Why do we trust teachers to prepare our children for adult life when most of them have never left school?

I hear where you are coming from. I used to have this philosophy in college. If the professor, especially in education or business courses, never had a job in that field, I dropped the course and signed up for a different one. I just felt that theoretical knowledge goes only so far.

But, for K-12 it is a bit different. I do secretly applaud the business teacher who does taxes on the side or the history teacher who used to work in a museum but those are teachers are rare.

It just isn’t possible to do that nowadays. First of all, why would someone leave a successful career such as historical research, baseball, statistical research, or nursing to go back to school to get an entirely new degree to make half the money (or less) as a history teacher, a baseball coach, a math teacher, or a biology teacher? It usually isn’t going to happen.

Second, a teacher isn’t qualified usually to go professional in their area. I have a master’s in history but I’d be lucky to get an entry level government history job. And research is out of the question. Those are almost always tenure driven spots at colleges which means a PhD. And if I had my PhD, I wouldn’t be teaching high school anyway.

I do have a friend who taught for five years, had a PhD in Computer Programming and was teaching high school with me. I asked her why high school and she said she didn’t need the money and always wanted to teach high school. Then after the stock market bottomed out a few years ago, she was wiped out and needed money to continue her extravagant lifestyle. So she took her PhD and resume out for a run to many of the computer firms. She found out that all of her hands on experience was obsolete and would she have to retrain to get a job in the field. So faced with 2-3 more years of college or tech training on top of her PhD, she decided to instead take 9 hours to get an add on administrative certification and is now a principal.

Now I did have an outside job before I taught. I was a retail sales manager for 5 years and an employee for 3 years prior to that before I went into teaching.

Now does that give me an advantage in teaching? I’m not sure. I do have different skills than other teachers. I can tell students what’s what in an interview. I can tell them what employers look for and expect. I can tell them what it is like to work 70 hours a week and your only guaranteed day off is Christmas.

BasicalIy, I can given them real life reasons why they need to stay in school.

But does it help me teach my topic any better? No, it doesn’t.

I am a student first off, and I absolutely agree. From my own personal experience I have had teachers that both worked outside of school for many years before becoming teachers and then I’ve had the straight out of university teachers and I will absolutely say probably 80-90% of the time the teacher who worked previously was not seemed more knowledgeable about the subjects they were speaking of, they were also able to relate the information to “real world” situations. Teachers without that experience of a working life can only offer you the facts from the teacher’s guide (which is how a lot of them teach). I had one teacher who had only a single previous teaching experience which was in Africa, he was an engineer who worked on oil rigs around the world which gave him the chance to travel a large portion of the world, he taught me 10th grade science and he was in no way relying on the teachers guide, he tried to use as many real life examples and his personal knowledge to teach the class and so far it was one of the classes I’ve learned the most in and when a teacher is able to actually teach the material you can absorb the information for the future, rather then remembering for the test/exam and then its out the next day which happens a lot. I had a business management teacher who would always point out the window and say “In the real world…” with multiple expressions afterwards. Although it was kind of cheesy you realize she was being honest that you don’t get chances after chances in the working world, there’s not opportunity to slack off, you have to work hard for what you earn in whichever career path you choose. I’m just making the point that through teachers with working experience they are able to relate the actual class work to real life situation/jobs/experiences they have had and in the end that gives a student the opportunity to not only learn the work but also get a better knowledge so its not a shock once we are out of university/college or even high school. I think real life experience should become a more dominant role in the hiring process rather then teaching experience.

I am not saying that teachers without the experience are not qualified and I absolutely agree they are under paid for what they do and a lot they have to put up with, what I’m saying is that having a relevant real life job to the subject your teaching in certainly gives you an upper edge on the topic and a different perspective then someone who hasn’t gained that experience because they’ve worked their full time job as a teacher since university.

People are quick to make negative comments about teachers without even knowing what they are talking about. I am a teacher. Yes, I have been in school a really long…. long time preparing to teach your children. Teachers just don’t go from the lecture halls straight into the classroom. We are required to do many hours of observation and have field experiences with students. We have to student teach. Most of us work in the “outside world” as you call it, in order to pay for school or to supplement our poor salaries. Teaching is a job… a career that lasts more than just the regular school day hours. We take our work home with us. To assume we don’t know about the working life is a really ignorant. We work hard. It is just sad that people like you don’t realize all we do and give us the respect we deserve.

The same way we trust doctors who’ve never left the hospital.

Trust me, teaching school IS a working life. Having worked in retail at many jobs, including retail management, I can attest that teaching is a full-time job.

Your question focuses on where teachers come from. Would you want a teacher who’d never been to school?

I, personally, was in a teacher ed program at my university for people who were reentering from other careers. We had carpenters, painters, sales reps, and mechanics. Craftsmen of all kinds, housewives, and real estate agents. Guess what? Several of these ‘real world’ candidates didn’t finish the program because of how rigorous is was. They were either dismissed or chose to quit and go back to their previous jobs.

By the way, I’ll bet your friendly neighborhood swimming instructor is a pretty good swimmer.

Great question!

I have been a HS math teacher for 10 years and at times I still feel and act like a kid:)

I feel like teachers have on foot in the “real world” and one foot in the “school world.” I think this gives us a great perspective to share with our students. We deal with the same everyday problems as other occupations.

BTW, I see way to many “real world” parents crippling their children by not raising them with a sense of reality and responsibility, or just a lack of parenting. Maybe the better question is why are some people choosing to become parents when some of them are still children?

What do you know about teachers? You’re making an extremely sweeping generalization that I, quite frankly, find offensive. Having plenty of “outside world” experience myself (seeing as how I am indeed a part of the outside world), I feel completely competent to prepare children for adult life. I especially feel completely competent compared to the many messed up parents who have more “life experience” than a coked-out prostitute.

I CAN say that this question might be better suited to college professors, especially those who live on campus. It’s been my experience that THEY have been caught up in the university world that they’re a bit far-removed from reality…But again, that’s just been my experience. I certainly wouldn’t say it holds true for all of them, or even for most of them.

I guess we teachers are just hermits then that never leave the cave. While we were in high school guess what? We had jobs in the “real world”. When we went to college guess what? We had jobs in the “real world”. During the school year most of us work a second job because teaching does not pay enough to pay the bills. So I guess you could say that teachers do much more than teach. Teaching is what we do, not what we are.

What about the teachers who to work in the “outside world” WHILE they’re teaching, just so they can make a decent living? Most teachers I know work during the summer, and many work a second job evenings and weekends.

I truely disagree with your way of thinking dear. I am going to attend college in the fall for english education.. Teachers are awesome people because they spend so much time in school. They struggle to be in school, college isnt free all of the time, most teachers have to pay loans and such and how to they aquire the money to pay for it? Besides you would rather trust your children’s education to someone who doesnt have one themselves? Just because teachers are and have been in school for a long time doesnt mean they dont have lives or problems..once you step out of your parent’s house and from under their protection you are in the real world…dispite where or how you choose to live…They may not know about settling for jobs, they learn for their careers. Dont you want your child to go to college anyway??? Well you can rest assured that your child’s teacher has been there and done that, maybe still doing that.

Well, we don’t because we home school, but I am going to be reading the responses to this question with great interest.

Edit:

I see that teachers can get just as defensive when it is suggested that they live/work in an artificial environment, as do many home school parents when told we do not raise our children in the real world because they do not attend a conventional school!

Interesting, I guess we are not so different after all.