Are you tired of the attack on teachers?

From the Tampa bay Times, By Joan F. Kaywell,

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach teachers.

Well, I have taught teachers for almost 25 years at the University of South Florida's college of education. I'm tired of those cliches — and of the assault on the profession.

We all know the power of that one teacher in a student's life, and I am giving my student-teachers — all 500 that I've taught over the years — the tools to become that teacher. Sadly, the current concern in the bureaucracy of education is not how to nurture that one teacher. Nope. The focus is on how you measure whether or not a teacher is effective and how you prove it.

We had a critical teacher shortage when Jeb Bush was governor. But instead of examining why, his answer was to let far too many unready people into the classroom. His way to ensure that anyone entering the field was "highly qualified" was to have each prospect pass a test. That's analogous to passing the written portion of the driving test and then being called a "highly qualified" driver.

After becoming "highly qualified," those entering the field are given a temporary teaching certificate and three years to obtain their professional license. A doctor goes through training to become a doctor before taking the state exam, but anyone who's graduated from college can teach without teacher training simply by taking a test. You don't even need a degree in English to do so. It doesn't make sense.

I teach both traditional college students as well as career-change professionals who have started to teach but still need to earn their license. There are too many alternative certification routes to list here — some clearly better than others — but colleges of education such as USF's that are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and endorsed by the National Council of Teachers of English adhere to the highest standards. About half of my students are teachers already in the classroom who are working on that certification.

To be truly highly qualified, a teacher needs to know much more than the subject matter. The artistry of teaching comes with one's ability to match method with student. One way might work with one student but fail with another. Here are a few real-life examples: (1) To "correct" a student's paper at the wrong time or overcorrect it can "teach" a student to stop writing altogether; (2) Given a specific task, mix students who understand with those who do not. It will benefit everyone. The most effective instruction is one-on-one, and since there is only one teacher in the room, more learning occurs by capitalizing on those who understand helping those who don't. And because you best learn that what you teach, those students who understand will have their learning reinforced.

In Hillsborough County, the eighth largest school district in the country, English teachers are given a scripted curriculum called Springboard from which to teach. This curriculum, aligned with the College Board, is designed to ensure college and career readiness for all students. But again, there is no one method that works with all students. Think of your own children or your siblings to realize how ridiculous it is to assume that they will all respond to the same script to make them healthy, charming, rich, college-ready, whatever. As a result, there appear to be three types of "teachers" in the field.

Type One believes that teachers are born, not made. If they don't feel they were blessed by the teacher muse, they give up on the classroom and leave the profession. Proper training could have helped some of them.

Type Two believes that teachers can learn to teach better. They are the ones who come to us at USF's college of education. We instill a basic value: All students can be taught and that is their job as teachers. But we also equip them with tools to make it possible, myriad strategies to employ even if they are required to use a script.

Type Three concerns me the most. Unfortunately, they are the ones most likely to stay in the classroom — and they are the very ones who can harm the education of our students. These individuals do not care. They follow the script they are given and do what they are told, but "their students are lazy," and it's not their fault if their students aren't learning.

It is human nature to shut down and not care when all sense of control has been removed. Unfortunately, with so much of the classroom scripted and standardized, even some exemplary teachers are beginning to feel this loss of control. Few people go into teaching for the money, and systems that reward them solely with "performance" pay are missing the point. The real pay comes when teachers' expertise enables them to help students be more, know more and do more than they ever thought imaginable.

Most of the teachers I have helped to produce have become educational leaders, and many have earned state or national awards in teaching, and acquired National Board of Professional Teaching Standards certification. I am proud of them, and that's why I believe outsiders need to stop blaming us teachers for America's failings. Excellent teachers need to be given authority and autonomy and not stripped of their control.

Yet what I hear back from some of my students is disheartening. One fears that we are not teachers anymore but "bookkeepers, data keepers and record maintainers." Another one laments that "I cannot teach my students how to love reading unless I can turn 'love' into a measurable data point."

Now the government is imposing a new teacher evaluation system for those already in the classroom. Teachers are having to learn a 50-page flip chart of indicators that will demonstrate whether or not they are effective. Their salaries will be tied to these indicators combined with standardized test scores.

Yet did we ever really need a standardized test to tell us that an 11th-grader can't read? Do we really need more tests to fix what's wrong in education? The FCAT season is again upon us, and it's time to answer the question. It is not multiple choice.

Joan F. Kaywell is a professor of English education in the college of education at the University of South Florida. She is the author of "Dear Author: Letters of Hope."

https://www.tampabay.com/news/perspective/those-who-teach-also-can-do/1225859