AFT-NH Written Testimony on SB 374 Relative to the Licensing of Part-time Teachers (Debrah Howes, President AFT-NH)
Thank you, Chair Ward and Members of the Senate Education Committee.
My name is Debrah Howes. I am president of the American Federation of Teachers – New Hampshire. I am here to speak on behalf of our 3700 members across the state. Our members include preK through 12 public school educators and support staff, university faculty as well as town employees. I am here today to testify in opposition to SB 374 Relative to the Licensing of Parttime Teachers.
We all want to give our students the best possible start on their journey of lifelong learning. We want them to have access to high quality materials presented by trained professionals as well as experiential and hands on learning to fuel their curiosity. To get this best start, our public school students deserve professional, credentialed educators because teaching is a highly skilled profession that deals with not just content area expertise, but also communication skills, classroom management skills and knowledge of how children or adolescents learn.
To be a good teacher, one needs to be able to communicate enough academic content in an engaging and effective manner to draw students in and make them curious to learn more. Having drawn students in with a hook, a teacher must then direct the students to an assignment that allows them to dig into appropriate resources to learn, do, and experience more on the topic. And of course, teachers must communicate clearly what the intended outcomes are: how is the student going to show what he or she has learned, and what the deadlines are. Teachers, part-time or not, must be skilled in designing assignments to match the competencies, breaking down assignments into smaller pieces for students who get “stuck,” and troubleshooting to help guide students to how they can get unstuck.
Teachers must also work to motivate students to start their work, continue their work, or complete their work and turn it in. Teachers must design formative assessments to check in with student learning to see if they ARE understanding the content. If not, additional lessons must be planned. Knowledge of how children and adolescents learn is extremely helpful to these efforts. On top of these professional teaching skills, teachers must also manage students to keep behaviors from flaring up.
With all these responsibilities, it does not make sense to allow noncredentialled individuals, who are not professional teachers to work as educators in our public schools. Our students deserve to have their needs considered and they deserve professional, credentialed teachers.
I urge you to find SB 374 Inexpedient to Legislate.