teachers crimes and passions

The reason I put a trephinated skull on this hub is that we teachers need to do major metaphorical brain surgery on our own minds. We need to realize how powerful we truly are. We need to realize that power is not a bad or shameful thing. Power in the wrong hands is evil. Power in the hands of a teacher is quite the opposite of evil. It is an unstoppable force for good.

No one took our authority away, fellow teachers. We opened our hands and gave it away freely. Trephine your minds with me.

The United States education system is predicated on teacher abuse. Mainstream United States society embraces the belief that teachers can and should be beaten back further and further against the wall, and teachers should and will submit. After all, the beating back and subsequent submission is a process that is part and parcel to U.S. Education. It is a trend that the United States system has followed for years.Why stop now? And more to the point, who or what could or should be powerful enough to stop that destructive cycle?

Mainstream society subscribes to the deeply-entrenched belief that the government and educational institutions should and will charge soaring college costs, and high interest rates for college loans. Teachers’ licenses, teacher training to retain licensure, etc, should all be high and taken from teachers’ pockets. Already frighteningly low wages should and will remain too low to keep up with the market, or be decreased even further. Teachers should and will be forced to sign contracts that agree to nothing but empty air on the part of districts, and indentured servitude on the part of teachers. Why? Because teachers love kids and they do not want to leave them. In that, teachers have transgressed and they must pay.

Mainstream society believes that the government can and should allow teachers to pay for school supplies out of their own pockets, that the government can and should allow teachers to default on their loans, go bankrupt, ruin their credit just to survive, and lose their homes (or just rent, because after all, why should a lowly teacher have to own a home? Teachers do not need to be homeowners. Teachers should be happy with what they get, and stop complaining).

Mainstream society believes that the government can and should allow, nay require, without a thought, that teachers work for free, do more and more for less and less, and have to work two or three jobs at a time after already coming in to school several hours early or staying after school several hours late, or working throughout the weekend just to perform all the tasks required to be a teacher.

Mainstream society believes that if teachers cannot or will not agree to work within these parameters, they should simply quit and find a menial task that pays more, when their hearts, minds, and souls are in teaching, that in displaying any color of humanity reacting to these conditions, including anger, sadness, regret, worry, fury, frustration, teachers are simply showing a bad attitude and not being a team player.

Society believes it can and it should use the phrase “bad teachers,” and use it often and with zeal. The phrase was plastered all over Newsweek magazine, after all. It said, “the solution to America’s education problem? Fire bad teachers Fire bad teachers Fire bad teachers Fire bad teachers…all over a blackboard.Society believes it can and should fire, with wild abandon, as if tear-gassing gentle protesters in a police action, entire teaching staffs which are not producing results according to standardized tests, often in schools in which the most basic needs of the students (see “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” but what would I know, because I am just a teacher), are unmet. Why not? Kill ‘em all. Get somebody worth his salt. These are bad teachers. This is a bad principal. Get rid of them. Burn down the building, too. Build something shinier and newer. Then, we will win.

That is the educational zeitgeist of the United States. That is the style, the trend, the culture into which America nestles K-12 education. That is the lense through which mainstream United States citizens choose to view the process and practice of K-12 education. Kill ‘em all, and build something shiny and new. That way, we’ll win. Forget objective research. Why would swallowing our pride and follow countries whose education systems are exemplary prove fruitful? Exemplary currently is the country of Finland, whose schools are 100 percent public, and whose teachers are all members of teachers’ unions. “Forget hard data, though,” dictates the U.S. zeitgeist, “We want shiny and new and big.”

That attitude produces exploitation and abuse.

In addition to receiving economic exploitation and abuse, teachers are mistreated socially. Teachers are held accountable for the moral, psychological, and academic welfare of each and every child. Regardless of whether the child is even willing to try to learn, regardless of whether the parent has raised the child to want to learn, the teacher is expected to produce psychological, behavioral, and academic success in the child. There is an incessant, electric current of guilt implanted in K-12 instructors’ throats. It runs all the way from the throat, causing shortness of breath, to the stomach, causing pangs, to the spinal column, down through the legs. Its incessant thrumming is simply part of the job. It’s a working condition. Construction workers wear hardhats, policemen carry guns, lawyers wear suits, doctors wear white coats, and teachers internalize and harbor massive quantities of guilt. The guilt is just as palpable as a hardhat, a gun, a suit, and a white coat, perhaps more so, as it supposedly doesn’t even exist. So we are supposed to work with that electric current inside, while at the same time pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s Orwell’s “Doublespeak,” and it’s right now! But it is just part of the job. It may as well be in the job description, in the training, and in the contract, renewed every year (or whenever the district wants to renew it), the guilt clause, a “Benchmark,” a “Standard.”

