My students are successful at passing the NYS Regents exams in Math & Science (I teach both), I hold high standards for classroom achievement as well as behavior. Why in the world isn’t that enough? So, I’ll trundle off this summer & finish my Master’s degree while muttering – “how will this make me teach better?”

What will help me teach better? Teaching at a Honors Academy this summer to very small classes of highly motivated students – it will allow me the luxury of pre-testing some curricula changes and doing another few thousand math problems!

Good math teachers, IMHO, love math. We do math problems for fun and for deeper understanding. We do them with students not only for the students’ betterment and learning but we step back and watch “how” they solve them. We tackle errors or misunderstandings in mathematical cognition as they happen

So did teacher ed “teach” me how to teach? Nope.
Will the Master’s degree make me a “better” teacher? Arghhh… I believe doing the job day after day gives me better insight as to what works & what doesn’t.

Give the ex-techies a few weeks shadowing an experienced and successful teacher, mentor them the first year with classroom management, pacing, etc and get out of their way

My guess is they will gravitate to the most well run schools where they have a high degree of freedom. I’m not sure the education establishment is ready for thousands of us who worked in a “skunkworks” environment, but I am happy teaching. I’ve adapted, my school has adapted and both of my department chairs have been supportive.

Why have the credential program at all? If they really want to be serious, why not wave the “teacher training” and let people just take and pass the CSET?

Why shouldn’t the same principle apply in the schools? Why should these be treated as some sort of extraterritorial spaces in which normal rules of law and civility do not apply?