Christopher Moore is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Coastal Carolina University. He lives in Myrtle Beach, SC with his wife and two children.I used to teach high school physics in a public school. I was pretty good at it too. During my tenure I sent more students into college physics programs than any teacher before me. My students chalked up higher scores on standardized physics tests (such as Advanced Placement) than any previous. I began an online venture called ilovephysics.com that connected my classes to technology unheard of before. I loved my job and my employers liked me.
So of course I left the public school system. Not because of unruly students. The students were great. I had no problem with parents. I had plenty of funding for equipment. I made plenty of money ($39,000 for 9 months work isn’t bad at all!)
I left because otherwise, the school system was going to fire me!
I wasn’t qualified to teach. I never got a degree in education. I’d never even taken a course in education. I was a little busy finishing an M.S. degree in Applied Physics. I also never took a linear algebra course as an undergraduate. Apparently, that is required to be qualified to teach physics in Virginia. Nevermind the graduate linear algebra course I took (in which I got an A). My advanced degree and high GRE scores (both regular and physics subject) don’t cut it.
Did it matter that I was qualified to teach both physics and chemistry at the university level? Was my actual previous experience teaching at the university level considered? Nope.
This isn’t just a problem in Virgina. It’s a problem in all fifty states as well as other countries.
Here’s a story about a professor in the UK:
Dr Wolfe has been teaching at the school for two years. The rules are that he should have “qualified teacher status” (QTS). Part of that is a requirement to have at least a grade C in a maths GCSE … There can be no compromise on the need for the QTS …
David Wolfe is emeritus professor of physics at the University of New Mexico, where he used to run the physics department. He has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
He said it would be easy for him to pass a maths GCSE – a qualification for 15 year olds – but, at 65, he was too old for that sort of thing.
“If there’s one thing that a person who becomes a professor has done, we may not be the cleverest but we’ve passed a lot of exams and I’ve taken enough in my life,” he told BBC News.
He accepts there need to be standards for teachers.
“But there also need to be exceptions made in special circumstances, especially given the situation where there is a great lack of teachers in a given subject like physics or maths.”
You bet. Requirments for “qualified” status need to be flexible. As the article discusses, the UK has added flexibility to its system, so Dr. Wolfe can continue to teach. But the UK’s counterparts in the US have not been so quick to recognize a solution to a problem.
The No Child Left Behind act has actually hampered a states ability to be flexible. Virginia does offer an alternative route to licensure. I initially got a job via this route. The problem is, that No Child Left Behind places a cap on the amount of “unqualified” teachers that a school can have before being labeled “failing”. Schools don’t like the “failing” label, so they avoid “unqualified” teachers at all costs. Virginia’s alternative route has its problems, but No Child Left Behind makes schools less likely to hire teachers that follow it, anyway. So a well intentioned and fairly effective state law has been trumped by federal bueracrats who know nothing of Viginia’s situation.
This is why I was facing a pink slip. In order to be a “qualified” teacher, I would have had to take five education courses, sit for three seperate exams (called PRAXIS), and go take that undergraduate linear algebra course. The school system was willing to pay for some of it, but I would have had to chip in over $1000. Before No Child Left Behind, I wasn’t worried, because the school system didn’t fire good teachers, even if they didn’t jump through all the hoops.
Post No Child Left Behind, I had two years to get it all done or I’d be pointed towards the door.
So I did what any self-respecting person with a graduate degree, cum laude honors, published research, a list of scholarship awards, and multiple private sector job offers would have done. I quit.
So why is there a teacher shortage in math and physics? Hmmmm.
What about last year, when you started the website, when you taught at a private school where they don’t require all of these teaching classes, and where No Child Left Behind doesn’t matter?
I quit the public school system and went to work at a private school. Let me be more clear: I LOVED teaching at the public school I started at. I left that school because I had to (well … I didn’t have to, I just couldn’t jump through the hoops fast enough). I went to St. Catherine’s to avoid hoop jumping. I LOVED teaching at St. Catherine’s. The administration was FAR more supportive and I was ALWAYS treated as a professional. When I jump back into teaching, you can bet that it will be a private school.
