Teacher Education: Are Colleges Properly Traning Teachers

With the nation focusing on education and the problems surrounding this issue teachers seem to be getting a lot of attention. Be it for low test scores or union negotiations, teachers are at the forefront of this national debate and jobs are at stake. Individuals and communities are starting to ask questions that are forcing the educational profession to take a long, hard look at itself. Questions like ‘are teacher education schools really preparing and training teachers to work with an increasingly diverse population?’

One of the largest claims against teacher education schools is that they simply are not preparing the next generation of teachers to properly connect and relate to the populations they are expected to teach. If every classroom, every school, every district and every state is different than why is there an almost one size fits all approach to teacher education. If a teacher is trained to teach in rural Montana, can that training be transposed to an urban New York City classroom? Or should states be more selective when choosing teachers to teach in urban verse rural classrooms considering the difference in needs of those two populations?

However, every state does differ, to a degree, in the qualifications it requires for teachers to have a license within its borders. There are just so many social issues teachers have to deal with and they can fluctuate to such extents depending on what geographical area they may reside. One has to wonder whether schools of education are preparing future teachers to deal with the ever changing array of social issues they encounter in the classrooms. And if there is a lack of ability in the teacher to connect, help and guide his/her students in a social capacity how do these issues impact the learning of individual classrooms and does this have an effect on teacher retention in urban areas? This is not to say most teachers do not connect to their students already, but are they trained properly and prepared to deal with the social problems so many districts are faced with? If schools are not just academic institutions but also social institutions, what are teacher education schools doing to ensure the highest quality of training and what can they do better?