On the need for teacher training.
Over the years that I have been involved in schools as teacher, administrator, and consultant, it has struck me that degrees do not guarantee that a teacher is proficient. On the other hand, it is not sensible to send a teacher into a classroom without adequate support. When I began teaching in high schools in 1982, I was thrown into the breach without help at all. There was the assumption that this is good enough, and that I would learn the trade, sink or swim. Had I not had access to experienced teachers to guide me ( the best had been trained in the public school system), I would have left the profession. And of course, wasted my students' time.
Now I work in PD for schools in Chicago at the ATT, and work with JNTP programs to mentor new teachers. There are some schools that support new teachers, there are others that simply do no different than was done to me in 1982. The difference is this - does the teacher have someone who will be a sounding board, a guide, and a mentor? Someone whom the teacher will trust, but who also has the capability to help the teacher? This guidance during apprenticeship, and even later in a teacher's career, has more impact than a sterile college classroom teaching pedagogy.
We don't have to follow what everybody else does, but we do need to do our best to go beyond mediocrity in ways that make sense.
Moshe Simkovich
PD at Associated Talmud Torahs, Chicago
