On Becoming a Teacher

There are two legitimate reasons to become a teacher. One is for a job abd the other is for a career. Anything else is unnacceptable. And I argue becoming a teacher for a job is unacceptable also.

Teaching for a job means not teaching to learn and not teaching students first. It also means conforming to protocols, circulums, and mandates that are usually irrelevant and irresponsible. A prime example of that is the No Child Left Behind Law. I doubt there is a school district in the country that does not cheat on its NCLB results to make it look like its is complying with and succeding at meeting the NCLB standards and requirements. I know of such unethical practices as not testing juniors who do not have enough credits to qualify to be on track to graduate.
Teachers who have a job make themselves believe the textbook, the worksheets, lab manuals, curriculum guides, the standardized tests, the programed,lock-step procedures have effacacy. And if they don't the blame lies with the student, the parents, televison, poverty, drugs, violence, crime, etc. No responable person will dispute these are obstacles to education and learning but they are not primary or rudimentary.
Teachers who have a job quickly lose sight of the distinctions between teaching and learning. They are fast to trivialize the differences between a learning centered classroom and a teaching centered classroom.
Teachers who have a job mistake control for discipline. They see the need for a rule to cover every possible circumstance or occurance. And consequently are changing the rules to meet gaps and loop holes until the rules are incomprehensible and meaningless. Then compliance to the rules becomes mandatory and arbitrary. Much like NCLB!
Teachers who have a job become professionally and philosophically self-centered and narrow-minded. They become defensive about their clasrooms, their techiniques, and their practices. As they become older and more set in their ways they become secretive. There are several ways to observe this, for example look at a school and find what teachers never accept student teachers or student ovservers.

Teachers who have a career are usually challenging individuals who have difficulty with rules, regimines, formulac instruction and programed learning. The idea of individual difference is fundamental to them and means something vital to their efforts.
Teachers who have careers believe in student-centered, learning-centered schools. furthermore they believe that learning should not be confined inside the walls of a thing callsd a school building. That if the thinng calld education is a process to parpare our children to live and function successfully in the world, then sequestering them inside the walls of an institution for 13 years and then suddelnly saying, "OK, now you are ready to be adults and operate the world and the rest of your lives" is idoitic. Ninty nine percent of the children in kindergarten today, May 2, 2007, will be taking employment in jobs that don't even exist yet. Teachers who have a career realize this and are thinking about how we educate our children for this future.
Teachers who have careers what to help our children become comprehending internalizing readers, articulate clear writers, eloquent trustworthy speakers, tolerant dependable problem solvers, ethical moral citizens, just practacal leaders, diligent honest workers, and courageous humble parents. Those teachers know those qualities are not found or developed in filling out worksheets, diagraming sentences, scoring above the norm on standardized tests, or adding AP credits to a high school transcript.