--- title: Education: What It Really Takes To Become an Elementary School Teacher description: The long and expensive process requires more than just passion canonical: https://time.com/4000511/elementary-school-teacher-requirements/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-17T19:34:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:01:41.181Z article:section: Ideas og:title: What It Really Takes To Become an Elementary School Teacher og:description: The long and expensive process requires more than just passion og:url: https://time.com/4000511/elementary-school-teacher-requirements/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta1be2f46d906fed7/69885f9f35ba6f21f4c0eb52/teacher-students-circle-reading.jpg?branch=production&width=504&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 504 og:image:height: 284 og:image:alt: teacher-students-circle-reading og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What It Really Takes To Become an Elementary School Teacher twitter:description: The long and expensive process requires more than just passion twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta1be2f46d906fed7/69885f9f35ba6f21f4c0eb52/teacher-students-circle-reading.jpg?branch=production&width=504&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What It Really Takes To Become an Elementary School Teacher > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=6d43ac58-0e08-4c5b-b654-c20b8d7ace3c&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: David Brooks Speaks at Dartmouth College Commencement 2015 [Watch (HLS stream): David Brooks Speaks at Dartmouth College Commencement 2015](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/js8WeAUP.m3u8) (20:49)  _Published 2015-06-16. David Brooks Speaks at Dartmouth College Commencement 2015_ by [Linda Banks-Santilli, Wheelock College / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/linda-banks-santilli/) ## Linda Banks-Santilli, Wheelock College / The Conversation Aug 17, 2015 7:34 PM UTC  Teacher with group of students (5-10) reading a book Teacher with group of students (5-10) reading a book Getty Images by [Linda Banks-Santilli, Wheelock College / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/linda-banks-santilli/) ## Linda Banks-Santilli, Wheelock College / The Conversation Aug 17, 2015 7:34 PM UTC Often, people think that becoming an elementary school teacher can’t be that difficult. Many assume that primary school teachers don’t need to know too much beyond basic reading, writing and arithmetic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was a Boston public school teacher for 12 years. And today, I am a teacher of teachers. I think about how hard teaching is almost every day. And I know that becoming an elementary teacher today is difficult – as it should be. After all, the impact a teacher has on a child’s life can be everlasting. But, the question is, are the requirements we place on prospective teachers the right ones? **The daunting process** For many, there is nothing more satisfying than to watch a child understand something for the first time. To know that you had something to do with it can feel powerful and gratifying all at once. The passion and influence of teachers have been captured through many a literary work. Even Yeats, one of the most celebrated Irish poets, described teaching as “the lighting of a fire.” But passion alone is not enough. You also need a bachelor’s degree; you need to complete a teacher preparation program; and you need a state license or national certification to teach in a public school. And the path to this certification [varies](http://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/degrees/) from state to state. Forty-four states require candidates to take a test or series of tests as part of their preparation; 25 states require students to have a specific [grade point average](http://www.nctq.org/statePolicy/2014/policyIssueFindings) before entering a teacher preparation program. The process is often long and expensive. Here’s how it happens in Massachusetts, one of nine states in the U.S. that earned a B- from the [National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ)](http://www.nctq.org/siteHome.do) in 2014 for “delivering well-prepared teachers.” A bit of context: the NCTQ [grades](http://www.nctq.org/statePolicy/2014/statePolicyGrades.do?goalAreaName=Area+1%3A+Delivering+Well+Prepared+Teachers&stateId%5B0%5D=&stateId%5B1%5D=&stateId%5B2%5D=&yearId=7) ranged from a B+ (given to Indiana, Rhode Island and Florida) to F (Alaska and Montana), with 11 states earning a D+. In Massachusetts, students who want to become elementary teachers combine an elementary teaching major with a second major in, for example, math, science, or the humanities. They must also learn how to effectively teach [English Language Learners](http://www.doe.mass.edu/retell), a growing demographic in this state. In addition, the state recommends that prospective teachers work in the field as early in their programs as possible. This [pre-practicum](http://www.doe.mass.edu/lawsregs/603cmr7.html?section=04) is integrated into seminar courses that