Gordon Chan: No wonder young people don’t want to go into teaching
Re: “How to entice young people into teaching” (Page 9A, Feb. 9): Columnist George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times gets it right when he wrote: “Californians collectively have not made teaching a very attractive profession, not like it once was.”
Most teachers enter the profession for the joy and passion of being “a candle that burns itself out, lighting the way for others.” A teacher needs time to find his way to be creative in developing his method of writing and presenting a well-crafted lesson that would enlighten a student’s mind and imagination.
Today a teacher is evaluated by how he uses the district-mandated teaching methods of setting an objective based on the Common Core Standards, of engaging all students all the time by using checking for understanding every 3 minutes (some evaluators actually time the interval). A teacher’s creativity is no longer an essential part of the classroom. For the sake of equal education for all, our best and brightest are dragged down by too many students who are struggling to master the basics.
Whenever the state has a financial down turn, school funding and teachers are the first to be cut to balance budgets. Is it possible to entice young people to teach?
Gordon Chan, Modesto
This story was originally published February 15, 2016 at 12:50 PM with the headline "Gordon Chan: No wonder young people don’t want to go into teaching."