My son is an NYC Teaching Fellow. This September, he is teaching special education middle school math in the Bronx.
My son has a bachelor’s degree in math from one of America’s top STEM universities. My son is working on his master of science for teachers in math (grades 7–12) and special education, and taking separate graduate courses in math on top of that.
My son is passionate about his subject and, as someone who left high school to educate himself, believes that schools must exist to serve the needs of students, not teachers, administration, or parents. He deliberately chose to use his degree to teach underserved 7th and 8th graders rather than “making rich people richer or helping AI destroy the planet.”
My son completed his seven weeks of training over the summer—working as an assistant teacher at a Washington Heights high school for its Regents Algebra sections—and passed his first set of mandatory exams, including Educating All Students; Mathematics; and Multi-Subject: Secondary Teachers (Grade 7–Grade 12): Literacy and English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Arts and Sciences (the latter with a perfect score).
My son did everything that was asked of him with dedication and commitment. And yet, there is no way that my son will be the teacher his students deserve.
Because he doesn’t yet possess the most important piece of being an effective educator: experience.
Programs like Teach For America and various charter school networks are regularly excoriated over putting inexperienced teachers in the classroom.
And yet public schools are doing the exact same thing.
To add insult to injury, these most inexperienced of teachers aren’t being put in Specialized High Schools where the students basically teach themselves (one of the primary reasons why my son dropped out of Stuyvesant), or in wealthy elementary and middle schools where parents regularly pick up the educational slack.
They are being sent to low-income, underperforming schools. The teacher shortage there is so great that there is even a financial bonus for being willing to work in the Bronx.
What this means is that the students who need effective teachers the most are the ones least likely to get them.
