Imagine a newly graduated doctor is placed into a highly intricate surgery. Doesn’t make any sense does it? Yet we do this with newly graduated teachers. Teachers with little or no experience are placed in the most difficult schools.
While they have compassion and a missionary zeal to succeed, they burn themselves out. Many people outside of education, believe that the only time a teacher is working, is when she is in front of a classroom. Yet professional educators know the job entails far more than that. Educator work days rarely conforms to a school’s bells schedule. They attend before- and afternoon-school teacher training sessions. Or they are attending college in order to improve their skills and their salary. They stay up late at night working through weekend creating imaginative lessons. They are making calls to parents, going on home visits, finding donations of food and clothing for families. They are providing tutoring or serving as surrogate parents. They are laying out their own monies to pay for materials and supplies for students who cannot afford to bring in their own materials.
They deal with non-school issues like abuse, homelessness. They provide students with a third-ear when students have nowhere else to turn. Teachers are burning out faster than colleges can prepare them.
Is there any thing which colleges can do to better prepare potential teachers? Is there anything that school administrators can do retain staff?