Urban Teachers MUST be Trained in Pedagogy

Teaching has no body of knowledge, so why waste time and resources on teacher education?

• It's one thing to know your subject matter, but something quite different to teach it to children and adolescents.
  
• Can't we simply recruit new teachers from a pool of recent graduates or mid-career switchers who know their subjects? They're smart -- they'll figure out how to teach once they're in the job.
  
  • which usually take place in education journals and magazines -- must seem pointless, and would be laughable if they didn't often spill over into politically charged decision-making environments.
    

Common sense tells us that effective teachers have to know not only what they're teaching but also how to teach it in a roomful of students with wide-ranging backgrounds and abilities. So the real question becomes, How do we make that happen? An important part of the answer is something neither side is talking much about: teaching apprenticeships.

Why not? We suspect it's because too many policy makers, school administrators, and university officials are concerned that apprenticeships would overturn teaching's occupational applecart. More investments would need to be made in master teachers who, in turn, would have more say-so in the design of university-led teacher education and school districts' novice teacher-support programs. Resources that pay for central-office supervisors and campus-bound university professors might need to be diverted to where the action is -- the schools and classrooms of master teachers.