Mom Is Teaching

I’m gonna remind you of this story in a later post, sorry to be writing backwards, sometimes it just happens that way.

Remember me telling you about the proficiency’s that schools have to meet and how teachers are suppose to be highly qualified and if the students don’t reach certain test scores then “experts” are brought in to teach the teachers how to teach…you know the ones, the teachers in your child’s classroom that went to school to learn to teach but now they have a retired teacher pretending to be an expert teaching them how to teach again.  Get that?

Anyway, there is a man I know….we shall call him Mac, ok.  Obviously that is not his real name. 

Mac was in medical school, all set to do his residency and his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.  He didn’t finish his residency.  Fast forward, Mac needs a job, obviously. 

Mac is a doctor ok…are you following me.  He finished medical school and was ready to enter residency, but couldn’t….and so, our school system hired him to teach high school math.  I am sure that he was quite qualified to teach the math and I saw him in action, his methods were equally well. 

The system allowed him to do that for 3 years.  But, because he did not hold a teaching certificate nor was he “highly qualified”, he was not hired back for the fourth year.  School starts and they need a science teacher.  Again, I’m fairly certain that this man is more than qualified to teach high school biology.  And, he did.  For three years that’s what he did.  But that fourth year came and…he still had no certificate, nor was he highly qualified.  He had an MD but no teaching certificate.  So, he wasn’t re-hired.

And, this same scene happened yet again at another school.  He taught remedial math.  Think he was qualified?  But, he didn’t have that teaching certificate, nor was he highly qualified.  So, out with him.

But, get this, they hired him as a substitute to teach the class.  He was a substitute, he didn’t have to be qualified or have a certificate or…anything.  He obviously couldn’t sustain his family on that kind of money and was fortunate enough to return to medical school to do his residency.

But, get this, a kindergarten teacher at a school near us had a baby this past summer.  She didn’t go back to work until school had already been in session for 6 weeks.  Guess who taught her class?  A teacher’s aid, no certificate, no highly qualified, just simply a substitute.

Is this system screwed up or is it just me?