The hardest part of teaching

Son David just posted this on FB.  It is so so true.

Quote :

www.huffingtonpost.com

[justify]
The Hard Part

They never tell you in teacher school, and it's rarely discussed elsewhere. It is never, ever portrayed in movies and tv shows about teaching. Teachers rarely bring it up around non-teachers for fear it will make us look weak or inadequate.

........... it is on the list of Top Ten Things They Never Tell You in Teacher School.

The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:

There is never enough.

There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.

As a teacher, you can see what a perfect job in your classroom would look like. You know all the assignments you should be giving. You know all the feedback you should be providing your students. You know all the individual crafting that should provide for each individual's instruction. You know all the material you should be covering. You know all the ways in which, when the teachable moment emerges (unannounced as always), you can greet it with a smile and drop everything to make it grow and blossom.

You know all this, but you can also do the math. 110 papers about the view of death in American Romantic writing times 15 minutes to respond with thoughtful written comments equals -- wait! what?! That CAN'T be right! Plus quizzes to assess where we are in the grammar unit in order to design a new remedial unit before we craft the final test on that unit (five minutes each to grade). And that was before Chris made that comment about Poe that offered us a perfect chance to talk about the gothic influences, and then Alex and Pat started a great discussion of gothic influences today. And I know that if my students are really going to get good at writing, they should be composing something at least once a week. And if I am going to prepare my students for life in the real world, I need to have one of my own to be credible.

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Every year you get better. You get faster, you learn tricks, you learn which corners can more safely be cut, you get better at predicting where the student-based bumps in the road will appear. A good administrative team can provide a great deal of help.

But every day is still educational triage. You will pick and choose your battles, and you will always be at best bothered, at worst haunted, by the things you know you should have done but didn't. Show me a teacher who thinks she's got everything all under control and doesn't need to fix a thing for next year, and I will show you a lousy teacher. The best teachers I've ever known can give you a list of exactly what they don't do well enough yet.
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Here's your metaphor for the day.

Teaching is like painting a huge Victorian mansion. And you don't actually have enough paint. And when you get to some sections of the house it turns out the wood is a little rotten or not ready for the paint. And about every hour some supervisor comes around and asks you to get down off the ladder and explain why you aren't making faster progress. And some days the weather is terrible. So it takes all your art and skill and experience to do a job where the house still ends up looking good.

Where are school reformy folks in this metaphor? They're the ones who show up and tell you that having a ladder is making you lazy, and you should work without. They're the ones who take a cup of your paint every day to paint test strips on scrap wood, just to make sure the paint is okay (but now you have less of it). They're the ones who show up after the work is done and tell passersby, "See that one good-looking part? That turned out good because the painters followed my instructions." And they're most especially the ones who turn up after the job is complete to say, "Hey, you missed a spot right there on that one board under the eaves."

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But all the other hard parts of teaching -- the technical issues of instruction and planning and individualization and being our own "administrative assistants" and acquiring materials and designing unit plans and assessment -- all of those issues rest solidly on the foundation of Not Enough.

Trust us. We will suck it up. We will make do. We will Find A Way. We will even do that when the state and federal people tasked with helping us do all that instead try to make it harder. Even though we can't get to perfect, we can steer toward it. But if you ask me what the hard part of teaching is, hands down, this wins.

There's not enough.

Originally posted at Curmudgucation

Very well done!  Every teacher starts with high aspirations until reality sets in.  That classroom is full of ghosts - the hungry child - the child with divorcing parents - the child lost in the sibling order of things - the child with disabilities - the child with angry parents - the child with parents who don't care - the child without the "right" clothes to wear - the awkward child - the shy child - the angry child - the child with innumerable problems with classmates - the learning disabled child

And that "cult of ignorance doesn't help. Classroom size doesn't help.

The descriptions in this article explain a little of the "why."

Bravo!

7/10/2014

                Not mentioned here the teenagers who don't want to learn and the torment
                teachers go through. I've ssen it at the end of High SChool in 1966, something
                happened I don't know what but when I went to school you were taught by your
                parents the teacher is your paremt from 9 AM to 3 PM and your parents better not
                get a letter home, once I witnessed what saw I thought no I'm not going to become
                a teacher....It's the parents who don't teach these kids, I've heard parents say I want
                them to have what I didn't have so by 18 they've had it all. I've Seen young girls say
                in documentatries " I want someone to love," when they were pregnant, hello parents
                wake up and raise your child properly.....Maybe they wold be a better citizen...

                                                                   Cheers....... 

When I was principal of an alternative school, I was afraid of some parents.  One showed up at lunch with her two sons to attack a student who had made threats to her child on the cell phone.  What we went through to collect cell phones was ridiculous - and it was to stop bullying, not plain texting.  We could use cell phones to teach - regardless of economic status they had smart phones.  But they used them to bully and threaten each other.  They hid them places unmentionable.  They helped each other hide them.  I was so glad the day that I no longer had to face the fear of entering that building or supervising lunch.  It was always a certain few that stirred up the rest.

Note that 3/4 of our students had emotional and mental issues.  That's why they were in an alternative school, not because they were "bad" kids.  They had parents who could not control them and were uneducated in what to do themselves.  Many of the parents lived in quiet desperation as single parents or unemployed or in abusive relationships. The desperate lives of the parents without the resources to help them reflected in their children.

I fell down one day, tripping on a broken piece of sidewalk chasing after students who left the boundaries to go smoke where shopkeepers forbade them access.  The minute I fell, the worse of them came to my aid.  They had heart.  We just did not have the counseling resources to help entire families. 

