As an American largely outside of the USA, the school system of the US is unknown to me. It is only through my courses at CU that I am starting to get an idea of the forces and movements that characterize education over here, be they social, economical, cultural or political. Teachers are too often found accountable to interest groups and individuals that have little or no knowledge about education and who unfortunately seem to hold sway over the policies that shape the education of students. A teacher, at any level, should, utopically, only ever be accountable to himself and to the students that he is trying to teach. Unfortunately, the traditional topics of education fall on some problems that can be partiuclarly divisive and sensitive to some of the elements of society. As such, teachers (and hopefully myself in the future) are often held accountable to parents, politicians and other members of the community. My personal opinion would be that non-educators should neither have a hand in education or in deciding how or by whom that education is meted out. However, compromise is essential and as of yet, I am too inexperienced not to change my opinions as I mature in my capacity as an educator.
So far, my limited experiences in education has either been through volunteer sports coaching, tutoring or my fledgling practicum course. However, teaching something to somebody, in whatever capacity, is already very enjoyable for me. Helping somebody « get it », see it when a topic or piece of information goes from unfamilliar to acquired, is great. I had some great teachers in my time in school, but they were too few. For the most part, there were too many people, I hesitate to call them teachers, for whom teaching was just like many other jobs : regardless of what they did, they would probably still get paid at the end of the day. I hope not to be one of those.
