Debate
Should we raise the bar for admission to teacher prep programs?

YES
MICHAEL BITTEL was education director at a drug and alcohol abuse recovery facility in Connecticut for two years, then got a teaching degree and has taught English and social studies for three years at Crittenden Middle School in Newport News, Virginia.

One day, a tough-looking young lady came into my class. Looking at her file later on, and hearing her talk in the hallway, I learned that she had been sent to my school for a reason. She'd been involved in gang activities at her old school and took pleasure in beating up other girls.

We had to keep our eyes open continually for any violence and praise any small movement to-ward the positive that she made. Through continuous reinforcement, she made it through the year and her grades improved.

The more challenging assignments in teaching bring more hazards: being injured breaking up a fight, having a car vandalized, and possibly being shot, among others.

Hazard pay is traditional for those who work in many other fields. When you have increased responsibility, you have increased pay. This is a standard equation almost everywhere except in education.

In education, every teacher gets paid the same, no matter what responsibilities he or she faces. If factors make it more difficult to teach, shouldn't we reward teachers for this?

That doesn't mean teachers who don't face such challenges should get less pay. Teachers with tougher assignments have extra things on their plates, it's not that others have things taken away.

One of my young gentlemen came into school during a hot day in May with no socks on. His house-arrest beeper was showing around his ankle.

How could I communicate to him the need to hide something like the beeper while not embarrassing him? I pulled him aside and quietly told him that, for the sake of good taste, he should probably make sure to wear socks.

He wore socks reluctantly from then on.

A teacher who deals with these demands daily should be compensated more for that labor of love.

The hours I spent talking to a social worker about the possibility that one of my young ladies was being used as a prostitute by her foster parents will never leave me.

The times I prayed that the administration would not find the food I hid in my desk because I knew some of my students would go without dinner will haunt me.

The minutes and hours spent with students crying in the hallway because both of their parents were in jail and they had to live with their aunt and uncle in a small hotel room have touched my heart.

The stories can go on and on, including threats on my life.

Students like these create challenges that teachers should be compensated for.

All students deserve great teachers. The great teachers who serve in tougher assignments deserve their due also.

Cast your vote | Forum

NO
JOHN FLICKINGER dropped out at age 16 and spent eight years on the road playing rock and roll drums. Then he met his wife, quit the road, built a business, lost it, went back to school, and, ten years ago, became an English teacher. He is now at Montwood High School, El Paso, Texas.

Tough is such a subjective term. Who decides?

Except for the pay, it sounded perfect: a private school for the gifted, great hours, solid, sometimes ravenous parent support, 12 to 14 gifted eighth graders. But the sheer fragility of these young souls made it the toughest place I ever taught.

The bus was full of kids, but one seat was empty. I finally found Lars in the boy's restroom, his feet pulled up out of sight in the stall. I heard him quietly sobbing, the echoes of an anguished soul.

Lars was the son of two doctors (engineering and political science). His astronomical IQ was not much help for a confused child weathering the storms of puberty. Lars, like many of his gifted peers, thought too much. Nothing was simple for this fine young mind.

Guidance from parents accustomed to excellence often just added to the pressure to succeed. Lars walked a narrow path through precipitous gorges. Above lay brilliance, below, the jagged rocks of failure.

Manic-depression is epidemic among our gifted children. Puberty, so dangerous for all kids, is even more volatile for these emotional, creative children.

Should we pay more for the trained, special teachers who are entrusted with the best and brightest? The responsibility is overwhelming. One misstep, and the teacher could lead the next great mind over the precipice.

Which end of the educational realm is more important and which is less? And what about the 90 percent who don't fall on either end? What about the regular students, that middle-of-the-spectrum group that will build our future world?

Freshmen: That first day of high school, confused and frightened, they look to teachers to give them the skills to deal with this brave new world.

It's filled with upper classmen anxious to get a little payback for the slings and arrows suffered at the hands of upper classmen before them, teachers who treat them like adults and expect them to act as such, homework (horrors), girls who look like women and act like venomous snakes. The ninth grade is perhaps the most difficult time of life and teachers are sometimes these kids' only, best hope.

Senioritis, that epidemic 18-year-old students must deal with, and teachers are the ones expected to find the cure before the disease becomes academically fatal.

I have taught gifted, at risk, and the 90 percenters, and I can tell you that, yes, it is worth more to teach them.

At risk, gifted and talented, math students, science students; when we start choosing small groups of students as being worth more, we send a message I don't think we want to send.

Isn't every child worth more?

Cast your vote | Forum

Should staff in tougher schools get higher pay?