#stop gatekeeping education

[anenglishmajorsblog]

How fast someone can hand write an essay on paper is not a good measure of intelligence. We can do better than that!

Source: @explrain on Instagram

[anenglishmajorsblog]

America: We really need teachers! Good ones, too!

People who wants to be teachers: I’d like to become a teacher! How do I become a teacher?

America: go to college, get a Bachelor’s degree at least, get thrown into terrible debt, do a lot of working for free, pay for all the things that an employer would typically pay for, like a background check, agree to be paid unfairly, continue to be required to give us many free hours of service, plus a whole bunch of other shit. And then, we MIGHT give you a job, bitch.

People who want to be teachers: fuck that, I am going into Computer Science.

[anenglishmajorsblog]

Do We Want Teachers or Not?

So I am taking an EDU 200 class, and there are a lot of hoops to jump through to complete it.

I have to complete forty hours of classroom observation. Just to do the observation, I need to have completed 24 credit hours of college prior to enrollment in the course, take and pay for a TB skin test ($16), and get a background check done and be fingerprinted ($48, plus the cost to mail and have all the documents notarized, which is another $15). None of these costs were covered by Financial Aid, and they were all due at once within the first week.

This is expensive and there are a lot of cost and time hurdles. They wonder why teachers are in short supply...

It’s all worth it though, because I am certain of what I want to do. But if I wasn’t, I would quickly abandon this administratively bloated, inefficient, costly, and time-consuming process. 

If we want to have the best chance of getting quality teachers, there shouldn’t be so many barriers and no help. 

I do think it is a great idea to have people be tested for TB and not be criminals; I am not arguing these things. What I am arguing is how I was blindsided with all these expenses. I am lucky that I can afford the costs and time, but others are definitely not so lucky, and my school really needs to do something about it and be upfront about what the course entails.