With that said, many many teachers in Los Angeles are not credentialed, they get an “emergency credential” that allows them to start teaching right away because there lacks so many qualified people.

Either way, don’t blow a statement like that out of proportion. I’m quite sure that Obama will offer much the same program to help our vets retrain for civilian life. I’m currently working with some vets to retrain in the high tech field. If McCain would have said lets get vets in high tech, I wouldn’t have assumed there just going to through soldiers in data centers.

The reality is that we have thousands of people coming home, who have sacrificed their lives for us, and need something new to do.

Essentially, I agree with ‘Freiddie’, ‘Colin J’ and Lockwood’ to some extent – qualifications and background knowledge are key. Confidence in the classroom comes from knowing your stuff and having a solid base to teach concepts from. It also allows those who graduate to first get a B.A, B.Sc, etc, before getting an additional teaching accreditation.

This allows the option to take another career path if they might discover that teaching is not for them. This is also true if they do what many beginning teachers do and drop out of teaching on an average of three years, because of many other factors – discouraged and disillusioned teachers who had their passion for teaching destroyed cannot be left without other options to work, which is true whatever your background may be.

I also agree with quite a few others in terms of how teaching is not ‘easy’, nor is it particularly understood as a discipline by many. That is reflected in low pay, low tertiary-entrance scores to enter into teaching courses and general lack of regard for teachers in society. Some of this is reflected in the WA Twoomey report – which I linked to originally, here: http://tinyurl.com/4yvh9n

That was something I referenced in passing at Dragon*Con, much to the horror of many who couldn’t believe that ‘teaching could be ill-regarded as a career choice’!

In short [this is short?? ] – yes, I’m certain that the military is an excellent source for disciplined, engaging and keen teachers. But to have no back-up plan for people who might then leave teaching as a profession is unwise.

I have been in the Navy 21 years, have a Master’s Degree and teach at the University Master’s and Bachelor’s level. I have taught, in one way or another, since before I entered. The Navy spent a lot of time and money teaching me how to teach, develop curricula, and think. Why waste that investment?

The military has its share of bad teachers, as does CIVLANT. Rank/experience does not equate to teaching ability any more than being a good educator makes you a great Dean or administrator.

We need to focus on clear teaching competencies and ensure all meet them. The military has equivalencies for in service experience and classes for their civilian classroom counterpart. This is an outcomes-oriented effort

The challenge, in my not so humble opinion, is retooling the now civilian educators for the Web 2.0 multi-tasked, socially networked you-tube generation they will be teaching. A population much different than they left and without the supports they enoyed on active duty.

As with many ideas–it is not the concept that is scary, but the details of its implementation.

Wow… that would be so awesome!

Still, McCain made it sound like he wanted to waive all certification requirements, which would be a horrible idea. Or maybe he misunderstood the program? In any case, he doesn’t have a very good track record for communicating with the public. It honestly makes me wonder why town hall meetings are supposed to be his strong-suit.

He could have phrased it better and coming as it did after a scathing and largely ill-informed indictment of education as a general “boogeyman” to scare people with (and his withering put-down of women’s health issues), it just sounded like he wanted to fling folks coming home from the war right into the classroom… a scary thought for BOTH the soldiers and the kids…

So what to do? Let anyone do anything? That’s hardly a good solution. We have to have minumum standards for all professions. Just because we all went to school, doesn’t mean we all know what it’s like to teach. Teaching IS hard.

I have worked hard for over a decade at it, and I still work hard every day to learn and become better at it.

I agree fully with Pam, that support and training for those that want to learn to teach is necessary. But don’t simply throw unqualified instructors in front of kids. They deserve better. And note that qualified doesn’t always mean good. A better way of determining qualifications and competencies is perhaps in order as well.

In the 1980′s I had a Calculus professor who did not speak English. I know for a fact that Calculus is very difficult to learn on your own, because my class had to.

In the 1990′s I had to teach my Daughter Algebra because the education major assigned to teach the class could not. She knew next to nothing about math. Everyone including the school administration admitted she could not, but other then offering to refer parents to tutors nothing was done.

In 2000′s one of my son’s favorite teachers was a former police officer, because that was the only class he had were they could study without students disrupting the class.

Former military in the classroom is not a perfect solution, but doing nothing is not an option either.

During my time in the military I went to a lot of classes. I also trained a lot of other Airmen in the fields in which I held knowledge.

In my leadership classes I learned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and different methods of quality control and quality assurance.

In my electronics classes I became confident in everything from semiconductor theory to digital logic.

But as a civilian, when I went back to college, I had to take classes over the same subjects I had already had while enlisted.

And even though I already understood how to apply Ohm’s law, I learned that there was an unforeseen depth that I hadn’t suspected. Maxwell’s equations nearly broke my brain but after I’d slogged my way through ‘em a lot of things made more sense!

I came to realize that there’s a difference between training and education. Being trained gets the job done, but being educated allows for a deeper understanding.

Of course, when I trained Airmen in the military I had one advantage that you don’t have. They had been ordered to complete all their work – and failure to turn in assignments completed and on time could result in punishment. Anything from push ups to a black mark in your Promotion Fitness folders.

Wouldn’t you love to be able to tell a student, “You call this complete? You suck! Drop and give me 50! By Friday you’d better be able to complete 30 problems over Hooke’s Law or I’ll have you cleaning bathrooms with a toothbrush all weekend!”