the students take at their college. This is followed by a 300-hour practicum, when a student works alongside a licensed teacher for a semester. The student teacher passes a practicum by demonstrating that she has met the state’s teaching standards. Her progress is monitored by a college supervisor who formally observes the student three to five times during the semester to document growth and to address challenges. As the semester continues, the student teacher gradually assumes more responsibility for the operation of the classroom. But this requires that she balance those responsibilities with coursework back on campus. But wait…there’s more. **The teacher tests** Look at what it takes to get a teaching license or certification. Again, requirements [vary](https://www.teach.org/teaching-certification) from state to state and are always being refined. But in Massachusetts, prospective elementary teachers are currently required to pass three state exams in order to teach elementary school children. Combined, these tests consist of answering a total of 288 multiple-choice questions that together take between 16 and 24 hours to complete. But that’s if the candidate takes each test only once. Pre-service teachers can take them as many times as needed to pass, and they do. Many students report that it took them between one and three tries to pass each test. Colleges offer test preparation courses to help students pass, but they’re in addition to the required courses of study. These tests also turn out to be quite expensive. The pre-service teacher ends up spending between $620 and $730 on registration and testing fees, or more if the subtests are taken separately or more than once. Most students spend about $1,000 or more trying to pass the tests. In the past, teacher certification was issued for life. Today, teachers must demonstrate that they are continuously learning in order to renew their teaching license. And this, in many ways, is a good thing. In Massachusetts, teachers can start teaching with a bachelor’s degree, but they must earn a master’s degree within five years from their date of employment. This will advance their initial license to a professional one. After working for three years, a teacher may also apply for a national board certification. This is a different process from the state’s certification, which was “created by teachers for teachers.” There are currently 110,000 teachers in the U.S. with [national board certification](https://theconversation.com/www.nbpts.org). Research shows that these teachers have more of an impact on [student learning](http://www.nbpts.org/advancing-education-research) – more so, when it comes to minority and low-income students. **Costs of testing** But here’s the problem with this system. Most people who choose to become teachers are from [middle-class backgrounds](http://www.academia.edu/257521/Teacher%5FPreparation%5Fand%5FDiversity%5FWhen%5FAmerican%5FPre-service%5FTeachers%5FAren%5Ft%5FWhite%5Fand%5FMiddle%5FClass) who often put themselves through college or work two to three jobs to earn a college degree. These teachers are unnecessarily burdened by the increasing costs of standardized testing. And this is even before they have an opportunity to enter a field in which the [national average salary](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/15/how-much-teachers-get-paid-state-by-state/) was $56,383 in 2014. In any case, the more important thing for a prospective elementary teacher is to develop a deep and sustained knowledge of the disciplines that she will be teaching. Unlike the middle school or high school teacher, whose expertise is often within a single subject, the elementary teacher is expected to master all of them. History, math, science and technology, English, reading and the arts all have their own unique structure, tools of inquiry, and ways of producing knowledge that cannot be explored sufficiently through repeated multiple-choice tests. Understanding a subject or concept well enough to teach it is harder than most people think. Teachers report that they learn more from pursuing their own questions and from each other than from [professional development](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/study-billions-of-dollars-in-annual-teacher-training-is-largely-a-waste/2015/08/03/c4e1f322-39ff-11e5-9c2d-ed991d848c48%5Fstory.html). **Problem with testing** I support the partnership that higher education, the federal and state government, and local communities must have to produce high-quality teachers. But sometimes in our quest to improve, we create something else entirely – a maze of technocratic processes and procedures that replaces common sense and removes the human element from our work as teachers. Preparing to become a teacher should not be reduced to a checklist of standardized tests and a mandated program of study with little room for electives. Prospective teachers need the time and space to delve deeply into subjects repeatedly and over time, to develop pedagogical approaches specific to those subjects and to use them effectively and creatively with children. As Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of