Well-Prepared Teachers Are the Key To Opening Up Student Success

By Cynthia Icardo

Every student must have access to well-qualified, competant and caring teachers to help ensure their academic success.

The most effective governance for a Board of Trustees is to lead and support policies that make the most difference to our students. As such the Kern High School Board must ensure that our district has an agressive ongoing recruitment for the best qualified teachers and effective, ongoing staff development for all teachers. We must budget for and support continued staff development and efforts to hire teachers who have been more than good students, themselves. They must be able to recognize the various learning styles of their students, understand the curriculum content and be able to assess their student's progress. They must give their students the confidence to succeed with persistance and dedication.

So much is made of accountability of teachers and rightly so. However,they have a challenging profession and we must also appreciate and adequately compensate them for their efforts and successes.