Is this all true? Yes. Is it happening right now, all over the country? Yes. Is it as bad as it sounds? Absolutely. Your question is, “So what?” Well, here is your answer. The issue is, abuses such as those outlined above are not only hideously immoral, but they are causing the entire educational system to be implicitly unstable.

Any system that relies on abuse is inherently unstable. Take a look at slavery, for example. What did the United States get out of that? Horrifying, unspeakable acts against a certain sector of the population, and ultimately a civil war. That is instability. Individuals, including my own husband, have repeatedly argued that “teachers are underpaid just like many other groups, such as policemen, for example, so what’s the difference?” Heck, my own state Senator from the district in which I work stated at a “Town Hall Meeting,” that educators comprise a “special interest group,” and subsequently, teacher’s needs are no more or less important than the farmers, than the elderly population, than policemen, etc.

Well, certainly farmers, the elderly, policemen, small business owners, have very legitimate, urgent concerns as well. No, I am not a farmer, I am not elderly, I am not a small business owner or a policeman, and, no, I do not know what it is like to be those people, nor do they, I suppose, know what it is like to be a teacher, for the most part.

However, though not all citizens are farmers, elderly, business owners, or policemen, allcitizens must be educated. All citizensmust be educated. Farmers attended K-12 schools. The elderly attended K-12 schools. Business owners, policemen, went to K-12 schools. My school district’s senator proabaly went to a K-12 school, but even if he didn’t, his private school instructors probably did, and his two children do attend one of our public schools.

Teachers themselves all went through k-12 schools. Whether K-12 attendees were “privileged” enough to attend expensive private schools or not, someone has to have attained and retained a quality education, and upheld the moral strength and courage it takes to pass on that knowledge accurately and effectively to the next generation. So how are teachers a “special interest group”? Chances are, many educators who taught at the private K-12 school to which members of the upper crust went, were themselves educated at a K-12 public school. Therefore, teachers are not, in any manifestation of reality whatsoever, a “special interest group.” That observation is intrinsically illogical. The results of following that line of logic are positively disastrous.

As it stands, most of my Honors Sophomores come to me unable to distinguish a noun from an adjective. This is a skill that I acquired in the third grade, probably much earlier.

Most of my Honors Sophomores are unable to figure out when a situation calls for the word “their,” the word “there,” or the contraction “they’re.” What Honor do you see in that?

Adults tell me they still cannot comprehend the “there/their/they’re” problem, and they believe their dearth is some sort of foppish joke over which to be giggled while enjoying a pint of beer, “Spell check will get it for me.”

Already we see the symptoms of the inherent instability of K-12 education: satisfaction with mediocre communication skills in the adult population.

Shall we also dispense with dictionaries and resume grunting and beating each other on the skulls to express the desire to mate? Drag knuckles along the ground as we drag mate into cave? Shall that be the next set of “standards” coming down from the worldly and wise upper echelon?

No. spell check will not “get it” for you. Typed documents come out looking totally ignorant, even moronic, all the time, even after both spell check and grammar check have been employed.

Additionally, professionals in all types of work need to be able to write by hand without looking hopelessly ignorant in myriad situations.

The once-bright flame of basic human communication is fizzling daily as the polluted water of mediocrity is splashed on it. Teachers plant, water, and weed the seeds and soil of society. Teachers are the maestros who conduct society’s orchestra. That orchestra could be an ear-splitting, nerve-jangling cacophony or a heaven-sent symphony pulsing with light and rich with hope. The quality of the music we are all going to hear depends on the amount and quality of honor, respect and basic human dignity and kindness mainstream society and legislators extend to teachers. Teacher quality results from those ingredients. Threatening teachers with RIFF’s (lay-offs) and litigation, and flinging foul phrases such as “bad teacher!” will always work against the goal of increasing teacher effectiveness. It will always work against the goal of making the field more attractive to eager neophytes, against the goal of maintaining joy and dynamism in the public school.