Education and History at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, so aptly explains in his provocative 2014 New York _Times_ article, “[Why is American Teaching so Bad](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/04/why-american-teaching-so-bad/)?” --- > “” --- Elementary teacher preparation is no longer elementary. It’s been hijacked by the standardization movement. We want intelligent, creative and enthusiastic teachers teaching our children. This requires allowing our teachers to think for themselves. And that can’t be measured by a standardized test. _This_ [_article_](https://theconversation.com/what-does-it-take-to-become-an-elementary-school-teacher-not-just-passion-44643) _originally appeared on_ [_The Conversation_](http://theconversation.com) ## Transcript Dartmouth class of 2015, it's an honour to be at your tree stump. As your commencement speaker I have important responsibilities. Commencement speakers have to be skilled at pretentious verbiage and pompous but completely meaningless rhetoric. [ LAUGH ] I think you made a smart move when you asked someone who normally teaches at Yale. [ LAUGH ] Graduates, I congratulate you. I feel like I know you. To get into a place like Dartmouth, you had to spend your high school years starting four companies, curing two formerly fatal diseases. Participating in three obscure sports like fencing, planking, and snow volleyball. Since you got into Dartmouth, you spent one spring break unicycling across Thailand while reading to Lepers. [ LAUGH ] You spent another exciting summer interning at the congressional office in Washington. Providing your boss with policy advice and sexual tension. [ LAUGH ] You tell your friends you like Kendrick Lamar but secretly you like Jason Mraz. [ LAUGH ] While on campus, you have mastered new skills. You learned how to master classroom discussions even though you didn't do any of the reading. In lecture halls, you mastered another skill. Right now, for example, it looks like you're staring at me with rapt attention, but you're all completely asleep. [ LAUGH ] I'm missing something over there. You negotiated the route between the major you're actually interested in and the mercenary major your parents wanted you to choose. [ INAUDIBLE ] Just once, I'd like to have a kid come up to me and say, you know, I really wanted to major in finance, but my parents forced me to major in art history. [ LAUGH ] That will never happen. [ LAUGH ] Now, on this big day, your life takes an exciting turn. There are two paths ahead of you. One leads to a soul- crushing job as a cog in a corporate machine. The other leads to permanent residence in your parent's basement. [ LAUGH ] I'm here to help you navigate these exciting opportunities. [ LAUGH ] I start by reminding you that you're at a beautiful spot in your lives. You're more mature than the freshman, still sexier than the faculty. [ LAUGH ] And let's face it, you're a lot sexier than the Dartmouth faculty. [ LAUGH ] You may not have been though other commencements before, so you may not know the etiquette. After you get your degree, it's customary to give president Hanlon a little tip, ten or 20 bucks just to show him he did a good job. [ LAUGH ] It's also customary to give the commencement speaker a little tip. [ LAUGH ] No more than 600 or 700 dollars, 5000 for the econ majors. This may be your first college commencement, but you probably know these addresses have a certain formula. The school asks a person who's achieved a certain level of career success. To give you a speech telling you career success is not important. Then we're suppose to give you a few minutes of completely garbage advice. Listen to your inner voice, be true to yourself, follow your passion, and your future is limitless. First my generation gives you mountain of debt then we give you career derailing guidelines that will prevent you from ever paying it off [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] I especially like all the commencement addresses telling graduates how important it is to fail. These started a few years ago with a Steve Jobs address at Stanford built around the message. Well failure is wonderful if you're Steve Jobs For most people, failure just stinks. Don't fail. [ Laughs .] I've decided for this commencement address I'm going to cut through all that. I'm just going to tell you what's going to happen to you over the next 60 years of your life. So right now I'm giving you the ultimate spoiler alert. If you don't want to know how this thing called your life is going to turn out... Pay less attention to me over the next ten minutes then even you are right now. For the rest of you this is your life. First you're gonna graduate today, and parts of the next year will be amazing and parts are really gonna suck. Very few will have jobs as exciting as being a college senior From now on no one will be paid to read your writing or your fascinating seminar interventions. You won't have the social life pre- organized right there in front of you the way it is here at Dartmouth. Happiness research suggests that after your 60s, your 