Hence why there are so many teachers without teaching degrees.

I've got a degree in teaching history at a secondary level; but if it weren't that I didn't have the work experience to go through alternate certification, I'd have done as well to have majored in history. I'd have done even better to have majored in mathematics, since that's what I'm actually teaching this year. I couldn't find a job teaching history, so I took the mathematics certification test and passed. Now I'm a math teacher.

I'm grateful for the job, and I'm proud of how I'm doing under the circumstances; but can I honestly say an occupation which is so flexible in its qualifications is a profession? And most teachers, at least in my area of the world, are less educated and more outdated than myself.

I'm all for the push to professionalize the occupation; but from what I've experienced, I think we've got a long way to go.