Teaching Rant (New and Improved)

Teaching Rant (New and Improved)

Fact:  Anywhere between 40 and 50 percent of teachers will leave the classroom within their first five years (that includes the nine and a half percent that leave before the end of their first year).

Fact:  Approximately 15.7 percent of teachers leave their posts every year, and 40 percent of teachers who pursue undergraduate degrees in teaching never even enter the classroom at all.

Fact:  The average starting teacher salary in the U.S. is $35,672.

Here’s the thing:  Teaching is hard.  Every day is a palimpsest of hormones and apathy and personality conflicts.  I’m not trying to say that other jobs aren’t hard – of course they are – but teachers who care take their work environment home with them every day.  And if a teacher happens to actually care AND teach a subject where kids have to write and think, the pressure increases exponentially. 

Is it possible to be a teacher and not care?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Is it possible to leave work at the end of the day and not think about school until the next morning?  Sure.  But only if your job is just a job.  When a person signs on as a teacher from the perspective of the job being a missionary calling, then they eat, sleep, breathe, and dream that job.  Students need teachers who are in the classroom for more than collecting a (mediocre) paycheck and periodically photocopying worksheets.  Schools operate in loco parentis, in other words, in place of the parents.  Parents don’t show up to school.  They don’t sit through eight hours of classes.  They forget what it’s like to be subjugated to the onslaught of growing up and dealing with the maelstrom education. 

Here are some things that I heard from other teachers just this week.  A random sampling of how things work at an above-average, highly-functioning high school:

·         Even after students read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn OUT LOUD, IN CLASS, some of them didn’t know that Huck was a white kid.  When asked on a quiz (the question was designed to make sure everyone got at least one question right) which river Huck and Jim were rafting on, the answers ranged from the Missouri River (maybe an understandable error) to the Amazon and the Nile. 

o   Subnote:  They’re not listening.

§  Sub-subnote:  Many of my students (past and present) have told me that they don’t need to actually read any of the books for their English classes, because the teacher summarizes it for them in class. 

·         As juniors in an Advanced Placement English class, students were almost unilaterally unable to write a thesis for a research paper, because they hadn’t been asked to come up with one on their own yet. 

o   Note:  They want to simply be told what to do, so they don’t have to think about how or why what they’re learning is important outside the parameters of a grade.

·         When reading Shakespeare (again, out loud, in class) students pretended not to understand what was being said, because they knew the teacher would just cave and tell them the right answer.

I don’t think teenagers are getting dumber; I think that students have learned how to play the game.  They don’t have to care, because other people (teachers, parents, counselors) will care on their behalf.  Then when senior year rolls around, they expect to be offered admission and scholarship to universities.  And most of them will get admitted, because colleges and universities prey on young people, making them believe that college is their only choice, so they should mortgage their futures with student loans, even if they have NO IDEA what they want to do with their lives and/or they don’t have the skills to succeed in college. 

It seems like I’m making the case that the problem with education is the problem with teachers, but what can we expect when earning a teaching degree is so easy and there is no real oversight once teachers are hired?  Teachers are expected to walk into their respective classes every day and teach roughly 30 kids (all of whom operate at different ability levels) the importance of, say, symbolism in literature, when some of those kids can’t even read or have crippling ADHD or are struggling with major depression or their parents are going through a grueling divorce … or the kids are just exhausted from trying to go to school eight hours a day, work a job to pay for necessities, do their homework, be involved in clubs and activities, practice for theater/band, or go to soccer/football/baseball/swimming/whatever-practice after school every day?  It is a RARE and COMPOSED teenager who can handle all that crap all day, every day. 

Young people just give up a little bit, every year, because they have no idea what to focus on.  Their coach is screaming at them to remember the plays, but meanwhile, their history, English, and math homework sits – unfinished – in their backpacks in the gym locker room. 

And the next day?  When they didn’t have time to do their homework, or when they chose not to do it because they wanted to nerd out with their videogame console instead, guess who has to try to pull it together?  The classroom teachers. 

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE is exhausted every day.  Something’s gotta give.