Challenges for K-12

The biggest challenge that students K-12 face is their teachers. Watching the movie Chalk I was reminded of the vast array of teacher quality a student is faced with. There are teachers who have a lot enthusiasm and desire to connect with their students, but as was the case with Mr. Stroop their motives were to prop up themselves rather than actually teach. He had his own interests at heart not the interests of those he was hired to serve. Then there are teachers like Mr. Lowry who get into the track of teaching without really exploring their own motives for wanting to teach. Mr. Lowry had recently been divorced and though he had a career as a computer engineer, there was something in his life that caused him to re-evalute his career and make a change. He took two different aptitude tests that indicated teaching might be a good fit. Though we are not told of the process that he underwent to get a teaching job, through observing him in the classroom we can guess that there was little classroom management training. He was unprepared to teach and as such he was miserable and made the students miserable.
Even though these teachers were poor teachers, I wonder about the administrative process that would allow two really poor teachers to teach. Though we saw Mr. Sroop's evaluation and the woman conducting the evaluation set out some goals to be worked on, he was given no tools to complete those goals. Even though it is the teachers whom the students have the direct contact with, one step behind that is the training and support that a teacher has to be the best they can be. Perhaps the biggest challenge is not the teachers themselves, but the lack of appropriate training and support that the teachers receive.