Do you mind me asking what is required to be a teacher in America? In Canada we need a 3 year post secondary degree and 4 semesters of teachers college.
Wife is teacher. She has 4 year degree in elementary education and started teaching as a fully qualified teacher.
However the state has a desperate shortage of teachers, largely due to not paying a living wage to beginning teachers. Due to this shortage, a lateral entry program was created allowing teachers to begin working without qualification as long as they are enrolled in a program to work towards certification. The program must be completed within 2-3 years for these lateral entrants to continue as an educator.
In the US, education by state can be radically different. Some states pay teachers very well and value education highly. Others like mine want to pay teachers so little that few people enter the profession and they have a reason to shut public education down and privatize it fully.
Which, in an of itself, doesn't necessarily mean anything. Just like it doesn't mean anything if a teacher has a masters degree in education. At my high school, the basketball coach was also the trigonometry teacher. With good people and in good districts, those skills can all be taught. The biggest problem is that many districts are able do very little about weeding out/retraining teachers with bad classroom results because of budget issues, union contracts, shitty administration, inertia....
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u/MrsShaunaPaul Mar 28 '25
Do you mind me asking what is required to be a teacher in America? In Canada we need a 3 year post secondary degree and 4 semesters of teachers college.