People tell me if I do not like it, why don’t I just “pick another job.” “You knew what you were getting yourself into when you went for it, so I don’t feel sorry for you. You should have just ‘picked another job.’ ”

First of all, teaching is not a “job.” Window-washing is a “job.” Flipping burgers is a “job.” Folding clothes at The Gap is “a job.” Teaching is a profession. Teachers are white-collar professionals. Teachers are highly trained, highly educated, white-collar professionals.

All teachers, even substitute teachers, as badly abused as they are, hold Bachelor’s degrees. The majority hold Master’s degrees, and many even hold PhD’s. These are highly advanced degrees that take a great deal of work to obtain.

In addition to degrees in their core content area, teachers undergo a stringent teacher-training programs and in-services just to become certified and maintain certification, and the cost of becoming certified is high, and comes out of educators’ ever-shriveling pocketbooks.

The amount and quality of knowledge and skill that teachers have, and the high, high level of acuity with which they are expected to handle that knowledge, is uncanny.

Teachers are far more equipped to educate than professors are, for the simple reason that they have to become certified in the art and science of teaching. Teacher training incorporates study, practicum, experience, and constant re-certification in the very latest brain-based research. That is to say, teachers know not simply their core content area, but the hard science and the delicate art of howpeople learn. And that is a tricky business, even for the 35 year veteran.

Though teachers are far more equipped to educate than professors are, the image the word “teacher” produces in a citizen’s head is one of a scattered, silly, playful, motherly person with lots of bright colors on the walls, thick, ‘80s spectacles, 35 extra pounds to play with, and a coltish reverence for the child and parent. “Teacher” is on his/her knees begging and thanking, begging, and thanking. He/she thanks society, the administration, the child, who only wants to learn, and can do no wrong, the mother and father, who are purity and perfection, and reserve the right to threaten and even litigate, the teacher, for some wrongdoing that is constantly waiting in the heavily-curtained wings of the teacher’s psyche.

Most of all, however, “Teacher” is begging and thanking the System, which allows him/her the honor of the position. “Teacher” is glad to have a few scraps now and then, always eager to work for free. “Teacher” is considered unprofessional if he/she declines to work extra for free. Administrators and Colleagues frown upon him/her even for asking whether there will be a stipend for the extra work, let alone how much it will be. And this extra work, oft manifesting itself in extra meetings and time-consuming projects, routinely involves delicate decisionmaking that could seal and secure the ideals and strategies of the entire school, or often the entire district. Yet credit for most decisions is given to curriculum managers and trainers. Due to willingness for unpaid labor, the teaching profession is not equal to a “J-O-B”, it is lower. Teaching is regarded as lower than, say janitorial work. At least as a janitor, one may expect to be compensated for overtime, no? Perhaps it is along these subtle lines that one may trace the faint outline of a slave on the tracing paper that draws the picture of “teacher.”

By contrast to the image the word “teacher” manifests, the image the word “professor” manifests is one of an affluent, usually male, individual steeped in knowledge and power, palms banging on a wooden podium the way a judge may bang his gavel in a courtroom, veins protruding, carotids pulsing with the unfathomable truths of the universe, gesturing madly in a chalk-dusty classroom, scribbling theories, sauntering in superiority across campus with a scowl, juggling theorems as God tossed stars, fielding myriad requests to come on this or that talk show, NPR, expert panels. “Professor” is Mad Oz behind the wooden door with that little frosted window. The Man talks, students write His every word. Logos. The Word.

But in reality, people do not learn best sitting at desks taking notes, even if God himself were railing behind the pulpit. Who knows this to be true? A teacher. Teachers are highly trained in the psychology of development and behavior, the dynamics of classroom management, matters of litigation, brain-based research, and scores of other facets of instruction that incorporate the whole human and the whole society, not just one topic they explain to a podium.

