
I lay back on an examination table in a neurologist’s office recently. As any good health consumer, I studied the man’s professional data to learn where he was trained, where he practiced, and read reviews by his patients. I asked my GP if he would have this neurologist run nerve studies on him; he said he would. He checked out as a competent professional neurologist, so I lay on his table. As he ran small jolts of electricity down various nerves from my neck and shoulder to my fingertips and right hand, he began a small conversation.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“Retired school superintendent,” I said.
“I tried teaching when I was just out of college,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone would choose to be a teacher. It’s impossible work.”
“I’m glad you left the classroom,” I said. “Only those who can teach should be teachers.” He looked at me thinking I was kidding. I was not.
He proceeded to tell me about all the things he did not like about being a teacher and closed with “I tell lots of people I know who are thinking about being a teacher how terrible the work is and how little they will be paid. The best thing is summers off. I tell all of them – don’t be a teacher.” Thankfully, he was just finishing the nerve study and shifted into giving me a summary of his findings.
He was proof of the adage I have reversed from its usual wording. “Those who can teach should teach. Those who can’t should do anything else.” Happily for me, I have an entirely different perception, understanding, and vision for the teaching profession.
The new professional teacher will be more like this neurologist than he will like. This future teacher will be highly trained with a baccalaureate and many semesters of seminars, courses, and workshops, if not advanced degrees. Like an MD, the teacher will be able to display numerous certificates of academic and advanced pedagogical accomplishments on her classroom wall as a result of many years of continuing education. My neurologist and the future teacher each will be engaged in a decade of study and early work before they truly earn the acclamation of professional.
Yesterday’s teacher may say, “Just like me” when considering this schedule of post-baccalaureate study, but not really. Yesterday’s teacher most often took post graduate credits in order to renew a teaching license. Many took any credit, usually a course that was close to home and fit neatly into the family’s vacation plans. Too many took credits that were not related to their teaching assignment, because license renewal was only loosely connected to advanced training. I do recognize that many of yesterday’s teachers, less than 30% earned a Master’s Degree along their path toward license renewal and salary advancement. Almost all stopped their serious professional study at that point and enrolled only for renewal credits during the second half of their career. Not really like what the future teacher will need to do.
Tomorrow’s teacher will be a professionally trained educational specialist. The nature of specialty may be as an early or primary education teacher of reading, language and mathematics. Or, as an upper elementary teacher of extended reading skills, composition, and pre-advanced math. Or, as a secondary teacher of college and career readiness using reading and data analysis, technical composition, and collaborative skills. Or the teacher may be an expert instructor of music or Spanish or computer science. There are many flavors of specialty needed to teach tomorrow’s children. She will complete “clinical courses” and performance-based workshops directly prescribed to strengthen and extend specific teaching skills required by her teaching assignment. She will dive deeply into the science of teaching for advanced learning. She will have a professional resume just like the neurologist and any parent or community member or school administrator will be able to ascertain both the details of her training and annual reports of the quality of her teaching.
Tomorrow’s teacher will not work a nine-month or school-year contract like teachers today. Classroom teaching of children will only be part of her contract. Her calendar-year contract will include ample time for daily instructional planning and reflection regarding instructional effectiveness. She will have time dedicated for working with individual children who need more time and differentiated instruction in order to successfully learn their annual curriculum. She will have time for test preparation, test correction, and conferencing with children regarding their test performance. She will engage with her peers in lesson studies that will sharpen their collective teaching skills inside those lessons. And, she will have time and opportunity to engage with mentors and professional evaluators so that she can improve her professional work over the duration of her career.
Concomitant with her calendar-year contract, she will be paid a salary appropriate for a contemporary professional. Most career teachers will earn $100,000 per year or more. In contrast with today’s teachers, they will not be paid more based upon the completion of additional credits or degrees. Nor will their employer reimburse them for the cost of credit completion. These will be the expected obligations of a professional who is paid a professional annual salary as compensation for the quality of her contracted professional work. That is the most significant change in a future employment: pay quality teaching that causes quality learning not pay for calendared work.
In the years to come, there will be a change in the public perception of teachers. Today, too many hold the opinion that teachers are unionized, public employees who work less than full-year jobs. Furthering public disdain is the perception that too many tenured teachers go through the motions of teaching with little regard for student learning because their jobs are contractually protected. Instead, tomorrow’s teacher will be esteemed because of the quality of her work and the impact she has in shaping the life of a child. She will be held in the same regard as doctors, lawyers and engineers and referred to as “Professor,” a throw-back to the adulation teachers received generations ago.
Perhaps the aspect of tomorrow’s professional teacher I smile most about will be the realization, similar to that of my neurologist, that teaching for the purpose of causing demonstrable learning is exceptionally difficult work. Only highly trained, committed professional teachers should do the work of teaching, and, because of this tomorrow’s adults will be much more ready for the difficult challenges they face than are the adults of today.