It is important for all teachers to be continuously learning. A lot of teachers go through college and then get hired by a school and do the same things and same routines year after year. This becomes redundant and as new technologies and new studies come out teachers need to be knowledgeable on new teaching concepts and new material. For many years there weren’t any programs that were required for teachers to learn of new educational technology and new ways of teaching. Students change every year and with each generation of children, their ways of learning change. Now a days, students need some sort of educational technology to keep their attention and because of this, teachers need to be ahead of the game when it comes to new teaching styles.
A new teacher education program was developed by school and higher education officials to improve teachers teaching skills. Eight states are implementing this program including, Louisiana, California, Colorado, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee and New York. The teacher unions are also backing this program up which is great. Normally teacher unions protect the ineffective teachers from getting fired and keep “bad” teachers in the system because of tenure, but with this new program they teacher unions are starting to see the benefits. By teacher being able to have the opportunity of extra teacher education to help improve their teaching skills, improve their time management, organization, educational technology knowledge and general student motivation concepts, they can help students get better grades and understand the subjects better.
Its common sense that if a student understands a subject more and is taught in the right way with the right educational tools, they will prosper and do well on standardized tests, which help schools ratings and get them a good reputation for parents to want to enroll their children there. This pilot program includes lessons that are critiqued in class by officials and teachers are critiqued on their teaching skills, motivational skills and student participation. Its important to get students to feel comfortable enough to want to participate in class because then they will be able to feel comfortable enough to ask questions to be able to understand the lesson better.
By having the options for teachers to be able to continue their education through this new teacher education program, teachers can get the vital skills that they did not get while in college. In college teachers are taught to be masters on their subjects but not actually how to teach a student. It’s important to not only know your information when teaching, but to be able to actually teach and help students to succeed. With this program in place, these eight states will have a foot forward on other states by teaching teachers the information they need to be able to successfully teach and motivate students. Half of the battle is getting the students to learn the information, the other half is getting them to actually want to learn the material and get good grades.
