"You are too smart to be a teacher."

“You are too smart to be a teacher.”

It is a comment that I repeatedly heard myself as a junior high and high school student, and it is a message that many of the students enrolled in the teacher certification courses I teach tell me they also have heard.

And often, students say they are told they are too smart for the field of education by the very people who you would expect to most fiercely encourage their pursuits – other teachers and school administrators.

Having heard so frequently about this frustrating and bewildering experience, I was not surprised to read a recently released study, which showed that the U.S. has a tough time attracting top tier students to education.

In contrast, many countries with particularly high-performing schools recruit teachers from the top 35 percent of high school graduates.

Teacher quality matters, so it makes sense that high-achieving schools would also have high-achieving teachers.

There are a few theories on why the U.S. fails to successfully draw high-performing high school students into education. Some maintain the problem is low salaries. Others say that Americans do not view the field of teaching as sufficiently prestigious. And others say that low admissions standards into education programs send the message that anyone can, indeed, be a teacher.

But beyond these reasons, it also seems clear that teachers themselves need to take the lead in advocating for their profession.

If the people who devote their days to educating and nurturing our students cannot recommend the field to other bright people, we cannot be surprised when the students with the most options shy away from teaching.

The message should not be that some students may be too bright to be teachers. The message, instead, should be that teaching is the sort of profession where our best and brightest are most needed.