I’ve read a book “Early Career English Teacher In Action”
chapter 1 introduction. The book mentioned many interesting facts. Firstly I
would like to talk about that 10 percent of new teachers leave after the first
year. I am not quite sure what English education is like in the US but 10
percent is not the small rate. I can feel teaching is not easy with this
number. In japan, teachers have to work harder as well and the rate of teachers
who quit the job within three years is approximately 5 percent. Of course they need to give a
lecture, do a lot of paper works and moreover, they have to be in charge of
club activities. New teachers will be mostly assigned to be a coach in a sport
club. Even though they have never done that before and it is kind of demanding
because basically club activities are held after school and Saturday and Sunday as
well so they hardly get a rest. I think this is one of the reasons why they stop working as a teacher. The author
says that early English teachers got extraordinary pressure and I really agree
with that.
Secondly the teacher evaluation system. Teachers tend to be
evaluated by students’ test scores. I understand it because it’s easy to assess
how good they are but it may lead the education into wrong way. Of course test
scores are important but you can’t decide if the teacher is good or bad with
only test scores.
The author mentioned also what the healthy school is like
and unhealthy school is. I was surprised by that she says that many new
teachers begin their career in unhealthy school though. The working condition
is really important especially for new teachers. They need help but if the
atmosphere in the work is bad, they couldn’t ask for it.
This book’s concept is to tell the narratives to others.
This is great. To share information is important to help teachers. If you are a
new teacher, you can expect what would happen next and could think of the way of
dealing with the problem. The trend is always changing and I thank ,to catch up
with that, stories from the past would be helpful a lot too.
Hiroki, your point about evaluating teachers based on student scores is an issue of contention in the field of education in the United States right now. A lot of professionals in education agree with you, but other professionals say that we need to hold teachers accountable. It's an important issue to consider.
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