Education chief, actor reach out to teachers

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the future educators and others thinking about joining the profession there are 8,000 new
teachers needed across the country.

“Far too many great young teachers come in and want to make a difference but they don’t have the classroom management skills, they are not listened to, there are not many mentoring and they burn out,” said Duncan. “They don’t make it.”

Actor Tony Danza, who stars in a reality television series about his year of teaching at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, was passionate about the experience.

“Last year’s the greatest thing I did in my life, it really was,” said Danza. He hopes the TV series will inspire others to teach.

Duncan says more male minority teachers are needed, especially on the elementary school level.

“We are absolutely trying to address this openly and honesty. We’re challenging schools of education to really think about recruiting a more diverse group of people in.

“These alternative-certification and grow-your-own programs we think are going to help to address this, but we want our teachers to reflect the diversity of today’s youth and there’s a growing imbalance and this is not a self correcting problem,” said Duncan.