I have decided I want to go back to the classroom. I miss teaching. I miss interacting with the kids. I miss me. I am a teacher, and when I am not teaching, part of my identity is gone.
I just read a great article online in The Chronicle about how not to be a jerky teacher. I was thrilled when I read in the comments how many teachers talked about treating their students with respect. Even so, I am sad because it is something that far too many teachers still haven’t learned.
To me education isn’t just about teaching or learning a certain skill set. Students also need to be taught how to think and how to question. I don’t believe that can be done in an authoritarian environment. If the student is afraid to ask questions and knows a wrong answer or failing will bring ridicule, he or she often only engages in the subject matter in a surface way. Students engage, learn, and grow in a classroom where they know they are respected and appreciated. I know, my students had some outstanding test scores to prove it.
I remember when I graduated from college. I had a diploma and a teaching degree, but I hadn’t been taught how to teach. I didn’t have any classroom management classes and I wasn’t entirely certain I would be able to translate my learning into teaching students. I actually said as much to one of my classmates. She admitted she felt the same way.
Everything I learned about classroom management I learned from my cooperating teachers when I student taught, and from trial and error my first couple of years in the classroom. I went to a top ranked Normal School (teacher’s college), but after reading about the programs at Walden University, I’m kind of wishing I had gone there. They don’t just teach their students the theory and politics of teaching, they actually teach them how to teach.
I hope you do make it back to the classroom.
I know you’ll be teaching again. You are a great teacher.
Wait, is that the Doonesbury school?
No, no, Dawg, that’s Walden College. The Harvard of Southeastern Connecticut, and Dubya’s alma mater. (And this didn’t worry anyone?) But they (WU) must get questions …
We were talking about this the other night. When the “people who decide these things” moved teaching into a profession requiring accreditation, the pressure was on to make the time and money investment more theoretical and less practical. And has the accreditation and university degree produced a) more respect for teachers and b) better educated students?
Some of the most gifted teachers my children experienced were those who yes, had a college education, but NOT in teaching — in the subject they loved (biology, etc.) and that love of learning translated into the classroom. Of course, it was a private school where the accreditation of the teacher was less important than the teacher’s ability to inspire students to learn. Public schools are driven by stats. We can see a HUGE difference in the level of joy in teaching in our kids’ public schools they attend now vs. when they were younger. We still believe they need to be in the public school now, but we do see the difference. For one thing, the public school teachers get so burdened by programs, and interruptions for social agendizing, etc. it is difficult for them to maintain a continuity with their students.
While you await the opportunity to get back into a classroom, I think you should hang your shingle for tutoring at the local library . . .kids will be lucky to have you intersect their lives.
Best to you!
I do hope you get back into it. They nee more like you.
if you really want to teach again, something will turn up. but is that what you really want?
You know, gong, gong alo I wanted to be a teacher. Then I did some student teaching, in my first year of college and determined I did NOT want any part of what I saw.
Homeschooling has been so awesome because it is what I wanted to do in the first place; create an environment where kids could learn, and yes, learn whatever subject matter is at hand but more importantly learn to love learning.
Respect is critical, I agree, and learning how to teach is important.
As long as classroom dynamics dictate that so much of a teacher’s time be spend doing things OTHER than fostering a love of learning and teaching in engaging ways, some of our most important resources are being wasted, time, teachers, and window of opportunity to reach kids.
With all due respect to your sponsor, I don’t think that any institution other than the College (University?) of Hard Knocks can teach a person how to teach for real. I’m sure, though, that there are plenty of institutions out there that will gladly take 30% of your income for the rest of your life and beyond for the privilege of trying (and failing) to replace C(U)HK.
I submit that our educational institutions are so broken now because We the People have lost sight of their intent. They are assembly lines – designed in the early years of the Industrial Revolution to produce little boxes, Mr. Seegar, that have enough knowledge to staff the factory machines without killing themselves or those around them. At least, not so frequently as to disturb the business’s profit margins. Public schools in the northern US, during the middle years of the 19th century, raised literacy rates to near 100% – compare this to the southern US, where public schools were rare, and literacy rates were nearer 40% (excluding the slaves, since it was a crime to teach any of them to read). Needless to say, most of the literate were among the wealthy classes.
No assembly line can turn out individually-crafted products, not and remain cost-effective. But this is exactly what We the People expect our school systems to do. And, like the crassest capitalist, We expect the schools to produce such products more cheaply than is possible, screaming our loudest when the slaves we assign to the task dare to ask, never mind organize, for appropriate wages and working conditions.
Dare I suggest that there are those who are encouraging the breakdown of the public schools, so that their scions in private systems (where the slaves work long hours for little money and call it good, lest the overseer come with the lash) may reap an ever-increasing chunk of society’s benefits? So that We the People may be returned to the conditions prevailing in the ante-bellum American South? I can think of few more heinous crimes against American humanity.
seeger may have made the little boxes famous, but it was reynolds who put it all down.
with an “education” or not, i can’t make any money. and the things i can “individually craft”, are of no interest to the folks who live and work in the little boxes. and it’s because my craft is not made of ticky-tacky and my things do not all look the same.
I hope you get back there Quilly. I think it’s got to be a lot more rewarding than writing advertisements!
Follow your dream, Quilly. While it is nice to learn different teaching techniques and classroom management, it is your personality and love for teaching that will really make the difference!
My thanks to you and the sponsor, because this is a great post. I loved learning French and German way back when but I remember we hardly spoke at all in our classrooms — and when I went to live in Switzerland at the age of 19, I couldn’t converse comfortably in either language, though I’d started learning French at age 4. I learned more of both languages in that one year struggling along in shops and cafes than I did all those years — but unfortunately for students, our teachers have so much paperwork and standardized testing etc to worry about, when do you find classtime to get the students to engage with their subject? Lots to consider –