GENERALS ARE MADE IN BATTLE. TEACHERS ARE MADE IN THE CLASSROOM.

There is a “teacher crisis” in America because the number of people preparing to be teachers is significantly under the projected number of teachers that are needed. This is already true in math and science, where teachers with this skill set are highly sought after and given significant federal incentives (scholarships, loan forgiveness, etc.) to pursue this path. The question, then, is how to get more teachers into the field, and once you get them to pursue the field, how do you best prepare them?

One suggestion is to take people who already know something and have spent years in many different industries (business, government, law, etc.) and just get them into a classroom. These people already have the skill set, they already know content and even better, they know how this meaningful content can be used in the real world in which they worked. They have what many teachers do not have: experience with the application of knowledge. This experience is priceless.

But some people (usually professors in the Education Department of some University) don’t want these people to teach until they have taken 20 credit hours of pre-requisites and spent $30,000 on university classes. Furthermore, these people have a significant voice in the creation of licensing standards, and therefore, they are in a position to oppose non-standard routes to licensing.

This is a problem.

You see, there are two ways to train a teacher.

One theory suggests that you spend a lot of time in school, taking classes about education and learning about education as a field of study. Lesson plans are created, teacher observations are conducted, term papers about methods of instruction are written, and presentations about cognitive development are given. Teaching is treated like a laboratory, and soon-to-be teachers sit under the microscope and analyze the “fundamentals” while also including some limited student teaching experience.

Another theory suggests that if you already have significant experience with the content, you can take a few brief intro-to-teaching classes over the summer, and then in the fall, you just go in a classroom, get some chalk and a chalkboard, and start teaching, figuring it out as you go. You have mentors to support you and perhaps a small 3-credit class to back you up, but everything else is learned in the experience. This is how I was trained as a teacher, and I am big advocate of this method because I learn by doing something, not by talking about it.

However, as people have proposed this second model for teacher training, there are those who object. The objections usually come from people (again, usually professors in the Education Department of some University) who regard teaching as a “profession” and a field of study. They don’t want to dilute the profession with “untrained” professionals who haven’t completed all the coursework, who haven’t analyzed education in the laboratory-like setting of a University classroom, and who haven’t written papers about “best practices” within education. However, these people are treating the teaching profession like it is the same as the medical profession. While education is similar to medicine in that it is a profession, the nature of exploring this profession is radically different.

To explore the profession of medicine, you need chemicals, computers, patients, laboratory animals, slides, microscopes, stethoscopes, x-ray machines, textbooks, computers, CAT scans, PET scans, and experience with a scalpel. To explore the teaching profession, all you need is a curious mind, a willingness to interact with others, the ability to learn from experience, and creativity to use the limited resources available to create unique learning experiences. You can progress the field of education without using the complex resources provided by University faculty and coursework.

Furthermore, the ultimate purpose of the licensing process is to ensure quality. However, any teacher who has jumped through the many hoops required for professional licensure knows the radical disconnect between the licensing process and quality teaching. In medicine, you just can’t fake your knowledge of every body part or how to perform open-heart surgery. In the medical profession, the licensing standards are strongly correlated to quality performance. But in teaching, anybody with an ounce of creativity combined with a handy thesaurus can jump through any licensing standard out there. I wrote some beautiful, poetic gems of nonsense that allowed me to hop through the barriers to my license. I was befuddled at the process because it just didn’t relate to my efficacy as a teacher. And I knew it didn’t relate because I was jumping through these hoops AFTER I had already taught for two years in a teaching program.

I cannot over-emphasize this fact: in all my years of schooling, I never found a system of more red tape that was easier to cross than in education. There are barriers all over the place in the name of increasing the quality of teaching, but these barriers are laughable. The radical disconnect between the licensing process and a quality educator, in many instances, is absurd.

Need an example? My dad needed to get his administrators license after being a chemistry and biology teacher for seven years. Besides taking classes in administrative theory, he also had to take classes that enhanced his knowledge of the content from his original license, which was chemistry. The only problem was that he couldn’t retake a class he had taken before, and since he took every chemistry class offered to him as an undergrad, he was left to graduate level classes. One of the graduate level classes that he had to take was “High Pressure Liquid-Gas Chromatography”. Here’s how the first day of class went:

Professor: “OK, so please introduce yourselves and why you are here.”

Student 1: “I am a Ph.D. student analyzing Chromatological effects on the phospholipid bi-layer.”

Student 2: “I finished my Ph.D., but as a doctoral research assistant, I am conducting research into High-Density lipoproteins and their restructuring in non-aqueous environments.”

My dad: “I’m here to get my administrators license.”

This is only scratching the surface of the number of ridiculous, absurd, and ineffective licensing requirements that are out there. But even if the licensing requirements had a greater relationship to quality teaching, there is still a problem: taking classes on teaching is never going to be the same as the experience of teaching.

Great teachers are forged in a furnace of the utmost intensity that can never be replicated in a classroom. You can’t simulate 25 sophomores who hate math, taking Algebra I for the second time, sitting in a room that doesn’t have air conditioning for a one-and-a-half hour class. You can’t simulate grading 140 tests AFTER an exhausting day in the classroom. You can’t simulate teaching from 7-3:30, coaching from 3:30-7, and then lesson planning from 7:30-9:30, only to do it all again the next day, week after week. This stuff isn’t learned in education classes. Sure, it’s talked about. Strategies are discussed. Plans are made. Ideas are proposed. But that isn’t the real thing. It is only a simulation, and the simulation is a significant jump from the reality.

Just as Generals are made in battle, quality teachers are made in the classroom. If we want more people to join (and remain) in "professional education", we need to remove barriers that prevent entry into the profession. We need to allow for curious, creative, and intelligent professionals to step in and learn the fundamentals, and then give them the tools to create amazing learning experiences. And if you eventually want to become an administrator, you shouldn't be required to take "High Pressure Liquid-Gas Chromatography".