
{"id":6956,"date":"2009-09-10T08:31:40","date_gmt":"2009-09-10T16:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=6956"},"modified":"2009-09-10T08:31:40","modified_gmt":"2009-09-10T16:31:40","slug":"teachers-need-a-career-path-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2009\/09\/10\/teachers-need-a-career-path-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Teachers need a career path too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Jennifer Colletti<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am a bright, ambitious young professional. I am also a high school teacher. Contrary to popular belief, these two things are not mutually exclusive \u00e2\u20ac\u201d at least not during the first few years of a teaching career. While earning my master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s degree from UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s education school, I scoffed at the oft-cited statistic that 50 percent of all new teachers change careers within three years. Now, upon entering my third year of teaching, I am at risk of becoming part of that statistic. The good news is that the solution to our nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s education woes is actually quite clear: We need to start treating teaching like a profession and not just a means to an end.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In two recent opinion columns (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Minding the School?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on July 2 and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Nation Still at Risk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on July 30), author Steve Peha rightly argued that the new focus of school reform must be on teacher and administrator quality and personal accountability. This doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean more bureaucratic hoops to jump through, but rather a change in the workplace culture of schools. <\/p>\n<p>Before deciding to teach, I worked for several years as a writer and editor at a local newsletter publishing company and then at a local nonprofit organization. When I decided to get my master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in teaching and become a high school teacher, I had no illusions about the job I was signing up for. I was prepared for low pay and long hours, and I hit the ground running as a teacher of English and journalism at East Chapel Hill High. However, I quickly learned the basic career-path components to which I had grown accustomed in my previous jobs \u00e2\u20ac\u201d meaningful performance reviews, increased responsibilities and recognition \u00e2\u20ac\u201d were hard to come by as a teacher. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, I find reward in my students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 success and the relationships I build with them. But I started questioning my decision to teach when I realized that all my hard labor and success in the classroom would earn me nothing more than four cursory annual observations from administrators and the state-mandated $500 annual salary increase. <\/p>\n<p>I realized that colleagues who joke about receiving \u00e2\u20ac\u0153standard\u00e2\u20ac\u009d classroom observation ratings will earn the same annual salary increase as a teacher with all \u00e2\u20ac\u0153superior\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ratings. <\/p>\n<p>And I learned that classroom observations are just a chore over-worked administrators labor to complete; as long as teachers are doing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153standard\u00e2\u20ac\u009d work or better, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really no need to discuss their performance and certainly no additional opportunities to offer them. Ironically, the better you perform as a teacher, the less attention you receive. <\/p>\n<p>Tenured teachers in good standing might only expect to see an administrator in their classroom once a year.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I realized that I \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like so many young professionals of my generation \u00e2\u20ac\u201dthrive on recognition, rewards and the promise of new challenges and privileges for a job well done. Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s public school system offers none of these fundamental motivators to keep ambitious educators engaged. We talk until we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re blue about innovative ways to keep students engaged, but we ironically forget that a teacher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s engagement in his or her job is a necessary precursor to any student\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s success.<\/p>\n<p>What would be involved in education reform focused on the teaching profession? First, school administrators need better training in people management so they can effectively uphold high performance standards, coach and mentor teachers under their supervision and devise programs for recognition and advancement of high-performing employees.<\/p>\n<p>Second, school districts must emphasize the vital importance of effectively managing and motivating teachers for all administrators and give them the time and resources to succeed at this task. Third, schools need to create and fund leadership roles that offer new challenges, responsibilities and earnings potential to experienced teachers, thereby giving all faculty members something to strive for. <\/p>\n<p>Finally, various merit-pay schemes need to be explored. Some experts contend there is no objective way to award merit pay to teachers, yet various other industries have formulated ways to rank employees with quantitative and qualitative data and award bonuses or salary raises accordingly. Merit pay for teachers should not be based on student test scores but rather on a comprehensive and meaningful performance review, just like in any other profession.<\/p>\n<p>Merit pay is not all about the money, after all, but about the principle that excellent work will be rewarded more than mediocre work. Without a workplace structure and culture that sends this message loud and clear, we cannot expect schools to improve their teaching quality, and students will suffer the consequences. Any smart company will tell you its most valuable resource is the people it employs. Schools need to start saying the same thing \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d and taking actions to prove it.<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nJennifer Colletti is a teacher at East Chapel Hill High School. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jennifer Colletti I am a bright, ambitious young professional. I am also a high school teacher. Contrary to popular belief, these two things are not mutually exclusive \u00e2\u20ac\u201d at least not during the first few years of a teaching career. While earning my master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s degree from UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s education school, I scoffed at the oft-cited&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6957,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions\/6957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}