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In the midst of this ridiculously cold winter, there have been some among us who have weathered the season rather comfortably. If you have a friend that’s a teacher, you know they have had the great fortune of staying inside while the rest of us bundled up to get to work.
Oh, teachers, you truly are the lucky ones.
If we’re being honest, though, this abundance of snow days has made the rest of us a little bit jealous of teachers. At least, this is what my Facebook feed indicates. At best, teachers are lovingly chided for staying home in their PJs yet another day; at worst, they are mocked and derided, with statements like, ”I wish I could have been a teacher so I could be lazy like them.”
Statements like this one reflect a general suspicion of teachers in our time. Once lauded and praised as some of the most important people in our society, teachers now face all kinds of trials. Parents, pundits and politicians, unhappy with the academic performance of our children, have suggested all sorts of plans to address our didactic dismay.
Most of these plans lay the blame for all our problems at the feet of teachers. But having spent some time studying teaching, and teaching children, teens and adults myself, I’ve realized what a challenging task teaching can be. Put simply, teaching is hard work. But most of us like to think differently. In our minds, teachers are the easiest to blame.
The funny thing about putting the blame at the feet of teachers is that it’s far too simplistic of a response to the significant hurdles our educational system is facing. It’s similar, really, to blaming the weatherman for the rain. It totally ignores the complex systems and theories at work that made it rain. Similarly, it’s just silly to blame teachers for our educational challenges without addressing the systems and theories that got us here.
For example, there are about eight ”-isms,” or educational theories, that guide teaching (behaviorism or existentialism, for example). Which of these provides the best results? It depends on who you ask. And, how does one meet the needs of every child, with learning disabilities and ADHD diagnoses at all-time highs? Given all of this, how does one teach the standards given by the state, and teach them fast enough that students will be prepared for the standardized test at the end of the year?
Notice, friends, that we haven’t even touched on yet is parents’ retreat from their children’s education (or, on the other end of the spectrum, parents’ obsession with their children’s education). Neither have we addressed problems at the level of school or government administration. That’s an important topic for another day.
But my point is this: it strikes me as just plain ridiculous to be laying as much blame as we are at the feet of teachers without any real understanding of teaching and learning and the changing nature of the American student. For that matter, as someone who has spent most of his life in a classroom – about 21 years in all – I’ve only had a couple of truly bad teachers.
I’ve had a lot of good ones, and a handful of simply excellent ones. If I were to ask you about a teacher who had an important impact on your life, I’m sure you could answer swiftly. In other words, my sense is that there are far more good teachers than bad, so we need a better solution.
The point is this: Lay off our teachers. Or at least raise the level of dialogue to be engaging with bigger ideas than teacher performance and pay. And, for goodness sake, let them have their days off. When they are working, most of them are working overtime, buying supplies with their own money and staying up late grading.
Tennant is a Warren resident. Email him at editorial@tribtoday.com