Running head: THE CYCLE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

The Cycle Between Teachers and Students Brittany Marie Lerma University of Texas at El Paso

THE CYCLE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS Abstract This paper focuses on the importance of educating better teachers. Better teachers will lead to more success for their students and can solve many other problems. In turn, the cycle between better teachers and successful students continues. The importance of the United States competing with other countries in regard to their education systems is also mentioned.

THE CYCLE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS Children are influenced by everything in their life beginning with their parents, siblings, and extended families. When they start school, their teachers are also very influential not only just in the education they receive from them but also the habits that they install in them. It is highly important that our teachers are well educated themselves just as it is important as giving installing a good education into the young minds of students. However, students in their first year of college are often times overwhelmed by the higher standards as well as other things they are not used to and consequently drop or fail out of college after their first semester. Others simply cannot afford to receive higher education due to tuition being the highest it has ever been. The solution to all of these problems revolves around a cycle between the success of college graduates taught by successful and effective educators. Graduates with a high school degree in the 1960s almost already qualified them to be classified as Middle-Class America regardless of how much they had actually learned in school. (Mehta, 2013) Nowadays though, a high school degree simply does not get the job. While high school graduation rate is the highest it has been since 1973 and still continues to increase (Yoshida, 2013), 20 percent of freshmen students still need remedial courses as they enter college (Lu, 2013). Paris and Robert Strom (2013) wrote that today, more than 60 percent of middle-class America has earned a degree but the United States need more than 20 million more college graduates to strengthen the economy by 2025 and also that unemployment for people with just a high school diploma is twice as likely compared to someone with a postsecondary certificate or college diploma.

THE CYCLE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS To better the American education system and also eventually the economy, the first step must start with creating better educators. This process must start with making the positions more captivating to college graduates with the desire to teach and help develop their skills. Although the need for more teachers is essential for the end result, the process of becoming a teacher must raise the bar. Therefore, if it became harder to become a teacher, respect for the profession would grow, and schools might start to show better results. This process could boost public confidence in schools, potentially leading to higher teachers pay and, in the long run, a greater desire by talented people to join the profession. (Mehta, 2013) According to education scholars, good teachers posses the extensive knowledge about the subject they teach, how to teach the subject to their students, and how their students will understand or how to correct their misunderstandings. (Mehta, 2013) Teaching requires more than just simply teaching students material required by the state that often times cant be taught but learned through experience. They must also learn to be a negotiator between students, their parents, and other teachers or coaches when necessary. If it is necessary, teachers must spend extra time to help students that would have a harder time understanding the concept or learn at a slower pace. Each student learns at their own pace and it is imperative that teachers understand and deal with students on an individual level as well as a class. (Collay, 2013) Teachers, rather than helping their students to merely pass, need to push their students until they reach their full potential. The United States has a lot to compete with other countries when compared to the success of education systems and should borrow some ideas (Mehta, 2013).

THE CYCLE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS The top countries in educational rankings, including Finland, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, differ in many ways compared to the United States K12 system. Teacher-training programs are harder to get into as Mehta writes, one in eight applicants are accepted in Singapore and one in ten applicants in Finland. Mehta continues to say that they choose their teachers from among their most talented graduates, train them extensively, create opportunities for them to collaborate with their peers within and across schools to improve their practices, provide them the external supports that they need to do their work well, and underwrite all these efforts with a strong welfare state (2013). Going to college should be the gateway to better paying jobs, however, receiving college education is continuously getting more expensive as colleges expand to be more available for larger numbers of students in the forms of higher tuition and fees. In a study included in an article by William McGuiness (2013), out of 41.7 million working college graduates in 2010, about 48% of them have jobs that require less than a bachelors degree. Students that have graduated have jobs that do not require their degree because of three reasons: there are simply not enough jobs available that would require their education background; the jobs available that require their certain degree are interested in people who have more experience in their field; and, must start paying off their student loans. Instead of becoming more independent after graduation, graduates often times move back into their parents houses because they cannot afford the cost of living by themselves all the while paying their student debt. (Melville, 2012)

THE CYCLE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS College choices are limited to many students because of tuition costs. To cut down on costs, many choose to stay close at home as they would not have to pay for room and board as well as other expenses. Millions of scholarships are more available and easier to apply for today than they have ever been. The students that need it the most dont take advantage of them though. High school teachers should push taking advantage of these scholarships especially as they would assist their students to receive the education they deserve. Besides just pushing students to apply for scholarships, better-educated teachers can help their students even more by increasing their chances of receiving scholarships because of their impressive academic achievements. The fast pace of today is in need of many more graduates to enter the professional workforce. In order to provide these graduates, though, creating better teachers must be done first. Raising the bar to become a teacher, no matter what grade level would be taught, could potentially increase interest for the profession and increase teachers pay. Novice teachers must learn to assume many roles other than just the teacher in order for their students success. Consequently, these better teachers will produce more prepared students that will graduate with a college degree and enter the professional workforce. With the success of college graduates, more jobs might become more available and can help boost the economy.

THE CYCLE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS References Collay, M. (2013). Teaching is Leading. Educational Leadership, 71(2). 72-76. Lu, Adrienne. (2013). 1 in 5 Need Remedial Courses, but Do They Work? USA Today. Retrieved from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/25/statelineremedial-education/2586013/ Mehta, J. (2013). Why American Education Fails. Foreign Affairs, 92(3), 105-116. Melville, Y. (2012). Is College Really Worth It? Crisis (15591573), 199(3), 40. McGuiness, William. (2013). Half of Recent College Grads Work Jobs That Dont Require Degrees: Report. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/underemployedovereducated_n_2568203.html. Strom, P. & Strom, R. (2013). Collaboration and Support for Student Success. Education Digest, 79(3), 50-56. Yoshida, Helen. (2013). U.S. Graduation Rate Highest in 40 Years. NeaToday. Retrieved from: http://neatoday.org/2013/06/10/u-s-graduation-ratehighest-in-40-years/