Reflection 1A

Could you imagine receiving your education from someone who is only teaching you because they are a servant with many debts? Is it easy for you to swallow being taught by a teacher who has received the bare minimum themselves? In colonial times children were being taught by teachers who never even attended a secondary school. Some people who taught watched, or became apprentices of other people who were thought to be “masters” in teaching. Even indentured servants were teachers simply paying their way to America. Not too many teachers had attended a secondary school and the limited amount of people that did were normally teaching as tutors (privately), working in academies or grammar schools. It was mostly the privileged people who were still located in Europe who had such exquisite education.
There was a time where if I had a teacher/professor who looked younger than early to mid forties, there was a problem. I had always thought of teachers as people who were wise and much older than someone who looked as if they had recently finished college. If I had that idea for a teacher and we are in modern times, I’m not sure what I would’ve done in colonial times. Many teachers who started teaching at elementary levels were merely teenagers. Teenagers! These teenagers had only received the bare minimum of education and were already teaching? That is something that couldn’t have lasted too long, and it normally didn’t. These teenage teachers only taught for a year or two.
Thankfully, Reverend Samuel Hall established a start in America as far as teaching preparation was concerned. He had established the “normal school” that was a program of two years, used to teach elementary graduates academic subjects. Then, the teachers were all women who were treated less than professionally, aside from their below mediocre wages, they were to have no personal lives including to never get married. I suppose these teachers were to become nuns. As the years piled up these normal schools began evolving into state teachers’ colleges and eventually moved on to become some of today’s leading universities. These schools provided the traditional approach to teacher education wherein students studied the coursework and then did clinical. In the 1980s began a quest to remodel education. At the time, teachers weren’t considered professionals and a group of education deans, Holmes Group, and the Carnegie Forum had decided to take a stand by producing reports which called for higher standards and to increase the professionalism.
Different approaches to preparing teachers came about, including Teach For America (or TFA). TFA had recruits who learned skills of teaching by basically working as an apprentice to teachers. People who support this approach have claimed that the volunteers become excellent teacher. Yet there are those who argue that the values and the standards of teaching have been placed on a back-burner in alternative programs like TFA. These volunteers-become- teachers were assigned to schools were finding teachers was a challenge. These school appreciated and welcomed the on the job training recruits.
More or less the teacher preparation system has changed for the good. It evolved from being elementary school graduates to those who are masters at teaching. I intend to pursue my teaching degree the traditional way but if the opportunity comes along where I too can have on the job training, I wouldn’t pass it up for the world.

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