Stricter Requirements for Teaching

So recently I learned of a new rule that my university is going to implement next semester for those looking to enter the teaching field that infuriated me.

Apparently, starting next semester at my university, any student that wishes to enter the teaching field must have and maintain at least a 2.75 GPA or they will be barred from ever entering the teaching program.

The old rule was if your GPA fell below 2.75, you could either take new classes and boost it back up or retake old classes you didn't do well in and boost it that way.

This also applies to new freshmen transferring in from high school: if your GPA was not above 2.75 upon your graduation from high school, you are never allowed in the teaching program EVER. Meaning that they have to take nearly every class and lecture in their four years of high school seriously and with very little room for error to be accepted into the program. Even if you boost your GPA up to a prefect 4.0, they will not admit you back into the program. This is even more unfair for them because of the fact that they have no way of boosting their GPA upon entry to the university.

They're apparently implementing this rule because they wish to acquire more skilled teachers and weed out any that they feel aren't serious enough. However, this has a lot more flaws to me than pros:

1. You'll have to start over from square one and drop your original major entirely because of them barring you, accruing more debt for your new major while shouldering their burden of your old debt that basically made you take classes that are essentially worthless now.
2. You obviously don't get your tuition back or the time you spent in the teaching program if you're kicked out.
3. The student-to-teacher ratio will more likely skyrocket because of lack of certified teachers to fill the positions.

Needless to say, a lot of professors and students were pretty upset at this decision, myself included, seeing as I have a 2.52 GPA and will never be able to get my certification as a teacher now.

So what are your thoughts on this? Do you feel the university's decision was justified or not?

 

I can understand the need to become strict with teaching programs, but I doubt a permanent ban would ever fix the situation any at all. While we are in desperate need of good teachers, I don't think the ban system will work very well until Common Core is completely abolished. If, after a few years, it still doesn't improve the education system, then start looking at stricter ropes for would-be teachers. Banning should only be a last resort though. If you ban too many people from even trying to improve their grades just to get into teaching, we'll eventually run out of teachers that may have had a hard time maintaining 2.75 or better, but would have otherwise been great at teaching and getting students into/interested in the subject. For a while, I hated History, then I ended up getting a teacher that made it absolutely fun. I don't know about his GPA, but if he struggled and was barred from teaching because of his grades, I would never have gotten that chance of taking a history class by a teacher that made the subject more interesting.

 

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT. This is a subject I feel pretty strongly about since it can play such a big role in someone's life and I once wanted to become a teacher.

Teaching is more than just knowing the material.

There are plenty of college professors who know the material but are awful teachers. The same can apply to high school and below.

But Imma be real with you guys for a second. Whenever there's a job opening, there are A TON of people that apply for a single position [I don't remember the exact amount]. I don't know what it's like everywhere else [Long Island is pretty much the definition of a privileged lifestyle], but over here, lowering the count of potential teachers wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

But, I digress, I've had teachers that knew what they were talking about, but were shit as teachers 'cause they had speech impediments or couldn't talk clearly or didn't know how to engage students. I'm not knocking on people with speech impediments or other hindrances, but if you have one you better damn well make sure that people can understand your lessons.

Imo, teaching is about 30% knowing the material, 50% social skills, and 20% experience. My friend and I once taught a lesson in front of the class, [with our teacher making sure what we were teaching was right] ONLY knowing the lesson for that day and the knowledge we had learned in the course up until that day [we were doing teacher takeover for senior year], and people told us that we did pretty good; no college GPA and no teaching license. Granted, we were both pretty smart, but what our teacher commented on afterwords was that people looked like they were genuinely interested in the lesson; maybe just because it was us but I just thought I would share that experience here since I thought it would be relevant. In case you were wondering, it was a history lesson on WWII.

I've never been a REAL teacher before, of course, so take of those percentages what you will. This is what teaching looks like from someone on the outside looking in [who at one point wanted to be a teacher]. Crucify me.

Now, Imma come back to Earth for a minute. Should you expect every class to be fun? No. But wouldn't you agree the best teachers are the ones who make you look forward to their class, even if it's just looking forward to it because you'll learn something interesting?

But there are SO MANY things that go into whether someone is a good teacher or not. Take someone from one of my schools and put them in the inner city, and they probably would be looked at WAY LESS favorably then they are right now. I'm not even got get into everything that would factor into being a teacher cause it would turn this already long post into a full on presentation. My point is that you can't really know if someone is going to be a good teacher or not [barring things like speech impediments or other distractions] until they actually get in front of a class and have to do everything by themselves.

Who knows, maybe this is what they're going for. Maybe they know that they can't control that and are just focusing on what they can control. But there are SO MANY things that can factor into someone's GPA [Life bullshit, bad teachers, a crowded schedule, to name a few] that looking at purely GPA is always going to shave off people who could be really good teachers. You really CAN'T control it, which really makes you wonder whether this is just less about finding more qualified teachers and more about lowering the amount of people who can become teachers. With the numbers on LI as my only source, I'd be inclined to say the latter.

tl;dr

Spoiler

Just read the last paragraph. Sorry for the long post. I hope I don't embarrass myself and say something stupid. I hardly ever make posts this long. I've never been a REAL teacher before, of course. This is what teaching looks like from someone on the outside looking in [who at one point wanted to be a teacher]. Crucify me.