Who will be the Next Great Teacher?

We have spent much time and effort recently identifying what a good teacher will know and be able to do. The TESOL/NCATE* P–12 Professional Teaching Standards (2010), for example, aim to capture the “professional expertise needed by ESL educators to work with language minority students” (TESOL, 2011). Additionally, each of our own institutions likely has a document or two describing what a good teacher does (e.g., a state’s Department of Education ESOL Teacher Standards, student teaching evaluations, or listed criteria for a passing grade in practicum/field experiences). These documents help us envision the proficiencies a teacher candidate leaving our programs ought to have. However, what about identifying promising incoming teacher candidates? What characteristics indicate that a potential teacher candidate could be a great teacher?

Recently, I took over coordination of my university’s elementary education program, so identifying who will make a great teacher (and how our program might identify “great teacher” characteristics in an applicant) has been on my mind. Lots of people have lots of ideas. A colleague in the Mathematics Department, for example, suggested we bar any candidate with a low ACT score on the mathematics portion of the exam from elementary education; he suggested a score of 22 as a cut off, which would have put me out of the running!

Considering our own field of TESOL, what are desirable characteristics in applicants to our TESOL programs? An administrator at one of my former institutions once asked me to bar nonnative English speakers from our K–12 ESOL endorsement program, saying that school principals simply would not accept them as legitimate English teachers. (I hope we all agree this was, at minimum, an uninformed request.) On the flip side, my colleagues and I are now considering barring applicants without second language proficiency. In addition, what about applicants’ test scores and GPAs? What about their experiences (or lack thereof) with diversity, travel, teaching, and language learning? Do these predict that a candidate will be a great teacher?

The answer is yes, and no, and maybe. It is not the case, in my view, that these characteristics tell us nothing about a candidate, but it is also not the case that these characteristics tell us everything. If only we could know that an applicant with a high GPA (or any other particular indicator) will certainly become a great teacher (and a low GPA holder will certainly become a poor teacher), our agonizing over applications would be at an end.

For me, the search for the ideal ESOL teacher program applicant is as much about the program they hope to enter as it is about the applicants themselves. As I sift through applications, I wonder how each candidate’s unique set of characteristics would require our program to provide particular coursework and experiences to propel her or him toward our expectations of what a good teacher knows and can do. Can we accept all comers? Certainly, we cannot, but the process of learning to teach is complex—even idiosyncratic—enough for me to feel compelled to give the occasional unorthodox, nontraditional, low-math-scoring, but committed and enthusiastic applicant the chance to come see if they might have the stuff to be the next great teacher.

*NCATE (National Council of Accreditation for Teacher Education) has now become CAEP (Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation).

Jenelle Reeves

REFERENCES

TESOL International Association. (2010). P–12 Professional Teaching Standards (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Author.

TESOL International Association. (2011). TESOL/NCATE Standards for P-12 Teacher Education Programs. Retrieved from http://www.tesol.org/advance-the-field/standards/tesol-ncate-standards-for-p-12-teacher-education-programs

Dr. Jenelle Reeves is the current chair of the Teacher Education Interest Section.  She is a teacher educator and educational researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she investigates teacher identity and  teacher thinking about teaching with English learners.  You can reach Dr. Reeves at jreeves2@unl.edu.