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Leave a comment Posted on class reunion, students

A Reunion to Remember

Attending class reunions is not on my bucket list which is why I’ve never appeared at one.  Since I had few friends in high school, why would I want to see people 10, 25, 50 years later with whom I never interacted with in the first place?  

However, when a former student of mine reached out to me with an invitation to her class’s 10th year reunion, I said, “yes.”    This wouldn’t be a reunion of people I went to school with, it would be seeing former students who are now approaching 30 years old. 

I have always enjoyed receiving emails and texts from those who shared a part of their youth in my classoom. Often they’d come by during their first year in college, a time when they struggle with the transition of becoming more independent and desire to return to familiar surroundings. 

Typically, it has been former journalism students who have remained in contact in my retirement years since I formed more personal bonds with those who worked on the school newspaper.  And Melody, the young lady who organized the Class of 2015’s party, was one of those students.

The event was held in a bar/billiards establishment.  My wife agreed to accompany me to ensure I’d have at least one person to talk with.  We walked past the billiard tables to a secluded bar area in the back and there was Melody greeting us.  At first, I was surprised how few people had gathered, but by the time the evening was over, nearly 40 people were present; I was one of a handful of teachers.  It was nice to see these former colleagues, but catching up with my students was what made the evening special for me. 

As student after student approached me, I could still detect the younger faces in the more mature visages now in front of me.  A couple of them have married and one recently had her first child.

The highlight of the evening was hearing from them how much they remembered about my classes and the positive impact it made on their lives.   As I have often said, these moments make a teacher’s career feel well spent.  Once students leave our classrooms, we rarely get a chance to see how they are doing years later.  I’m glad I went. Us older teachers need those moments.

Leave a comment Posted on California Commission on Teacher Credentialing

Get Ready for Less Qualified Teachers

This year, over 17,000 teaching credentials will be issued in California, not enough to fill about 25,000 vacancies.  In order to encourage more people to go into teaching, a new state law was passed in 2024 allowing anyone with a bachelor’s degree to get accepted into a teacher credential program.   It is no longer necessary to pass a test to assess a candidate’s basic knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic.  It is no longer necessary to have a minimum 3.0 GPA.

California Commission on Teacher Credentialing’s Executive Director Mary Vixie Sandy said that “now is a great time for anyone with a qualifying bachelor’s degree” to become a teacher.

Why is allowing less qualified people into the profession viewed as a good thing?

Instead of fixing what ails the teaching profession, namely a lack of prestige, competitive salaries and support from administration and parents, the state is lowering the qualifications to attract more people into the classroom.  If anything, higher minimum requirements is the first step in ensuring only qualified people be allowed to teach.

If this approach were applied to the medical field, with an influx of doctors who could not otherwise meet basic requirements suddenly earning medical degrees, they’d be an uproar about health care.

For some reason, when it comes to education, there isn’t any pushback that more inexperienced, less academic people will be teaching young people.  But it gets worse.

To meet the demands of the teacher shortage, school districts are hiring people on an emergency credential that pays them a full salary without taking the two years of coursework and student teaching that traditional candidates complete.

Even those teachers who do the full credential coursework and earn a credential aren’t destined to be effective teachers.

I know this first-hand from my work as a university field supervisor who visits schools where the teachers in training work.  My job is to observe a candidate teach between three to six lessons over an 18-week semester, then evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

More important than someone like me is the mentor teacher who observes the teacher candidate every day, reviewing their lessons and offering suggestions.   It’s crucial that the mentors are highly qualified.  Unfortunately, many are not. 

College credential programs don’t have the luxury of vetting mentors due to how few classroom teachers show interest in that role.   That’s because not enough excellent teachers are willing to hand over a couple of their classes to a novice.  Often, those who become mentors are those who are looking for a lighter workload.

That’s why the evaluation forms from the mentors may not be an accurate assessment of a student teacher’s abilities.  After all, how can an ineffective teacher help a young teacher be effective? 

I often find myself assigning higher marks for candidates based on the inflated evaluation of the mentors.  It is difficult for someone like me to hold higher standards since the mentor is seeing so much more of the candidate.  How can I justify lower marks when I’m only observing six lessons, while the mentor observes 90 lessons?

My job observing student teachers for the past four years is frequently disappointing and sometimes depressing.  Still, each semester I meet that one young teacher who has a knack for working with kids, a desire to help children with their academics and their lives.  That’s what keeps me going, a flame of faith that for some students, their future will be bright.