Reflection 1

In today's society, to become a teacher you have to attend college, pass competency exams, be background checked and fingerprinted, and become board certified. Being a teacher is seen as career today. So, it amazed me how in colonial times being a teacher was regarded with little or no respect.

Teachers in those times hardly received and preparations for the job, some elementary teachers never even attended secondary school themselves! Many only learned to teach due to apprenticeships to master teachers and because they were indentured servants paying for their way to America by teaching for a few years.

The teachers that were teaching at a secondary level in Latin grammar schools, academies, and as private tutors received some college but more often in Europe then America. Teaching was seen as a temporary job not a career. Many of the teachers that taught at the elementary level were just teenagers and would only do so for a about a year or two. Others had questionable characters, records have been found stating that a great deal of teachers were fired for drinking and stealing.

Things started to change for the better when Reverend Samuel Hall established a normal school in Concord, Vermont. This school provided elementary school graduates with training in teaching skills. Hall's normal school was the stepping stone in schools in America. The next normal school was state supported and established by Horace Mann in Lexington, Massachusetts. These normal schools provided a two year teacher training program, dealing with academic subjects combined with methodology.

Today we have Teach for America (TFA). TFA recruits highly motivated and talented people who find themselves in very distressed schools. These recruits are placed in schools that have higher problems finding teachers. People that support TFA say that the volunteers become excellent teachers. The volunteers are also eagerly accepted because they are usually sent to a school where finding a teacher was more a challenge.

So as opposed to the early 20th century, being a teacher has become a whole new ball game. Whereas teachers didn't have many supporters before, they now have unions and whole organizations offering them support.