Preserving Education, Opportunity, and the American Dream in Michigan

Michigan Department of Education Superintendent Brian Whiston has challenged our state to become a Top 10 Education state in 10 years, but at the rate we are going, we’re headed right to the bottom. The Great Lake State is on track to becoming a state better defined by its continual failure of its students and teachers.

Despite presidential candidates visiting Michigan before our primary elections, the candidates’ treatment of education policy was limited to brief mentions of higher-education issues, or they ignored education completely. The issue of education deserves better attention from those seeking our votes for the Oval Office.

Instead of just talking about education, we need to talk about TEACHERS.

My personal story is telling of one of the systemic problems with how we, as a society, view the teaching profession. I chose to leave a chemical engineering doctoral program to become a teacher. I am now a National Board Certified Teacher in mathematics and a Lead Teacher at my school. When people discover I was an engineer and now teach high school math, they look at me with disbelief and pity. Many tell me I made the wrong decision — that I should go back to engineering and leave teaching to others who don’t have the kind of career options that I do. What they are essentially saying is that someone who chooses to teach, is highly educated, has significant industry experience, and has demonstrated the highest standard of teaching available in this country should not be teaching.

I would like to pose the question, “Then who should be teaching your child?”

This kind of attitude is incredibly detrimental and actively prevents teachers from being as effective in their line of work as other professionals in their careers. It is an attitude that we in Michigan need to change, and one that needs to change at the federal level as well.

Teachers are professionals with training and licensure requirements. Yet teaching is the only profession in which a brand new professional is expected to perform the exact same duties as an experienced person on the first day of work. Further, education does not have the standardization that other professions have for entry into the profession, mentoring through the beginning phases of a teacher’s career, and then structured career pathing as the teacher progresses as a professional. We also do not have the autonomy that other professions have to regulate ourselves and to practice our expertise. Teachers in Michigan and throughout the country need and deserve to be recognized for what we are: professionals.

We need effective systems that allow teachers to grow as professionals, mentor our new colleagues, and provide the best educational experience imaginable for all students, regardless of where they live or what their economic or family situations are. We need to be able to perform our (often unimaginably challenging) duties, as professionals, without being hindered by outdated or nonsensical regulations and restrictions. For instance: we need the flexibility to change the structure of a traditional school day if that makes sense in our building. We need the resources to prepare our students for the challenges of post-secondary life, whether that be a trade, a university, or the military. We need to have more of a say in our own professional development so that the profession doesn’t lose the best and brightest minds to other careers, and our students don’t lose the opportunity to be taught by them. We also need to have a voice in policy decisions, because we — teachers — are the ones on the ground, in the classroom, every single day.

The TeachStrong campaign — a national campaign aimed at modernizing and elevating the teaching profession — can help bring us closer to realizing these goals, and help Michigan meet Superintendent Whiston’s challenge. The coalition member organizations of TeachStrong cross party lines, and all of them agree that our students are not being served effectively. I’m a TeachStrong Ambassador because I believe the coalition understands the challenges facing teachers and the educational system writ large, want to make meaningful changes, and have the policy prescriptions to make that a reality. I’m a TeachStrong Ambassador because I have learned the value of my voice this year and want to continue using it.

We are a nation built on the American Dream, a dream that is fundamentally based on education and opportunities. That dream is crumbling here in Michigan. It will continue to crumble unless we come together to address this pressing need to modernize and elevate the teaching profession.