10,000 Hours to be a Teacher

The article I will be referring to throughout this piece can be found here: http://bruceelkin.hubpages.com/hub/10-000-Hours--The-Awesome-Power-of-Practice

How long does it take to become a master at a given skill?  Days?  Years?  A Lifetime?  Bruce Elkin’s article posits that time-frame to be at 10,000 hours devoted to a specific skill for someone to gain master of it.  He mentions Olympic athletes, authors, and martial artists who each have devoted this much time to achieve the level of mastery they are at currently.  He also claims there is a necessary mindset, the “Growth Mindset,” and necessary attributes to get to the coveted level of mastery: passion, practice, and persistence.  This “Growth Mindset” centers on a person’s drive focusing on growth at all costs, they are not afraid to appear weak or ineffective by admitting their shortcomings.  People with this mindset would rather get the help they need to push their skill to the next level than pretend to know what they are doing until they slowly pick it up on their own.

Geffory Canada, an amazing educator, reformer, and CEO of Harlem Kids Zone, spoke to this point in the documentary Waiting for Superman when he said it takes about five years to make a master teacher.  The first year a novice teacher is putting theory into practice.  The second and third years recent teachers begin to find their routine and couple theory and practice.  By years four and five the emerging teacher can effectively and efficiently run their classroom and be a force for their students.  Looking at the numbers:

180 school days X  4 or 5 hours facilitating a lesson per day = 720/900

5 years of teaching X 720/900 facilitation hours per year = 3600/4500

Added to this are professional development sessions, planning/reflection periods during the day and at home, student teaching (at least a semester ~360/450 hours), and roughly 40 credit hours of undergraduate or graduate courses (and for each credit hour, two hours per week of instruction and two hours per week of practice for 15 week semesters thus 40 X 2 X 2 X15 = 2400 hours).  This also does not include any summer work to enhance a teacher’s practice. 

All put together, even on the low end, there are well over 7,000 hours a teacher puts in from the time he or she enters a credential program until the end of their fifth year.  Probably more time and energy spent by those who have a “Growth Mindset” and pursue their career development with passion, practice, and persistence. 

I believe I have the necessary growth mindset and love surrounding myself with experts who can teach me something about their own practice which I can then incorporate into my own.  However, I believe I need to be much more focused with my practice.  I need to lay out clear, specific goals so I can diligently pursue them.  Elkin suggests four questions or activities necessary to move a novice closer to mastery.  I will attend to these activities in forthcoming posts.  These questions/activities are:

• List three reasons why they thought it is important to think that ability can be developed;

• Bring to mind an area where they had developed an ability, and explain how they made the changes involved;

• Email a hypothetical protégé describing how ability can be developed, and

• Recall examples of when they saw someone else learn to do something they did not think that person could do. And then think about how that learning happened, and what it means.