A note to those I taught at St. Catherines: Leaving was the hardest decision I have had to make in a long while. Right now we would be through with nasty vectors and I would probably be taking a pounding in the stomach with a sledge hammer. I miss that.
newton
Galileo
I’m so glad I found this page… To be honest, I think it’s funny how many politicians and people in political debates are afraid to question “no child left behind” when every educator who has had to deal with it will tell you that it’s garbage.
I really think because of the said “hoops” that you have to jump through to teach, it really ruins the quality of the teachers we have. Personally, I’m now wondering if the reason 3 of the best teachers we had at our school quit because of these regulations (one of which being a PhD.) I notice the replacement for the computer science teacher isn’t even a computer science or math major. Why? I doubt it’s because an English major with no prior experience in programming was the most qualified man they could find to teach outside of these regulations.
Even worse than what we’re seeing right before our eyes is the effects that these changes will have in 1-10 years when these are the students out competing in the real world. I think it is having a huge negative effect outside of highschool as well, and not just because kids got only half an education in a public school.
I can imagine schools have a really hard time getting well qualified computer science teachers (well qualified as in having computer science degrees and experience, not education degrees.) Why teach when you can have a rewarding job in the private sector that pays twice as much?
Although I point out that money is not the fundemental issue. For me, freedom is the most important issue. I liked teaching because of the freedom I had. I get paid almost nothing to do research right now. But I have freedom. I get to play with ideas. I get to build things. I get to discover and explore. And when this gig is up, I’ll most likely go back to teaching, either at a private school or by starting my own private school.
I couldn’t get the trackback thingy to work, so here is my link, and here is my excerpt:
http://blamp.com/blog/2006/04/kips-law-sighting-michigan-education.html
Yes, I can relate. I hold a BA cum laude, BPhil and DPhil (PhD) degrees plus 10 years university teaching experience as a casual lecturer, but that does not qualify me to teach. I have to take a DipEd to teach in Australia. The narrow-mindedness and inflexible bureacracy is amazing. That being said, it should be good to get some advice on classroom management of teenagers as university teaching does not really demand exactly the same behavioural skill set. However, it’s another year of foregone earnings. Fortunately I have a spouse who will support this further endeavour, which will resolve our academic two-body problem. I will also get to spend my daughter’s last year before primary school without a full-time job, which could be good for work-life balance. It is the family-friendly nature of school teaching that attracts me, rather than the intellectual stimulation which will probably be a lot less than at university.
You know what it’s called? It’s called “FOLLOW THE DAMN RULES!” I don’t care how “overqualified” you are. If you’re not following the rules of the state, GOODBYE. Easy as that…
Paul, you miss the point. I was following the rules of the state. The Commonwealth of Virginia had a great system for bringing in physics/math teachers, which are hard to find. We’d come through the alternative route and then receive the necessary training in classroom management, etc. that alephgirl mentions above. We’d then recieve teaching liscensure. It wasn’t that hard a process.
The problem was that the federal government stuck its nose in the locality’s business. We in Virginia had a solution to a problem that worked failry well. The federal government forced a change in the rules during the middle of the game. They also made creative solutions to real problems nearly impossible. Our school system would have been literally punished keeping me on, and could have risked federal funding if they had too many teachers on an alternative route. That made such an option not really much of an option any more.
Yes. Follow the rules. But bitching about the rules because they are stupid is a God-given, and very American right and past-time.
I now have a Ph.D. in physics. I study physics education and pedagogy for a living. I’m slowly becoming an expert in scientific reasoning and teaching physics to non-science majors (like those you would find in a high school.) I conduct workshops with elementary and middle school teachers on teaching techniques in physical science. All of that said, I’m still not “qualified” to teach physics at the local high school.
Hi,
I am just discovering this thread because I would really like to leave research and go into teaching. I have a Ph.D. in physics and am currently a postdoc. I am looking at small colleges but thought to consider high schools as well. This thread is very discouraging to me, because I had hoped this would be a good route for me to go. As a coincidence, I am strongly considering Virginia since it is my home state (I am currently in the Netherlands). Is there any advice you could give me? Try for private schools? I do not have a lot of teaching experience at this level, but was assuming that the need for teachers would be to my advantage. Perhaps not.