After all, if you have not been trained in the art and science of educating, and you are not required, as teachers are, to incorporate Marzano’s Nine, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Gardner’s Theory of Intelligence, and kinesthetic learning, etc. etc. etc (pardon me, once again, for my knowledge of these terms…after all, I am just a lowly teacher), how are you going to get your students to learn anything more than that which is required for regurgitation on the next test?

Thus, in professors’ classes, they are not telling the student, they are telling the podium, which listens about as well as the host of students who are passed out, cheeks bloating, like bums in the bath tub, little red patches swollen in the little puddle of drool spreading across their desks as you rattle on in self-worship.

Professors, please correct me if I am wrong! Please encourage me by instructing me on all the teacher training you have undergone! I would love to be wrong about this issue. But I know what I see. I know what I have lived. In undergraduate school, the most highly lauded college of the many I have attended, Professors had “office hours.” “Office Hours” were few and far between. Students would wait and wait, palms sweating, outside the door, and apologize for taking up too much time.

“Professor” is like “Doctor”, who ambles in briefly and hurriedly tosses a few words at the patient’s aching head before and after the nurse provides the care and work.

Once a week, the professor conducted an auditorium class. All other classes were small group classes conducted by Master’s students. Oh, if I had known the raw deal for which my mother and I were paying out the eye-teeth, perhaps I would have stopped there and applied as head fry-cook somewhere. At least then, my work day would stop the moment I punched out for the day.

In addition to the fact that teaching is not a “job,” but a white-collar profession, teachers cannot simply “pick another job,” as one might pick a booger when no one is looking. Teachers are responding to a calling. Believe me when I say I truly wish, quite often that I had had a “calling” to be a CEO, a CFO, a lawyer, a doctor, a pharmacist, or yes, a professor! So I could perhaps at least “profess” to pay off the student loan which promises to bulge to $120,000.00 by the time it’s done ingesting my life and my retirement. Believe me when I say it.

But, like the priesthood, like military service, teaching is a calling. It is a blessing perhaps, but perhaps more often a curse that you love to hate or hate to love depending on the day or moment, but, nevertheless, it is not something you can simply drop like a half-knitted pair of gloves or a worm-drilled Granny Smith.

So I will continue to walk my walk, and shout at every street corner when I need to shout at injustice. I will continue to be an unruly inconvenience to the jaded public eye. Even if I am the only teacher in my district standing on that street corner waving a sign, one is better than none.

Bad Teachers

My name is Jane Doe, and I am a “bad teacher.”

I am a high school English teacher who just completed her fifth year. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in English, Summa Cum Laude, and a Master’s degree in Education, Magna Cum Laude. I have had nothing but strong evaluations from my administrators. My Assistant Principal deemed me a “master teacher” and “a leader in this house,” and the lead Principal advised me that I should teach teachers. These principals told me these things during my third year. This year, my Assistant Principal advised me that I am the best classroom manager in the entire school, which has about 2,000 kids in it.

My name is Jane Doe, and I am a “bad teacher.”

My colleague, X, who has a PhD in Biology, yet still humbly chooses to labor among us as a high school teacher, is also a “bad teacher.” My other colleague, Y, a math teacher who desperately loves teaching but is seeking another job in which she will be miserable, so she can afford to feed her family, and is practically told to stick to a script every day, is also a “bad teacher.”

X, the Dr. of Biology, brought a Newsweek to school one day. The cover said: “The Solution to America’s Public School Problems?” Behind that text was a blackboard completely covered, from bottom to top, with the sentence “fire bad teachers fire bad teachers fire bad teachers fire bad teachers fire bad teachers” over and over and over again.

My name is Jane Doe, and I am a “bad teacher.”

I think that it's not OK to use the phrase "bad teachers." One would never be permitted to use the phrase "bad students,” nor would one suggest that a student be simply kicked out or discarded as only so much garbage if he or she were underperforming. In applying the phrase “bad teacher,” one suggests that nothing at all that the teacher does while on the job has any merit in it whatsoever.

Is the fact that we are grownups what makes it OK to call us “bad,” or is it something else? I believe that for some reason, certain members of society believe that it is teachers’ choice of profession that kisses the public with that sweet-yet-tangy permission to cudgel us with that kind of language. Perhaps in some cases, this belief is not a  permission, but some sort of ugly and rude responsibility on some level.

