Arne Duncan at MSU? Well...kind of!

This Monday and Tuesday, the Education Nation Summit will be held in Rockefeller Center. President Obama, Arne Duncan, and many others in the Education Department/Profession will be interviewed, making speeches, asking questions, and discussing issues in today's education on MSNBC. MSU was ranked first, for the 16th consecutive year, in Elementary and Secondary Education. This ranking has given our school the opportunity to be video-streamed into the discussion at 2pm on Monday. Select students from different cohorts will be given the opportunity to ask questions to Arne Duncan, through a video stream. Now, both of these topics are very interesting. We have the Education Nation Summit, which should be very important to all of us as future educators, but what's even more mind blowing is that Arne Duncan, the current Secretary of Education, will be talking "face to face" with students from MSU. How crazy is that?! And yes, of course I'm bummed that I'm not in a cohort, because I'm very involved and interested in the politics of education, but hopefully we will have students representing us that will ask the tough questions. Ones that he can't answer simply, but ones that really make him think for a minute.

What I mean by that...well, I can't really explain until you've read this proposal. Now, this proposal is very idealistic. Sure, bringing qualified, diversified, and productive teachers sounds great! But HOW are they planning on doing this? How are they going to distinguish between people who are just competent in their subject matter, from those who have the heart to become teachers? In a perfect world, you could teach someone how to have all the qualities of a teacher. But let's face it: to be a teacher, you need to have more than "young people who have the most talent and skill in these subject areas". A teacher needs to be patient, flexible, understanding, kind, have a general liking of students, and many more things. So my question, Mr. Duncan, is how are you going to prevent a revolving door effect? How are you going to make sure that you are choosing qualified candidates for teaching? How are you going to prevent the recruitment of students who are just good in their subject, who are roped into teaching because they're "smart", but discover they hate actually teaching and drop out a few years later? Then we'll be stuck with the same problem all over again.

Ok, that's more than just one question, but I obviously follow these issues very closely and don't want empty promises anymore. There is an education crisis in this country, and I'd really like to see people start asking questions that can't be answered with a few simple words.