20s are your happiest phase of life. People are happy in their 20s then it dips down until it bottoms out at age 47. Which is called having teenage children, and then it shoots up again. [ LAUGH ] You'll have long periods of loneliness and heartbreak. If you're like the average college graduates, a third of you will move back home at some point in the next two years, and your parents will give you blindingly obvious advice about things you've been doing on your own for years A third of you will be unemployed, underemployed, or making less than $ 30, 000 a year. In two years half of you will feel that you don't have a plan for life or a clear direction. But this is part of the process. It's part of the process of finding your loves and testing your loves. Now let me explain. All of us love certain things. Certain friends, certain dreams, certain professional goals. But you don't really know the nature of your love until you've tested it with reality. When I graduated from college I knew I wanted to be a writer, I knew I wanted to do some teaching. I thought I wanted to be a playwright or a novelist, go into politics. Have a spouse, children But I didn't know exactly what order my loves came in. So like everyone in their twenties, I got to test my loves and I got to sample some new loves. It was like trying on clothes at the mall. After ten years, some of my loves, like playwriting, just didn't fit or faded away. Some new ones came into view. But most important, over the next ten really formless years, my heart developed some contours and I learned what I loved most. Writing was more important to me than politics. I could write out a priority list on a piece of paper of the things I loved, and I could rank them, and I could devote my best energies to my highest love. When you have the ability to write that list in order, you've achieved your agency moment. I had a student who was a young army officer and during one of his tours he had a terrible superior officer who gave him nothing but negative feedback. During those 18 months he said he could not rely on external validation. Or criticism from outside to get a sense of whether he was doing a good job. He had to come up with his own criteria to judge himself. That's the agency moment. When you hit this moment you're not molding yourself to some prefab definition of success. You've your own criteria. You're not relying on the opinions of others. Your own standard and your own ability to judge your own life. For most people this agency moment comes just before 30. But then you can have a few other agency moments later in life, at age 53 or 75, when your loves change order and you have to realize that and you have to adjust. Once you've achieved your agency moments, you can begin to make commitments. We're not a society that nurtures committment making. We live in a culture that puts a lot of emphasis on individual liberty, and freedom of choice. Ivy League student culture is built around keeping your options open, and fear of missing out We live in a society with decommitment devices. Tinder, OKCupid, Instagram, Reddit, the entire internet is commanding you to sample one thing after another. Our phones are always beckoning us to shift our attention span. If you can't focus your attention for 30 seconds, how can you make a commitment for life. But your fulfillment in life will not come from how well you explore your freedom and keep your options open. That's the path to a frazzled, scattered life in which you try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one. Your fulfillment in life will come by how well you end your freedom. By the time you hit your 30s you will realize that your primary mission in life is to be really good at making commitments. Making commitments sounds interesting or intimidating, but it's not. Making a commitment simply means falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it. That will carry you through when your love falters. When you make a commitment to something you truly love- whether it's a spouse, a job, a company or a school- it won't feel like you're putting on an uncomfortable lobster shell. It'll feel like you're taking off the shell and becoming the shape you were meant to be. When you're making a commitment, you won't be paralyzed by self- focus. Because you'll have something beside yourself to think about. Specifically, as you go through your 30s, you'll make four major commitments and your life depends on how you do it. These four things. First, a commitment to your spouse and to your family. Second, a commitment to a career and a vocation. Third, a commitment to your faith or philosophy. Fourth, a commitment to a community and a village. Somewhere between the ages of 28 and 32 you'll begin to realize you've already begun to make a commitment to a vocation and a career. But a vocation is not a career. A career is something you choose. A vocation is something that summons you. My hero here is Frances Perkins. She was a young woman in the early 20th century whose life was somewhat adrift in her late 20s. She witnessed a horrible fire, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and