The Kind of Schools Teachers Want

Not long ago an acquaintance shared his true feelings of about teachers. He expressed nothing but scorn for us and for our pushback against the constant barrage of tests and the misuse of the test results in rating teachers, schools, and districts.

He expressed quite clearly the general feeling of those who see teachers as ticks growing bloated on the public carcass.  They hate what they see as the "whining" that comes out of the mouths of 6 hr. 40 min., 180 day loafers, who abuse children for a living. They see tenure as a job guarantee; they see a public school teaching position as a sinecure; and their opinions, often biased by an unpleasant personal experience, reflect an unwillingness to see the job of teaching as significantly different from many other professions. 

This person complained of his own difficulties with teachers as he struggled though his school years. He felt mistreated, misunderstood, and misled by a string of mediocre teachers. Why, he wondered should the public be forced to grant such teachers tenure and be forced to accept mediocrity for their children?

He also spoke of his son and daughter, both young lawyers, and compared the way his children were treated in their jobs to the expectations of teachers, drawing the conclusion that teachers are, at best, wimps. Young lawyers, he says, work almost non-stop, are expected to do everything the partners demand, and can be summarily fired if they do not produce excellence.

I asked him if he believes that the work done by his son and daughter is improved by the long hours, and meat-grinder conditions they are made to endure.  If so, then we could have no basis for discussion.  Also, if he feels that children need not be treated any differently than adults, that a child and a contract are the same thing, again we will have to just agree to disagree.

If, on the other hand, he recognizes that overloaded, discouraged, exhausted, lawyers cannot possibly perform their jobs with optimum effectiveness, and that overloaded, discouraged, exhausted teachers can have damaging effects on large numbers of the most vulnerable, then we had something to talk about.

I tried to explain that teaching is different.  It involves, primarily, our children. It is a humanist job. It means dealing with the needs and futures of children like the child he was when he was in school. I pointed out that his sad history as a public school child is not what we teachers want for our children and that none of his teachers ever went into the profession hoping to be no more than barely adequate. In fact, I noted, many good, effective, smart young teachers choose to leave the profession all the time because the conditions are too much for them to take. For the most part, it's not the poor pay that drives them away, but rather those conditions in schools that demoralize both teachers and students; that make it nearly impossible for the teachers to grow towards excellence. These young people want to see schools where students have a chance to succeed and teachers have a chance to prepare them for that success.  

I asked him if his lawyer children were told exactly how they must do their job, or if they were left to figure it out for themselves. He told me it was the latter. I then explained to him about state-created curricula and packaged curricula that many school districts have adopted and expect their teachers to present lock-step -- whether they are appropriate for the children or not. I explained to him how misguided administrators can make nonsensical demands that set teachers up for failure (as when my wife's principal decided that teachers could no longer have desks or when she decreed that an expensive veteran teacher should teach Spanish even though the teacher had never taken a single course in the language in hopes it would drive this otherwise excellent teacher into retirement) .

I tried to help him see that we have to change the conditions, because if we don’t then the only teachers who remain will be the mediocre ones who put more energy into playing politics than teaching students. 

What we want is to have the majority of the people teaching with us be able to do the job with excellence.  We want the potentially excellent teachers to stay in the profession.  We want them to be able to achieve that excellence.  Grinding up the good teachers and spitting them out is NOT in the best interest of our children.

This man may have some issues with the public school system, but teachers are not the system, they are subject to the system. It is a system that we teachers want to see changed, and we believe that he should want to see it changed too.

I would also like to talk to him about the issue of tying teaching to performance measures, and I want to talk about the effects more money might have, but maybe not now.  I’d rather he think about my main point that teachers want to be able to do the wonderful job they dreamed of doing when they chose to go into the profession.  I want him to think about how the conditions he describes prevent people from doing that wonderful job.  I want him to think about how important it is to all of us, not just the clients, that teachers be given conditions that allow and encourage that kind of job.