Criticisms Sting, but Teachers Agree Help Would Be Welcome

Out on education’s front lines Friday, the news that teachers and their training pose a national problem ricocheted across campuses around Los Angeles, sparking some applause and much resentment among men and women used to being caught in the cross-fire of debate.

“It seems that teachers are being singled out and singled out and singled out,” said classroom veteran Joanne Galileo, clutching a bag of cookie dough for a project with her kindergarten students at Third Street School in Hancock Park on Friday morning. “It’s very upsetting.”

Galileo mentors the three new teachers at her school who lack state credentials but are, in her estimation, doing an outstanding job.

But rookie teachers pose a major threat to teacher quality and relying on them risks jeopardizing the future of America’s public school children, according to a national commission, which spent two years studying the way the nation recruits, trains and supports its teachers.

The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future called the widespread practice among school districts of hiring unlicensed teachers a national disgrace. It urged sweeping changes in teacher training

and evaluation programs, licensing requirements and recruitment strategies to end the flow of inadequately prepared teachers into the nation’s classrooms.

Its harsh language in delineating the challenges facing the teaching profession stung many teachers, who felt the barbs were undeserved.

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M.L. Smith, an elementary school teacher in South-Central Los Angeles who did not want her campus identified, said there is little hope of improving the teaching corps as long as teachers are paid “less than the average well-paid mechanic.”

“Upgrade the pay of teachers and you can expect more of them,” said Smith, who has taught for 25 years. “Then you’d draw people into the system who really want to be there.”

Smith said salaries have not kept pace with the escalating demands laid on teachers’ desks over the last few decades. Teachers are expected not just to see that children learn, but to perform “social work” for students from needy homes whose parents often lack basic parenting skills, she said. In Los Angeles, the multitude of languages spoken in the schools complicates the already challenging task of adapting teaching to a wide range of student abilities.

“You really cannot prepare teachers for all that they have to do,” she said.

Yet some teachers agreed with the national commission’s urgent call for reform, and say they will benefit as much as the children they teach.

“I’ve been teaching for 14 years and I’ve seen the enemy and it is us,” said Crenshaw High English teacher Alfee Enciso. “There are 10% [of teachers] in every school that are incompetent. This is why schools are failing. This is why children are failing.”

Enciso applauded the commission’s recommendation that districts adopt a new “peer review” system for evaluating teachers, one that relies on teachers, rather than administrators, to maintain professional standards and help root out those who cannot help their students.

Just as doctors and lawyers have review boards, so there should be review panels for teachers, Enciso said, which would make teachers “fear [for] our jobs” and strive to do better.

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Seth E. Cutler, a bilingual coordinator at Loreto Street School in Cypress Park, has in his 18 years in teaching seen a lot of colleagues--novices and experienced teachers alike--suffer in isolation in their classrooms, afraid to ask for or offer help.

If they are ill-prepared, they often try to hide it. If they are doing well but want to sharpen their skills, they are frustrated by schools’ rigid schedules, which leave no time for collegial discussion or collaboration.

“You can go all day, all year, without seeing another adult,” Cutler said. “That’s scary.”

More than anyone, teachers know the system that produces and supports them is imperfect, that new teachers often leave college lacking the practical knowledge and skills they need to handle a classroom full of wiggly kindergartners or rebellious high school students.

What’s needed in teacher education programs, some say, is a strong dose of reality.

“I think I learned more here, on the job, than I did at Cal State,” said Jose Giron, who teaches fourth and fifth-graders at Loreto Street. “There is so much theory, and so many kids who do not fit the textbook.”

‘It seems that teachers are being singled out and singled out and singled out.’