By Arthur Levine, Laura Overdeck, Brian Maher and Chris Daggett

Many teaching graduates say they didn’t feel ready for the classroom realities of reaching students with academic deficits or challenges at home. Too often, new teachers are knocked on their heels and must improvise when faced with realities of today’s student population. Others leave teaching because they get little support.

It’s time to provide teacher preparation programs that reflect the importance and value of teaching to the well-being of our economy, culture and democracy. Too many university-based education schools that prepare teachers are weak. Some have updated their programs to meet the varied demands of today’s students and new technologies, but the majority still focus primarily on theories of education, with just a few weeks of student teaching.

On Friday, Gov. Chris Christie announced a new program, the Woodrow Wilson New Jersey Teaching Fellowships, that will recruit STEM college grads and career-changing professionals to teach in the state’s high-need schools — and prepare them in intensive, innovative ways so that they keep teaching.

New Jersey urgently needs highly trained teachers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). New Jersey needs engineering know-how to rebuild after natural disasters. We need smart infrastructure for our growing population. We need the knowledge of life sciences that supports pharmaceutical companies, farmland and wilderness alike. And we need the financial and statistical acumen to manage it all.

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Yet New Jersey faces both a chronic shortage of well-prepared STEM teachers and an imminent wave of teacher retirements. The situation is complicated by the large number of new teachers who leave — 30 to 40 percent in their first three years, and more in high-need schools.

That’s why addressing New Jersey’s need for STEM teachers requires more than getting good people certified to teach. They need stronger, richer preparation for teaching’s practical and personal challenges. Most important, they need robust field experience.

Consider a surgeon who might operate on one of your family members. You would want that surgeon not just to understand anatomy and surgical procedures, but to have experience operating on patients — and not a few weeks’ experience, but over several months or years.

New Jersey’s students deserve the same depth of preparation from their teachers, especially students who come to the classroom burdened with family issues or low self-confidence. They need career opportunities and an understanding of current events, from weather to health care, that come from the STEM fields.

That means our education schools must do better. They must produce STEM teachers who know how to teach students in challenging circumstances. They need to prepare teachers with extensive experience in classrooms, just as surgeons get in operating rooms. They need to insist on rigorous preparation that befits the lifelong significance of teaching. The stakes are, ultimately, as high as those for surgeons.

In the new Woodrow Wilson New Jersey Teaching Fellowship, five institutions — The College of New Jersey, Montclair State University, Rowan University, Rutgers University-Camden and William Paterson University — have been selected to prepare the fellows. They were chosen because they have agreed to create the model, world-class programs that will produce the high-quality teachers our children need.

Enrolling in one of these universities, the teaching fellows will pursue a master’s program with a year of clinical practice in Newark, Orange, Paterson, New Brunswick, Camden, Trenton, Ewing, Lawrence, Pemberton and several rural districts. They will receive $30,000 during their master’s work. And they will commit, with ongoing mentoring, to teach in a high-need New Jersey school for at least three years.

This program is just a beginning. Teacher preparation at every college and university in the state — indeed, nationwide — needs to move in this direction. We need to reaffirm the importance and complexity of what we ask teachers to do. New Jersey must lead in overhauling teacher preparation, both to give young New Jerseyans the 21st-century education they deserve and to bring greater meaning and value to our most crucial profession.

Arthur Levine is president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton and President Emeritus of Teachers College, Columbia University. Brian Maher is the former CEO of Maher Terminals and now is a philanthropist focusing on education. Laura Overdeck is founder of Bedtime Math Inc., a Summit non-profit that works to increase children's math confidence. Chris Daggett is president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

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