Posted on Fri, Nov. 6, 2009
When I first started teaching in Philadelphia public high schools nearly 40 years ago, there was a ubiquitous joke: If you can't do, then teach. Over the years, the joke has been insightfully amended: If you can't teach, then teach teachers ("Teaching the teachers," last Friday).
"Students in troubled schools typically have the least-qualified teachers," you say. And how true that is - until recently. Last year at Overbrook High School, we had a large group of new teachers come in under the Teach for America program. These were bright, well-educated, enthusiastic young rookies who were immediately successful and are even better this year.
So, what's going on here? These young teachers had degrees in something real - history, English, math, science, etc. - instead of the usual degrees in secondary education. In other words, they actually were smart and knew something - and their students soon realized and respected that. There remains, nonetheless, this stubbornly held belief in college education departments, as well as in each new Philadelphia School District administration, that good teaching is some magical product that percolates from constantly updated "data" and can be imparted to teachers by way of professors, mentors, experts, and constantly rotating nomenclature. What an expensive and distracting myth that has been.
Our experience at Overbrook would suggest a different insight: that good teachers are born of talent and intelligence, not made by methodology or the hugely wasteful and overfunded staff development that seems to obsess our present school administrators, just as it did their predecessors. The condiments keep changing, but the baloney remains the same.
Philip Beauchemin
Teacher
Overbrook High School
Lansdale
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