Chapter Summary

	Teachers, Schools, and Society by Sadker & Sadker
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Chapter 15: Your First Classroom

Chapter Summary

Teachers make a difference. Studies underscore that, dollar for dollar, investments in teacher qualifications and training directly and substantially improve student achievement.
Teachers provided with sufficient support can move through a series of stages: survival, consolidation, renewal, and maturity. At each level, the teacher's influence becomes more powerful as the teacher's focus moves from personal concerns (such as classroom management) to broader educational issues (school strategies that could enhance student learning).
School districts are implementing a variety of induction programs designed to assist first-year teachers. Mentors, or consulting teachers, work with intern teachers to help them succeed in their new position. These mentors provide both personal and professional support, as well as observe and evaluate new teachers skills. Classroom observations of teachers are done not only by mentors but also by supervisors or colleagues. When other teachers do the observation, the approach is called peer review.
Professional development has become an integral part of a teacher's life, not just for new teachers but for all teachers. Effective personal development is directly related to a teacher's work, links subject content with teaching skills, uses problem solving, and is research-based and supported over time.
Educational reform advocates are reshaping schools to build learning communities, more intimate and personal educational climates. These changes include smaller size, looping to increase student-teacher connections, block scheduling for longer and more in-depth study, and broadening of the teacher's role.
Focused resumes, comprehensive portfolios, and effective interviewing skills are useful strategies available to new teachers seeking that first teaching position.
One of the reform recommendations established the National Board for Professional Teacher Standards to identify and assess superior educators, who are identified as board-certified teachers. This is one of several efforts designed to increase the professional status of teaching.
Merit pay and career ladders are two other efforts aimed at professionalizing teaching. Merit pay offers teachers more money based on various criteria, including gains in student performance, typically measured by standardized tests; teacher performance, as measured by outside evaluators; individualized plans, in which teachers have a voice in setting their own goals; and the nature of the teaching assignment. Each of these approaches is controversial. Career ladders, on the other hand, offer teachers increases in salary based on their competence and advance teachers through increasing levels of job responsibility. Some argue that the problems of this approach mirror those of merit pay, while others insist that career ladder programs offer room for true professional improvement.
The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest professional and employee association in the nation. Formed during the second half of the 1800s, initially it was slow to work for the needs of its members. (In its early days, women were not even admitted.) During the 1960s and 1970s, the NEA became a stronger advocate of teachers' rights. In the 1980s and 1990s, it refined its position on a variety of educational reform proposals while exploring merger possibilities with the AFT.
When teachers' unions from the Midwest affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1916, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was formed. While significantly smaller than the NEA, the AFT has historically taken a more militant position, demonstrated by its early support of teacher strikes. Under the longtime leadership of Albert Shanker, the AFT has changed its image from that of a scrappy union to that of an important force in education reform.
Today both the NEA and the AFT offer a range of services, including magazines, journals, and other professional communications; legal assistance; workshops and conferences; assistance in collective bargaining; and political activism.

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