Being that I continue to be ridiculously busy (you know, from writing this blog instead of out looking for a job), I am hoping to depend on some colleagues, friends, and readers/followers to write articles. Today's entry comes from
Paul Kelter. Paul teaches teachers at Northern Illinois University,
he has a blog of his own, and he chimed in with a comment before as well as sent me an email. I asked him to share his perspective on education from the University level, and he happily obliged--I think he actually returned the email within seconds. Teachers and bloggers--mix the two, and you'll never be short an opinion.
He writes:
I’ve had the privilege of working with pre- and in-service teachers for
nearly 30 years, and my primary assignment at Northern Illinois University is
to teach elementary school science methods. I love my job and the kids – wait,
“kids” is not at all correct. One class, which I teach on-campus, has 27
“traditional” students, including 26 young women and one young man. The other
class, which I run at the Rockford campus – a fairly new, overgrown one-room
palace of a schoolhouse, has 20 “non-traditional” students, who are returning
to school after working in other professions for, in some cases, three decades.
These are line workers, Sunday school teachers, business owners, and moms, and
they all want something better (well,
not the moms – they want something different,
now that their children are independent.).
To be a teacher is to be something better.
It is a profession with profound dignity, because there is no paying profession
that is more important to a healthy society.
But that’s not the
message my soon-to-be-teachers get from our not-so-healthy society. Not the
younger ones and not the older ones. These soon-to-be-teachers are being
bombarded daily with the message that when good things happen, it’s because
their students begin the year already prepared to learn, and when bad things
happen, it’s because the teacher, in loco
parentis, can’t do the job. The message is that teachers arrive at 8, leave
at 2, go to the spa, have the maid take care of the family, and watch as the
Teach for America students (and, after their 5 weeks of training, they are
still, truly, students) show us how it’s done.
We thought it
couldn’t get worse, and then came No Child Left Behind. My student-teachers
tell me that their cooperating district teachers do not have time for science
and social studies; not with the tests
looming. It’s all about the tests.
The creative beauty that defines teaching is under heavy assault. So we have
the beat-down about how easy the job is (Grading? What grading?), the cushy
salary and benefits packages (How much did you spend on supplies last year
because the district is broke?), the lack of passion for the job (Look at those
Teach For America kids! You, too, can spend two or fewer years in the classroom
and then earn six figures at Goldman-Sachs; it’ll give you cred as a minority
affairs specialist!), and No Child Left Behind (Fill in your own tag line here:
_______________________). And then, just when it couldn’t possibly get
worse, The word that school teachers
throughout the state are getting RIFfed! NIU is owed $55 million from the
state. Layoffs may loom at my place too.
So, what’s the
view from my younger and older future
teachers at NIU? Just what we’d expect. They are scared. Really scared. They
will graduate in a year, and there will be no jobs. They will have worked for
at least four years in college, paid, perhaps, $50,000 or more for their
education, jumped through all the wild academic hoops (What other field has
students write “reflections” about everything from their experiences in class
to the price of sorghum on the Mercantile Exchange?), and their only mistake
was that they love kids enough to want to help them give structure to the chaos
that is this bizarro world in which we live.
If only they’d
wanted to be hedge fund managers.
So what can I do
as their teacher? I constantly remind them that their career aspiration is the
best one. That they have dignity, and that the struggle to keep this dignity is
part of the deal. Experienced teachers struggle every day, and they do keep their
dignity, I tell my students. They know what they are about, and they know the
impact they have on their kids. The state legislature, many in the public, all
kinds of people will try to take away that dignity. But inside that classroom – that’s OUR place, whether in 2nd
grade or at NIU. No one can take that away from us as long as we have our job.
So our public school teachers struggle for their jobs. But they will maintain
their dignity. This is what I tell my students. I believe this. And, in spite
of the firestorm of slings and arrows they see hurled at professionals, so do
they.
Well Paul, I think you see it as I do. Keep telling your perspective, and stay positive, you have a voice for sure.