was watching as hundreds of people died, either burned to death or leaping to their deaths. She became for ever after an instrument in the cause of worker safety and workers' rights. This tear in the fabric of creation had to be addressed. People with vocations don't ask, " What do I want from life ." They ask, " What is life demanding me to do. What gap is there in my specific circumstances around me that demands my skill- et ?" It's not found by looking inside to you for your passion. People have studied this. 80 % of you don't have a passion. [ LAUGH ] It's found by looking outward. By being sensitive to a void or a need, and then answering a chance to be of use. A calling like being a teacher or a nurse or a scientist, comes with certain rules, obligations. [ INAUDIBLE ] And standards of excellence. These customs structure the soul and guide behavior. And become deeply woven into the identities of the people who practice them. A teacher's relationship to the craft of teaching is not an individual choice that can be renounced when the psychic losses exceed the psychic benefits. Being a teacher is who she is. The second commitment is the one you'll make to a partner or a spouse or to your kids. I hope you've already had one great love affair in college and that you weren't one of those students who controlled the love life so they could spend more time doing homework. If you've already had a great love you know that it humbles you. You've been captured by a delicious madness and lost control of your own mind. Love plows open hard ground, exposing soft vulnerable soil below. Love decanters the self and reminds you that your riches are in another person. Marriage is a 30 or 40 or 50 year conversation that ends with a confusion. I don't just love you, I am you. Like all great commitments love operates simultaneously on two different levels. The level of greater reality and the level of transcendent magic. The level of greater reality in marriage is the grocery shopping, the cleaning, and the compromising. If you do the dishes after each meal or you put them in the sink and do them at the end of the day. Does the toilet paper roll from over the top or from under the bottom? [ LAUGH ] The gritty reality of love involves the particular gifts and foibles of this or that partner beloved. This particularity was captured in one of my all- time favorite wedding toasts Leon Weizelt to the wedding of Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein. This kind of love, Weiseltier said, is private and it is particular. It's object is the specificity of this man and that woman. The distinctiveness of this spirit and that flesh. This kind of love prefers deep to wide, here to there, the grasp to the reach. When the day is done and the lights are out, there only this other heart, this other mind, this other face, to assist in repelling one's demons or in greeting one's angels. It does not matter who the president is. When one consents to marry, one consents to be truly known, which is an ominous prospect And so one bets on love to correct for the ordinariness of the impression and to call forth the forgiveness that is invariably required. Marriages are exposures. We may be heroes to our spouses, but we may not be idols. And that is the gritty vulnerability of love. But there's another side to it. Which is poetic and transcendent and idealistic and universal. This is the side that Taylor Swift sings about. [ LAUGH ] Like being summoned by a vocation, this love demands you cast off cost benefit analysis. This love demands that you enter into a different and inverse logic. I remember the birth of my first son involved a very long and painful delivery. It happened in Belgium, and the doctor put a plunger to my kid's head and yanked him out. He came out after many, many hours blue and in very poor health and was rushed to the intensive care ward. It was scary, and it introduced me to the level of soul- deep anxiety you are not aware of until you become a parent. But I remember having an awareness in that instant that if he could just live for an hour, it would still be worth it. An hour of his life would be worth a lifetime of grief. Now that doesn't make sense from any normal cost- benefit terms. He wouldn't have even been aware of his hour of life. How could it be worth a lifetime of grief for his parents? But every parent here will know it makes perfect sense by some other logic. Every parent here knows that every second of life for one you love As infinite dignity. The essence of that love is not counting the cost. Fortunately he came out of it fine, is now strong and healthy and 24, but love has it's own logic that defies normal utilitarian logic. For example, most resources are scarce. You can use them up. But love is the opposite. The more you love, the more you can love. The person who has one child does not love that child less when he or she has another. A person in love is just capable of more love. A person who loves his college does not love his country less. Love expands with use. Again against the grain of normal logic, people in love make themselves vulnerable to great