One of my kids had an 8th grade social studies teacher that was a career changer. I remember she had three grown kids. She was very organized and had lots of interesting ideas to get the kids involved. She was confident and seemed to enjoy the kids - and not all teachers do in middle school. He learned a lot there not just about social studies but about how to use a text book, how to prepare for social studies tests, how to study history.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw that one of my kid's HS teachers is brand new to the school, and from a quick google search I learned that they are also brand new to teaching, and have no education degrees, but do have a masters in another field. I am just wondering about how they would have been trained on the MCPS curricula, classroom management skills, school policies and procedures, etc. Would this have happened over the summer? I'm not trying to be critical of them, I just don't understand how this all works for people who don't come out of education degree programs. Thanks for any insight.

Most teachers do not have a degree in education. You should be thankful that someone is your child's teacher, somebody step up to be in a profession where they are over worked and underpaid. First year teacher usually have a mentor, a veteran teacher who has taught for many years.

Why yoild you want a high school teacher to have a degree in education? Their teaching license requires that they have a degree in their content area. There is alot of ignorance on this thread.

I agree. For high school, content specialization is more important than an education degree.

Correct. I don't think anyone would go into elementary teaching with a masters in economics or whatever, but who knows.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw that one of my kid's HS teachers is brand new to the school, and from a quick google search I learned that they are also brand new to teaching, and have no education degrees, but do have a masters in another field. I am just wondering about how they would have been trained on the MCPS curricula, classroom management skills, school policies and procedures, etc. Would this have happened over the summer? I'm not trying to be critical of them, I just don't understand how this all works for people who don't come out of education degree programs. Thanks for any insight.

Most teachers do not have a degree in education. You should be thankful that someone is your child's teacher, somebody step up to be in a profession where they are over worked and underpaid. First year teacher usually have a mentor, a veteran teacher who has taught for many years.

Why yoild you want a high school teacher to have a degree in education? Their teaching license requires that they have a degree in their content area. There is alot of ignorance on this thread.

I agree. For high school, content specialization is more important than an education degree.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not a unique situation - about 40% of the new hires in MCPS teaching positions for this upcoming year have no experience (447 out of 1,078). Between MCPS training and prior education classes, the new teachers make do.

Where do you find those numbers?

They were shown at the MCPS BOE meeting yesterday. Here at the 1 hour and 30 minute mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSNh2g33WJk

Anonymous wrote:It's not a unique situation - about 40% of the new hires in MCPS teaching positions for this upcoming year have no experience (447 out of 1,078). Between MCPS training and prior education classes, the new teachers make do.

Where do you find those numbers?

Would

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw that one of my kid's HS teachers is brand new to the school, and from a quick google search I learned that they are also brand new to teaching, and have no education degrees, but do have a masters in another field. I am just wondering about how they would have been trained on the MCPS curricula, classroom management skills, school policies and procedures, etc. Would this have happened over the summer? I'm not trying to be critical of them, I just don't understand how this all works for people who don't come out of education degree programs. Thanks for any insight.

Most teachers do not have a degree in education. You should be thankful that someone is your child's teacher, somebody step up to be in a profession where they are over worked and underpaid. First year teacher usually have a mentor, a veteran teacher who has taught for many years.

Why yoild you want a high school teacher to have a degree in education? Their teaching license requires that they have a degree in their content area. There is alot of ignorance on this thread.

I have no idea - but I wanted to chime in that my HS chemistry teacher was a 1st year teacher who spent the prior 25 years as a chemical engineer at a large company and he is the reason I have a BS in chemical engineering from a highly ranked university.

When kids balk at learning things and say “I’ll never use this”, someone with real life experience can give tangible examples of how it is used in research and industry. Having a teacher with non-teaching career experience helped paint a picture for me of what a career in STEM could look like when none of the other the adults in my life had that type of job.

For all I know he didn’t know how to conduct teacher conferences and filled out the attendance software incorrectly, but he changed my life.

Yeah those consultant teachers suck. They increase your workload about 25% and its definitely punitive from the start. We are already drowning in busy work and have our planning periods taken away to sub for free and now we have to writebreports and rationales to justify every little decision. Then they discard you. I guess it's training to be admin.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The mentor program in MCPS is not helpful.
It added a ton of stress and felt like information overload in my first year. I was too tired to absorb anything useful from my mentor teacher and she kept assigning busy work that I had to get done on top of my teaching responsibilities. It also felt punitive as they have to recommend you continuing for your second year so I was too scared to share any serious problems with her.

Do you cooperating teacher? A mentor can’t assign you anything since they do not evaluate you.

There is a mentor teacher program in MCPS. It is mandatory for teachers who are coming in without any training. These mentor teachers are not at your school and their full time job is to train/evaluate teachers in their first year. They pop in and do monthly evaluations, etc. I did not find it helpful and it just added to the stress. It was actually the worst part of my first year. The teacher had no clue about my content area and couldn’t help me with it

They're called consulting teachers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The mentor program in MCPS is not helpful.
It added a ton of stress and felt like information overload in my first year. I was too tired to absorb anything useful from my mentor teacher and she kept assigning busy work that I had to get done on top of my teaching responsibilities. It also felt punitive as they have to recommend you continuing for your second year so I was too scared to share any serious problems with her.

Do you cooperating teacher? A mentor can’t assign you anything since they do not evaluate you.

There is a mentor teacher program in MCPS. It is mandatory for teachers who are coming in without any training. These mentor teachers are not at your school and their full time job is to train/evaluate teachers in their first year. They pop in and do monthly evaluations, etc. I did not find it helpful and it just added to the stress. It was actually the worst part of my first year. The teacher had no clue about my content area and couldn’t help me with it

Just want to point out that other states, such as VA, have a free online database for anyone to search for certification status. I’m shocked that MD doesn’t have one. My child goes to a Title 1 school and I have to request in writing to the principal if I want to know my child’s teacher’s certification status.

Anonymous wrote:The mentor program in MCPS is not helpful.
It added a ton of stress and felt like information overload in my first year. I was too tired to absorb anything useful from my mentor teacher and she kept assigning busy work that I had to get done on top of my teaching responsibilities. It also felt punitive as they have to recommend you continuing for your second year so I was too scared to share any serious problems with her.

Do you cooperating teacher? A mentor can’t assign you anything since they do not evaluate you.

I don’t think it is possible to know what someone doesn’t have from a Google search. You’ll really only know what they decided to put online or someone else shared about them. Most career changers are hired through university partnerships with MCPS that include 2-3 months of training before the candidate begins in the fall. People are unlikely to include that on their linked in or whatever and will wait until they’ve earned the MAT or MEd.

The mentor program in MCPS is not helpful.
It added a ton of stress and felt like information overload in my first year. I was too tired to absorb anything useful from my mentor teacher and she kept assigning busy work that I had to get done on top of my teaching responsibilities. It also felt punitive as they have to recommend you continuing for your second year so I was too scared to share any serious problems with her.