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Just a few months after completing a year as a teaching assistant, Becky Mansell started her first fulltime teaching job in September as a middle school Spanish teacher at Sweet Home Middle School.
A week or two prior, she began working on her master's degree through St. Bonaventure University's Buffalo campus at Hilbert College. She must complete that work within three years to receive a professional certification.
It's a rigorous schedule, to be sure, one that all new teachers must face as they begin their professional careers, but one that Mansell is eager and excited to begin.
"I started my masters program before I started teaching," she said. "But I have a really good department. I feel very lucky I'm in the situation I'm in and landed the way I have."
Mansell sat with experienced educators and other teachers for a recent roundtable discussion hosted by Business First to talk about the challenges of preparing today's teachers. Most agreed the educational landscape in 2004 is very different from 10 years ago, when standards in education meant something entirely different.
The idea that Mansell has just three years to get her full certification, as opposed to the previous five, puts a lot of pressure on new teachers at a time when they should be focusing on preparing work for the children in the class room, rather than their own classwork.
"I think that's a horrible mistake," said Peggy Yehl Burke, dean of the school of education at St. Bonaventure University. "As a first-year teacher, you reall need to focus on being a first-year teacher, not spending nights and weekends on your master's. There's a certain irony that before she started as a teacher she's taking the graduate courses for her professional license."
Burke said the result of the states decision to change the qualification period is that individuals are going into graduate school without any real teaching experience.
"It has fundamentally changed that master's program and puts a lot of pressure on a new practitioner," she said.
Efrain Martinez, principal at the Charter School for Applied Technologies, said another unintended impact is...