From Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan’s column in the Alaska Dispatch clarifying his remarks that teaching degrees aren’t as challenging as engineering degrees. Full disclosure: I dropped out of a teacher certification program because it was tortuously vacuous. I decided to get a masters in creative writing instead.
(T)he facts show that the countries that are outperforming the U.S. are doing a better job of consistently attracting top students into the teaching profession through a combination of strategies, including more rigorous and challenging college instruction and financial incentives for entering teaching as a professional career path. The point I was trying to convey is that we should examine those strategies and implement those that make sense and will help improve our student results.
Lynn. Amanda here. Thanks for that.
Lynn, if you are sincerely an aspiring educator of our children, I would encourage you to proofread your posts before submitting. ‘Asmire’ appears to be a typo and you intended to write that you ‘admire’ the Mayor and Amanda. You incorrectly used an apostrophe after ‘college’ and normally ‘Ivy League’ is capitalized. Oddly, you used ‘buy’ instead of ‘by’ but I don’t know if this is a typo or simply confusion over which word to use. In the following sentence you should consider using ‘an’ not ‘a’ before elementary. You use two dashes, one long and one short, in the following sentence which is also incorrect. I am not familiar with the word ‘cowtails’ in the context you are using it and believe you may have intended ‘kowtows?’ Cowtails is defined as a coarse wool of poor quality and this makes the sentence meaningless. You should continue to capitalize ‘Mayor’ as you did correctly at the beginning of your post. The last sentence is incomplete and you should either make two complete sentences or strike the period and not capitalize ‘And’. I would encourage you to consider making two sentences instead.
I am a product of both the Anchorage School District (Chugiak ’90) and an Ivy League University (Cornell ’93) and do not recall a single educator at either institution so challenged by basic written communication. I do hope you pursue your dream of becoming an educator but I hope that you consider strengthening your basic writing skills before you have the privilege of instructing our children.
Well said Lynn.
Yup Bartender Dan probably had to go home and get the real deal from his wife, then write up a clarification.
Thank you for the word ‘tortuous’: ‘twisted, winding’. I thought you had mistyped ‘tortuous’. Another word, new to me, from your respondent who said the mayor ‘cowtailed’. Keep up the good blog! LSmith, Homer
Thank you both Mayor Sullivan and Amanda. I asmire that you both have the courage to speak out in an attempt to allow greater flexibility to improve our children’s educational opportunities and systems. To me, it’s ridiculous that I am qualiified to teach at an ivy league college’ but, buy not being “certified” considered somehow to be inept and unqualified to teach at a elementary, juniior or high school. What has become wrong with our schools is the NEA. They have become extremely politiically powerful and have successfully branded themselves as caring about kids and education. Instead, they really are all about salary increases, restricting teacher entry and tenure – – none of which helps the kids. Again, I applaud Mayor Sullivan for standing up and speaking out to help improve our education system. His opponent bows and cowtails to the NEA. Think about it and join me in supporting the mayor’s bid for statewide office. And truly improving our state’s education system.