I’m ashamed of my union’s hopeless devotion to the “credentialed teacher.” The knowledgeable teacher, the motivated teacher, the teacher who excels in his/her content area–these hardly merit a mention from those who “know what’s best for our children.” As a teacher, I should know, right? The sad part is, my credentialing experience did little to increase my “effectiveness” as an educator. My content area was largely ignored, but we did spend quite a bit of time on making sure all of us prospective teachers were aware of how to modify lessons for students of varying cultural backgrounds. The problem comes with knowing enough about your subject to design an effective lesson to modify. 95% of my expertise in my content area comes from my undergraduate work and my own study and practice.
I’m sure there are pockets of effective credentialing programs churning out promising teachers, but this asinine loyalty to “the credential” is really making a subgroup (the cult of the credential)educators look like insecure fools.