I know that individuals who like to employ the phrase “bad teachers,” in simply going about their daily life probably do not point at people in general and say, “BAD PERSON. BAD PERSON. GET RID OF BAD PERSON.” I really don’t buy that. Not for one moment. No. In fact, typing those phrases makes me laugh because they sound so Tonto-esque. In truth, they sound as if the writer simply lacks the ability to reason.

Having read the “bad teachers” article, I know the writer has achieved a certain level of education and is aware that treating people with respect and kindness is the modus operandi that is generally understood as successful and acceptable in society, and that for the most part, we save this level of brutality for those who are actively out to harm us.   

Is it morally right to club a k-12 educator , of all people, with brutality because he or she is ineffective? It seems that educators are perceived as somehow guilty of some kind of insidious high crime if scores do not reflect the ideal. We truly are saddled with a enormous amount of guilt. It’s as if the certain members of the public perceive us as devious or lazy if we cannot figure out a way to make our students understand certain concepts and show that understanding in a test.   

            The thing that is truly ironic is that, usually, the more successful we are at true, authentic instruction that produces critical thinking and encourages excitement about learning and a dynamic classroom, the less successful our students are probably going to be on standardized tests, because we will have spent too much time dallying about with real , genuine instruction and teacher-student didactic relationships, and not enough quality time repeating rote strategies to figure out how to beat trite, limp multiple choice exams.

            At our school, we have tests called “Benchmarks” that we administer four times per year. Our “Benchmarks” are constructed by a company that produces and outsources standardized tests. The purpose of “Benchmarks” is to check the kids’ progress and identify which concepts need to be taught or retaught, so that ultimately the kids can pass the “AIMS” standardized test, which is the test they need to pass to graduate.

            Our English department sits down at “Benchmark Review” meetings, which are designed for us to assess “Benchmarks” ahead of time to ensure that the questions are logical. Unfailingly, there are several questions on every one of those “Benchmarks” that are illogical for a number of reasons. Sometimes they do not make sense, sometimes two or three of the answers are just as true as the one the company has deemed correct. Sometimes the test question itself is just stupid because it has nothing to do with language arts, and we look at each other and say, “I have a four-year degree in English and I’ve never heard of this, and it has nothing to do with anything that is important in life, in logic, or in communication of any kind.”

“Me too. Me neither.”

“Me neither. I don’t get it.”

We don’t even get 100% on the Benchmarks when we take them ourselves .

            In order to change the “Benchmark,” test, we have to trade in questions that do make sense, because the questions come in little packs that you have to trade out for other little packs. In order to trade out the little pack of questions, we have to trade out the entire boring excerpt of the boring story or insipid poem, or boring fake business letter, or boring contract, or whatever the case may be, and risk another pack of questions, which will, most likely also be riddled with illogical questions. Meanwhile, we have kids, husbands, wives, pets, laundry, and lives waiting for us at home, we’re tired, we have to grade papers and plan what we are going to teach and how we are going to teach it the next day and week and what have you, and perhaps take a moment or two to ourselves before the next day rolls around, so we shrug, and feel powerless, as we do in so many situations in this career.

Just trying to be a “good” teacher takes massive courage and unflagging commitment. Simply pursuing a career as laden with sacrifice as k-12 teaching warrants a purple heart. Should that level of courage be discarded, mocked as it is? Should that kind of faith be spat on with the phrase “bad teacher” upon an assessor’s discovery of inefficacy or inadequacy? Or instead, should an ineffective teacher be encouraged, helped, supported, just as the kids are? Just because we are adults doesn’t mean we are perfect. Far from it. We need and want ongoing training and new strategies and encouragement just as much as the kids do.

I would like those who do use the phrase “bad teacher” to know that most of the teachers who are 1,000% committed and love your kids, and want to do right by you, and are intelligent, and creative, most of the teachers who are working our brains to the skull and wrangling all of our faculties to try to figure out how to get your kids to pass these tests that are not based in reality, most of the teachers who are wringing our hands and hearts day and night in hopes that we won’t get our salaries cut or our benefits snatched away or our jobs taken away or our identities slashed apart because we just couldn’t be good enough, counting our rosary beads and self-flagellating, keeping vigil, constantly trying to be better and better and better…

We think you’re talking about us.

 

Are you?