Friday, September 27, 2013

Response to the 9 things you should never say to teachers

I admit it, I scroll down the Huffington Post for my news. I feel slightly queasy doing it, but there are some things there I appreciate about it, specifically that they have an education page. Currently education news is a little slow, but I did find this, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/never-say-to-teachers_n_3990648.html which intrigued me as a teacher. For the record, I have only heard one of these statements before, but I have heard other comments that are more offensive than some of these. Here are my responses to a few of these:

1. "Teaching sounds like such a sweet gig. I mean, you get summers off."
"During the summer, many educators teach summer school classes, participate in teacher training, earn advanced degrees and plan for the next year."
All of this is true, but my district didn't offer traditional summer school, only offered two days of paid training, and one paid day of prep. You know what most teachers do during the summer? THEY WORK! As we all know, there is very little money involved in teaching, and most teachers need to work over the summer to support their family, that is why this is number one on this list.
5. "It's awesome that the point of teaching is to make a difference, but do you really think any of your students will remember you?
First of all, I could be wrong in thinking that everyone remembers a teacher they had at some point in time, even the idiot who asks the question thinking that it is correlated to teachers making a difference. Secondly, I think teachers and non-teachers would generally agree that teachers are teachers in order to make a difference, but I think the definition of what is a difference would be different between the two groups. While the community and politicians might think that the difference is graduating students into prestigious universities, raising test scores or teaching disadvantaged Latinos calculus (or more recently inner city kids how to enjoy writing), teachers would probably think of smaller victories. As I think of these small victories, most are achieved through kindness and mercy. Like helping students through bad days by giving of time and words of encouragement, spending time before or after school helping students master an important concept or giving students a shot at redemption to help them make the grade. I am actually not good at any of those things, but I know there are teachers out there who are, and that's great. My goal in special education was to inspire students to enjoy doing math and believe they could do more than they had done in the past. Nobody passed an AP test but I can at least say that there was a change in student attitudes while I was at Thompsen and Union. This goal translates into fewer truant students and dropouts, higher grades and test scores, and more graduates. Does it make students remember me? Who cares?
7. "If you get tenure, you pretty much can never get fired, right?"
"As noted in a National Education Association blog, 'Tenure is about due process -- not about guaranteeing jobs for life. And it’s not about protecting 'bad' teachers -- it’s about protecting good teachers.'"
This comes up in every discussion about teacher quality, but there's a shift against tenure in most conservative-run states. Everyone in the district I taught in has a one year contract and the district is under no obligation to renew it. I have seen teachers and administrators alike 'pushed out,' so to speak, so this doesn't really apply to me. But if I taught in California I'm not sure it would offend me.
8. "Can't you just sit back and let the textbook teach for you?"
Some teachers have done this. It is not incredibly effective, exciting or popular, but the answer to the question is yes. I have not seen it done in schools I have taught, but I had a class in high school that fit this definition, and I think that if I was the only one this question wouldn't have made HuffPo's list.

My overall synopsis of the questions is that I don't think people are really stupid enough to ask them. Most of them require the questioner to not value the traditional public education model either for political reasons or personal (like having the same world history teacher that I did). These are the same people who would ask questions #3, 6, 7 and 8 because they think teaching is a super easy job that offers a lot of autonomy and cushion because of the superpowerful teachers union (applicable to unions in California, Illinois, and New York in particular). These are generally the students who did not need extra help to pass their classes, or underachieved and didn't care. As parents they start charter schools to try and keep bad teachers out of their kids' classrooms, which is noble, I guess, but not entirely necessary in my opinion.

I'll end this post with a story of the most offended I've ever been as a teacher. To be honest, it may be the only time I was offended by a parent or anyone else when talking about my profession. It happened when I was a student teacher at parent teacher conferences. I was teaching health education at the time and a parent told me I should have gone into teaching math. I guess I was offended because I did-and still do-believe teaching health in school has great merit, and it actually is more applicable to students' lives and can make a bigger difference in the big picture for students as well. Looking back on it, his tone was more offensive than his words, because I would have gladly been a math teaching major if I wasn't already three years into a political science degree when I decided I wanted to teach. Health was the fastest way to become a teacher, but I got hired to teach special education instead because of my merits as a teacher, and now I teach math anyways.