Re: [Phys-L] teaching credentials +- qualifications +- administration

["Marc \"Zeke\" Kossover" <zeke_kossover@yahoo.com>]

Marty is pretty much on the mark. 

Hiring teachers is hard. I've been involved in hiring high school teachers at nearly every level from enormous urban public schools to highly selective private schools. I've had successes and failures over the years. Just like it isn't obvious what makes a great teacher a great teacher, it isn't obvious what we should be looking for when we hire a teacher. 

At the risk of helping candidates in the future, let me outline what seem like the key things to me.

First, candidates should be curious and have acted on their curiosity and learned the discipline. I've worked with teachers from time to time who are teaching a subject that they learned incidentally--like a biology teacher that was a bio major because he was premed, but med school didn't work out, and he became a teacher. Many of these folk really, really know their discipline well in a multiple choice test kind of way, but they can't--no make that--they don't put the ideas together or apply them to novel situations. A lack of passion doesn't have to keep you from being a great teacher, but it usually does. Your knowledge becomes outdated, you don't see what's cool about the subject, and you often lose sight of the forest. 

Second, you have to be able to see the world through the eyes of your students. A strong teacher is constantly wondering what does the lesson look like from the students' points of view. Asking yourself, if I were Jane, what would convince me? How about if I were Scott, Michael, Sophie, Darrell, Tim or the rest of the kids in your class. What will cement the ideas in place? Note that I said "student_s_  point_s_". They come from different places, and they may need different things.

Once a teacher starts to see the world through a students' eyes, other things like classroom management come into focus. I'm not talking about empathy, really. I don't know what it is like to be abjectly poor. I wasn't raised in a religious family. I was a happy kid and a happy student, and I have lived a charmed life, but I can learn what it is like to be afraid and what that does to you. I can learn what it means to be worried all the time. I can learn what it means to be distrustful. Then, I can make a class and set up structures to help deal with these situations. 

While it is never possible for a teacher to know the material too well, it is possible for some teachers, since it was so easy for them, to be unable to see the material from the students' points of view anymore. They will be successful with only a small number of students.

This changes with time, too. Kids change. Not much, but some. The biggest change is how well they know computer graphics. Seeing a video of an experiment isn't the same as doing it themselves at all. They don't trust YouTube. Good for them, but more work for me. 

Keeping up with educational research is a big help. It isn't possible to put yourself in the position of your every student, but reading good studies lets you peak into their world. I remember reading a study about kids and demonstrations. The instructor dropped two differing but same-sized masses and they hit the ground at the same time. The class was duly impressed. A couple weeks later they set up the same experiment and asked the kids to predict what would happen and why. Not only did a lot get it wrong, but worse they thought that they'd seen the heavier one hit first in class!

Enough of my rambling. I'll just end by pointing out that many people think that they know what would make a person a great high school teacher though they have never taught and never hired someone to teach. They would probably be ticked off if I were to suggest how their universities should hire professors. 

Zeke Kossover






On Sunday, October 20, 2013 2:05 PM, Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net> wrote:
 
Absolutely correct (about the relative ease of hiding a lack of subject knowledge vs sufficient control of the classroom)   Most principals are just happy to have a a teacher who shows initiative and runs a well organized, well disciplined classroom.  If he knows some physics, too, that's a bonus.  Now, I'm talking about the inner city, but this hold true for many middle class suburban schools as well.  The upper-class, wealthy suburbs may be different, but I maintain, as Philip seems to say, and BC will admit,  that, in the city and mid-socioeconomic level districts, classroom maintenance and control is as much or more vital to success than  a rich knowledge of the subject.  
> On Oct 20, 2013, at 4:20 PM, Philip Keller wrote:
>
> > On 10/20/2013 2:30 PM, Marty Weiss wrote:
> > > Successful teachers must possess a lot more than just similar academic or socioeconomic credentials.  Successful teachers must have the right personality and ability to hold a class, maintain discipline and control, be interesting (yes... there's a lot
 of that necessary in high school teaching), and maintain focus despite some rather obvious distractions ( p.a. calls from the administration, students pulled out for various reasons, lesson plans that go awry, fielding off topic questions, and a myriad of other things that you in university do not have to deal with.).   There are so many things that mentors have to get prospective teachers from outside the field to understand and do... eyes in back of your head when someone in the front of the room is texting while you are in the back of the lab instructing;  knowing when to separate two boys who are about to go at it over some girl;  some kid who tries to show you up because his father is an engineer so the kid thinks he knows it a
> l
> > l.
> > >       These things can happen anywhere, not just in the city.
> > I agree that teachers need those things.  The question is: are these things any less likely to be found in an alternate route candidate with a sub 2.75 GPA from a more challenging school (and a degree in the subject area) than they are to be found from a education major with a 3.2 and a science minor?  Those from either group who lack the ability to control a room are going to wash out pretty quickly. And I hate to say it, but an insufficient grasp of the subject matter is easier to conceal than an inability to maintain a disciplined classroom.   Considering that those who hire and evaluate you probably don't know the subject either, you could be well and tenured before anyone discovers that you just don't know what you are doing!   If I were a principal making a hire, I know what I would want to do.  (But my own back story leaves me with a clear bias.)
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