Many of the parents really did care and came to school begging us to tell them what to do to get their child under control.  They cooperated on discipline techniques, but by the time they were teenagers, the students were set in their path, many members of gangs or pseudo gangs that controlled their behavior.

It's more than parents.  It is a desperate society, rootless and unable to see hope or any means to control their destiny, looking for someone or something to blame.

Lack of power. Without money or knowledge, violence is the only source available.

At night school, one of the biggest problems with cell phones was drug related. They used the phones to make contact with dealers and buyers.

We had metal detectors at the school entrance, and teacher's duty included searching bags and back-packs. We worked at making the situation as pleasant as possible - a way to get to know the students - light conversation, etc. Our principal would hold the cell phones during the day, and return them as they left. Knives and guns were confiscated and students were removed from campus.

it was a challenging job, but the results made it worthwhile.

Wow.  I was never a school teacher and can't truly say I understand the problems teachers face today.  My son taught for a while and quit due to unruly students.  He was not permitted to discipline and got no support from the people in charge.  It was a private school and they wouldn't do anything to jeopardize a paying student. 
Like Joe, I remember what it was like when I went to school.  That seems an eternity ago and so much has changed that one cannot make a true comparison.  The one thing that hasn't changed is the parental role.  Unless the teacher/school has the support of the parent, I don't see how the school can or should assume that role.  On the other hand, it may be the only guidance a child receives along with some loving care.

I've generally been lucky in that admnistrators backed the teachers, so long as teachers kept good documentation re disciplinary steps taken before sending students to the office.  At ACE, the self-paced, compentency based school where I taught my 1st 14 years, we used a system called Reality Therapy, which involved specific procedures designed to show students that they were responsible for their own behavior.  It didn't work in every instance, but for the most part, it was very effective.  It was right for me, because it was very close to the tactics I used at home.

Discipline was not punative, but based on natural consequences.

I went to lousy schools., Prvate, but lousy.  Enough said.

I didn't mean to end this thread, but ny teachers belonged in jail and today that is where they woudl  be.

They were very violent and downright MEAN.  It was like they were going to get us to heaven by beating us. They were ghastly.

When I grew up, married and lacked  sufficient funds to attend private schools, i was pleasantly surprised.   The public schools were far different.  The teachers were interested in teaching, not beating.

Corporal punishment was common in public schools when I was a student. Things had changed when I started teaching and my children were in school.

Society changes, generally for the better, I believe.

Schools will really improve once the public is willing to pay enough to get top-notch teachers and keep class sizes down.

Restorative is the new buzz word in discipline.  It means working with a small group of students, their parents, their peers and counselors to determine appropriate consequences for actions.  The problem is the time factor and the cost factor.  Otherwise, it has a good track record. 

I guess it makes more money for the prison industry to not spend money on education and support prison employment and industry (the products of prisons make a pile of money for the private prison management companies).

alj wrote:

Corporal punishment was common in public schools when I was a student.  Things had changed when I started teaching and my children were in school.

Society changes, generally for the better, I believe.

Schools will really improve once the public is willing to pay enough to get top-notch teachers and keep class sizes down.

This is where our money should go instead of tax breaks for the wealthy and wars.

Like.   

I forgot to add that "restorative" includes not just consequences for actions but also a plan that moves the students forward.

I read an article that talked about the emotional conferences when everyone has the same goals and the students bare their soul.  It can be heart breaking what young people have experienced, especially in the inner city ghetto areas.

What they share about themselves is not for an excuse.  The program has no excuses, only restoration to damages as part of consequences and a move forward plan.

DK, are you familiar with Rby Payne and her studies on the effects of generational poverty on the students who live through it? I've posted some sites here before, but it has been a while.

Okay, here is my idea.  Education for teachers should  be changed.  It should be a very difficult field to get into and even more difficult to master.

Teachers should be required to show interest in children and an ability to bond with them.  They should be able to interest kids in the way they teach them and motivate them to learn. 
  
If a teacher cannot interest and motivate kids, he/she should do something else.

There should be no tenure for teachers.

All good points, Alice, but if these master teachers still get overloaded with 35 kids at a time, there will still not be enough.  If salaries don't become similar to other professions, there will still not be enough.

When public education and educators are made a high priority, and valued to a greater degree, the other problems will take care of themselves.

With higher salaries offered, school administrators can pick the top applicants.  When class sizes are limited to  reasonable number, teachers will be able to individualize instruction to meet different needs.

Quite right,    Ann.  The pay and respect will rise with the abilities of the teachers.  Right now it is an easy field to excel in.  No more than 20 kids should be allowed per class. Teachers should have paid trips where they can learn firsthand about the world. I could go on and on.

Problem is, who is going to take on the extra course hours in harder classes for low pay?  Respect in our society is tied to income.  Teachers aren't paid enough to be respected by most people.

Still in all, there are lots of dedicated teachers out there, doing the best they can in spite of the conditions.  I have to go back to the point of the original article.

The problem is that there is not enough: time to do the tasks, salary to make it worthwhile, respect from citizens who are anti-intellectual anyway, teaching staff to keep class sizes down, materials to provide quality exercises and assignments.  I could go on and on, too.  


And

We must shift our funds from war to education.  If we shifted the billions from war, we 'd have money left over.

Teachers should be elevated to our most respected professsion. 
This country needs to change its priorities.
Pay should double for starters.

Alice for president!