There is a powerful shared narrative around entering the teaching profession, and it's couched in the language of survival. We constantly hear phrases like "sink or swim," "the first year is the hardest," "the toughest thing I ever did." This is the challenge facing those who want to teach: being thrown into a classroom and figuring out how to "make a difference."

The sad reality is many teacher education programs are not built to meet the demands of first-year teaching. There are two reasons this should worry us. First, most teacher training is not focused enough on the foundations of teaching, nor on how to meet the needs of our nation's most disadvantaged students. Second, even when these teachers are well prepared, we then drop them into an antiquated school model: 30 students for every adult, paper-and-pencil practice, minimal collaborative or group work, seven-hour school days, and 180-day school years.