Teaching is, as almost every teacher will tell you, really tough the first year in the classroom. Don't get me wrong; I knew before I ever stepped into the classroom I would be putting in hours far beyond an eight-hour day; I knew teaching was fraught with challenges; but I did underestimate the nature, number, and frequency of the challenges I would face.
To be sure, there were moments of joy, immense satisfaction, discovery, and belly-busting laughter. However, I am going to claim that the incredible stress of teaching today, at this point in time, makes blissful teaching moments fewer than they used to be for teachers in the past.
My parents were both educators. My mother was a teacher for 30 years. She is gentle, loyal, fastidious, and steadfast in her commitments. Still, sometimes the very attributes that made her a great teacher often caused her a great deal of stress. She had regular anxiety about missing some detail or fretting that something wasn't "just so." She was always concerned about not letting anyone down, although none of those things ever were the case.
Her dedication was recognized, and she was very well-respected. She became a mentor and academic coach to other teachers, and both students and staff loved her. However, growing up with her as my mother, I knew the anxiety her teaching responsibilities caused her, especially when she felt torn between those and her role as a mother. It often left her exhausted.
My father, also an educator, started out as a teacher. He quickly moved into administration. He was a principal for over a decade and then moved into a district position overseeing the elementary schools. After five years in that role, he found he missed the daily interaction with teachers and students, and he took up a principalship at a newly opened school.
My parents always extolled the virtues of the job. They tried ardently, many times, to convince me to become a teacher. True, they would say, you won't get rich teaching, but there are other kinds of riches to be had from the profession. Stability, camaraderie, life-long impacts on students, the satisfaction of making a difference, and a chance to flex your creativity. They especially emphasized the good retirement pension. Not really wanting to "only be a teacher," I took a business career path after college.
I made my way up into positions where I made a big six-figure income, but I became rather unhappy in the corporate grind, especially after my kids were born. So, I got my teaching certification with the intention of changing careers. By the time I was certified in 2010, my parents had been retired from teaching for almost twenty years—they retired in 1991. Policies and theories on education fluctuate constantly, so in those twenty years, things certainly changed, particularly after the passage of NCLB* in 2001.
When I describe the expectations, responsibilities, procedures, and issues I have witnessed and experienced as a teacher, they are not only dismayed but also greatly saddened by the turn education has taken. My kind and dedicated mother would never have made it as a teacher today. She would have been driven to physical and emotional collapse. Lost then, would have been the mentorship, empathy, and experience that she shared with the teachers she guided. Her students never would have experienced her compassion and understanding or benefitted from the learning atmosphere she created for them. She made a difference to so many students and teachers, but her talents and dedication would have been lost on the world of teaching today.
I don't want to imply that teachers today are unable to be compassionate, creative educators or mentors. But, it is getting harder and harder to do that in too many schools in our system of public education. I am a member of a number of social media teacher groups, some with over 5,000 members. Teachers are actively contributing their thoughts and experiences in these closed spaces and sharing the most significant issues they deal with as teachers today. What I have seen are very clear and consistent issues that are common across the nation as the sources of significant problems in education today. The top three issues I regularly see are problems with (1) accountability and inconsistency in schools' expectations and consequences, (2) an extreme lack of social-emotional development in students of all ages, (3) learned helplessness (more about this phenomenon in a future post) in part due to an extreme emphasis on standardized testing and Common Core. Of course, complaints about standardized testing has been around for many years now.
In a series of upcoming posts, I intend to discuss these issues. I hope to present some empirical information, explore the truths or misconceptions of these problems, and I also plan to share real anecdotal stories as to how these issues impact the classroom in the United States today.
But, this is this is what remainswhat remains of my teaching career.
*No Child Left Behind
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