WHO ARE THE TEACHERS?

WHO ARE THE TEACHERS?

As the media usually present teachers, they fall into two groups. One is composed of incompetents endlessly leeching unearned pay from taxpayers. The other is made up of self-sacrificing, saintly souls devoted to the students whom they inspire to amazing accomplishment. Examples of the two types are constantly featured in the media, and the public can hardly be blamed for assuming that the stereotype is a fairly accurate picture.

The actuality is different, of course. For a better picture, begin with some revealing statistics. As of the school year 2005-06, there were 5,995,000 public school teachers, and every one of them had at least a bachelor’s degree. More than half, 56%, held master’s degrees, and there was even a scattering, .08%, with a doctorate. Women made up 79% of the profession and men only 21%, though in 1961, 31.3% were men; apparently many men fled to other fields. As custom would have it, teaching children continues to be pretty much the province of women. Given the general label of women’s work, teaching salaries not surprisingly rank low among the professions.

According to the 2005-06 survey, the average work day for teachers was 7.4 hours, but the average teacher spent 50 hours a week on professional duties. That figure might help to explain the disturbing fact that 50% of all new teachers quit within five years.

Numbers can’t tell the whole story. Working conditions for teachers bear little comparison to those of other professionals. Hours are set and assignments made for the teacher; a teacher on duty literally is locked into a schedule. A duty-free lunch is seldom as long as 45 minutes; elementary teachers supervise playgrounds and lunchrooms in addition to teaching classes. Submission to a routine signaled by ringing bells is only part of what a teacher accepts as infringement of professional status. More troubling is the fact that the teacher is told what, when, and how to teach. Creativity, intellectual strength, range and depth of knowledge are all at discount if not simply ruled out, and teachers are reduced to pushing “teacher proof” curricula. Such restrictions are usually based on the current demand that students score well on specific - district or state devised and mandated - tests. Basing the success of public education on such “proofs” of learning is an issue deserving its own blog, which will be coming.

Idealism is a common characteristic of the teacher, but it is challenged by the daily reality of the classroom. Public schools can’t pick and choose their students (as can private and charter schools); they take everyone who shows up. “Everyone” includes children unable or unwilling to meet classroom requirements; a thousand problems may create the underachieving or misbehaving child, but it is still the teacher’s job to lead that child into educational achievement, no matter what. At the same time the teacher must not neglect the children at the other end of the scale who are ready and willing to learn.

These goals collide with insufficient materials (individual teachers spend hundreds of dollars from their own pockets to provide them), uncomfortable and overcrowded classrooms, inadequate textbooks, and a lack of supportive services such as school nurses and librarians. Moreover, teachers often work under the authority of principals with little teaching experience but big egos, whose judgments can create problems and even kill a career.

In spite of these and many other roadblocks to job satisfaction, teachers persevere in their very stressful work, and those who choose to do it vary in their ability to do it well. As is true in any profession, some muddle along below expectations and others rise to levels of excellence. Every adult remembers that one really superior teacher, the one who caught the hearts and minds of many, who lives in recollection as a life-changing, life-nurturing force. Such individuals are as rare in teaching as they are in every profession, as they are in life. To expect all teachers to meet that standard is unrealistic and unfair.

Just as there are exceptions at the top, there will be exceptions at the bottom. Sadly, most adults can also recall a teacher unworthy of the profession. The media inflate the problem of bad teaching by telling the public that such horrors abound and cannot be fired. Simply not true - another blog will show how incompetents can be removed.

What needs to be remembered is that between the extremes works the vast majority, teachers who are competent, hard working, and successful in meeting all the requirements of their profession. They sign on for jobs that tax their patience and challenge their ideals. They, not the extremes, are the heart and soul, the essential driving force of public education.