Earlier this week, I had a conversation with a recent graduate who earned their degree in education. They expressed a mix of excitement and anxiety about stepping into their first elementary classroom next school year. When I asked what made them most nervous, their response didn’t surprise me, but it did sadden me.

 “Classroom management. I feel like we learned a lot about writing lessons, aligning to standards, and practicing culturally sustaining pedagogy, but I didn’t learn a thing about how to lead a classroom, handle discipline, or even structure my day.”

I’ve heard this same concern voiced by new teachers across different states and contexts. Over and over again, early-career educators share how unprepared they feel for the practical realities of managing a classroom. They enter the profession equipped with theory, but not with the tools they need to create safe, structured, and responsive learning environments.

Many teacher preparation programs place a strong emphasis on theoretical coursework, topics like learning theory, pedagogy, and developmental psychology. These are critically important for developing reflective, equity-minded practitioners. But when theory isn’t paired with explicit, sustained instruction in the pragmatic aspects of teaching, we fail our future educators. New teachers need to know more than just why students behave in certain ways; they need to know what to do in the moment. They need to understand how to pace a lesson so it doesn't run over time. They need to know how to manage smooth transitions between activities. They need strategies for addressing challenging behaviors without escalating conflict. They also need support in how to build and maintain relationships with students and families across lines of difference.

Too often, teacher preparation programs rely on student teaching placements to fill these gaps. But this creates deep inequities. The quality of fieldwork varies dramatically based on a student’s placement: the school’s investment in mentoring, the disposition and skill of the supervising teacher, and even the classroom demographics. A student teacher in a well-supported, diverse, and reflective classroom will have a vastly different experience than one placed in a school with little support or homogeneity in student needs. Fieldwork alone cannot shoulder the burden of preparing teachers to manage real classrooms.

Of course, this is not a simple issue. Many faculty members in schools of education have not taught in K–12 classrooms in years, if ever. There’s also no single, universally accepted model for classroom management. One example of this is the ongoing debate between traditional behaviorist methods and more relational, trauma-informed, or restorative approaches. Some universities may also avoid engaging deeply with behavior and discipline due to fears of promoting compliance-based systems, or because it requires grappling with hard truths: the historical and ongoing inequities in how Black students and other students of color are disciplined, and how classroom management practices can reinforce systemic racism if not interrogated critically.

But despite the complexity, I believe this dilemma is solvable. In fact, I believe it’s essential to solve it if we hope to address the current educator shortage and support the well-being of teachers and students alike.

Universities must integrate theory with practice throughout the teacher preparation journey. Education students should be engaging in real classrooms from year one- not just in their final year. Coursework should challenge them to interrogate both the why and how of teaching. Classroom management, relationship-building, behavior guidance, and trauma-informed care must be treated as core components of teacher education, not side conversations or optional modules.

Most importantly, schools of education must partner meaningfully with classroom teachers- the professionals who are living the realities of today’s classrooms. Veteran educators hold a wealth of knowledge about what works, what doesn’t, and what support new teachers really need. We must honor teaching as a profession by co-constructing teacher preparation programs that are both rigorous and responsive.

A teacher who understands the theory of learning and how to manage a classroom with empathy, clarity, and care is a teacher who stays. That’s the kind of preparation our future educators (and their students) deserve.