suffering. And sometimes they knowingly walk into suffering. Sometimes you tell people in love that it doesn't make sense for them to be together because they'll be in different cities. Or they drive themselves crazy. But lovers rarely break off a love, because that doesn't make sense. They'd rather be unhappy together, than happy apart. And so, here we're coming to an essential feature of committment making. It's sort of like quantum mechanics. It doesn't make sense from a normal object. A commitment spills outside the balance of normal utilitarian logic, and has a different logic. This logic is a moral logic. And it's filled with inversions. A committment is a moral act. The moral world is not structured like the market world. It has an inverse logic. To develop morally and inside, you have to follow an inverse set of rules. You have to give to receive. You have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself. You have to conquer your desire to get what you crave. Success leads to the greatest failure which is arrogance and pride. Failure can lead to the greatest success which is humility and learning. In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself. Taking a job is not a moral act. Going on a date is not a moral act. Having a vocation is a moral act. Entering a 30 or 50 year marriage is a moral act. Making a commitment is a moral act. A couple months ago I published a book around the distinction between the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues. The resume virtues are the ones you bring to the market place, where it makes you good at your job. The eulogy virtues or the moral virtues. Their the things they say about you after you are dead. Whether you are honest or brave or caring or capable of great love. My point in the book was that we all know the eulogy virtues are more important than the resume virtues, but we live in a society that puts a lot more emphasis on how to build skills Than how to build character. A lot of us are clearer about how to be successful than about how to be virtuous. I wrote the book because I wanted to understand how people become deeply good, and radiate the sort of inner light. When I finished the book, I believe that goodness and character comes from internal struggle against your own weakness. But in the months since I've come to see that I put too much emphasis on the individual exercise of character building. Becoming a good moral person is not being able to control your temptations. It's about this ability to make commitments. Your education has opened you up to possibilities. Adulthood is about closing around commitments. Dartmouth has opened your mind. The purpose of an open mind is to close around some certain beliefs. The highest joy is found in sending down roots. There will come a time 20 years from now, or 25 years from now, where you come back to this spot for your reunion, and as you walk and drink wine and beer. [ LAUGH ] You'll think of your former selves and your current selves and the decades of life that will still be in front of you. You'll be with people who knew you back when, when you had no branding. No success status to fall on. When you were like today, both very brave and very scared. And you'll remember some professor some book assigned to you and you realize Dartmouth had set off little time bombs in your head that gave you pieces of wisdom that only come decades later when you're ready to receive them. You'll see your own kids across the lawn. Soaking themselves with whatever version of a super soaker water cannon they have n the year 2040. You'll make a mental note to take them back to the hotel to change them before dinner. You'll be sitting in Adirondack chairs and you'll reach over and slip your hand into the hand of the person you love most in the world. You'll tell your old Dartmouth friends about the town you live in The neighborhood kid you mentor. The things that really make the most to you. And your mind will slip back to today, the incredible weather, and the people who love you who came to watch you graduate. And you'll think at some random moment in that day after a few glasses of wine, about the totality of your life. Where you came from. Where you were when you graduated, and where you are a quarter century later, and you'll know that you were so lucky to have been at Dartmouth. And then after a few years of stumbling, you found a place for yourself in the world, a place deeply connected to commitments of affection that will never fade. At reflective moments like this, it feels like time is suspended and reality will slip outside its bounds and you'll experience a sense of gratitude that your life is filled with joy. A joy beyond anything you could not, could possibly have earned. There's nothing to be done at such moments except be thankful, to be thankful For people, places, ideas, and causes that you've embraced and that embraced You back. And that is the moment you come to the realization that is the full Definition of maturity. It's the things you chain yourself to That set you free. Congratulations Class of 2015. 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