In this entry, let's examine what must, at times. seem like a paradox of sorts. It would be most difficult to imagine our world without individuals we refer to as "teachers." Of course, in this context we are speaking of, those individuals have in one form or another, and one title or another, chose "teaching" as a profession, and generally make their livelihood by being compensated as such.
So, what is the paradox, you might ask? The paradox is that in a profession considered by most reasonable people as being fundamentally essential to the education and development of other human beings, young and old, and is the profession that trains and prepares people for all the other professions, the "Mother of Professions;" if you will, is constantly under oppressive scrutiny and attack by elements in our society.
In addition, we have a profession where the principal players - teachers - are constantly in contact and interchange with other human beings, yet, as noted in the quote above, teachers frequently feel isolated and on their own. Teachers generally find themselves experiencing the "fishbowl" and/or "microscope" effect where the person imagines, or experiences, a continuous scrutiny from both within and outside the formal school organization.
Not only a paradox, but seemingly contradictory is the notion that a profession that has been referred to as "noble" should seemingly be under constant attack by the very society it serves. As noted in the introductory statement, except for a small element of critics, teaching, and its product, education, are considered essential and fundamental to the strength of a nation.
There would appear to be two questions pressing us for reasonable answers? 1) If teaching is a "noble profession," why are the discordant messages coming from perceived benefactors? 2) Is there a solution to the dissonant perspective(s) that view teaching in a lesser light? One does not even have to go to the professional literature to gain a sense of the variables contributing to the rift between what is perceived as "existing" vs. "what should be." An initial search of the internet will generate a plethora of insights, perspectives, and opinions, with a bit of factual information included for good measure. To provide the reader an example, the writer has included a recent "opinion" article from an on-line administrative journal dealing with the topic:Can we make the teaching profession noble again?
We need to stop
blaming teachers and focus on increasing quality
Written by: Caroline Lewis
Teaching is losing
its magic. Every year, the profession loses some of our most effective
colleagues prematurely. Moreover, we fail to attract enough college graduates
who have the talent and passion for teaching.
Many of us blame the education reform movement for this. Leaders
may be well intentioned, but they ignore the reality that successful public
education requires development of three key pillars—think of them as though
they were the legs of a stool:
- the ability and readiness-to-learn of the students
- the quality of the teachers and
- the culture and tone of the school (leadership, resources, parental involvement, and so on)
We seem fixated on
only one of the pillars—teachers—and not in ways that improve quality,
but only in ways that undermine, place blame and seriously demoralize too many
good people. Somehow, in the debate on what constitutes successful education,
the spotlight has become laser-focused on a teacher’s ability to get students
to pass tests.
True teaching is hard to measure
We have to recognize
that effective teaching is about so much more. What is easily measurable isn’t
always what’s significant in most teaching-learning environments.
What a teacher contributes
to an individual student’s attitude, ambition, choices, career paths and so on
may never truly be known. Teacher effectiveness is a complex issue—as I detail
in my book (Just Back Off And Let Us Teach, 2014, Dog Ear Publishing)—and many
of the rich classroom exchanges between teachers and their students go
undocumented.
For too many,
teaching is now reduced to robotic drilling of information in preparation for
tests. The ideal of a teacher as a caring, scholarly, creative, pedagogical
wizard is not the image being presented or acknowledged.
The joy of teaching
has been diminished, and the wind has been knocked out of teachers’ sails.
These teachers do not feel validated, much less fulfilled, and are vulnerable
to burnout and despair in the current climate.
Racing to the top
We must rethink our
education strategy and change the current debate. I would like to remind those
who disagree with me that we cannot reform public education if our pool of
effective teachers continues to shrink.
We must extol, not vilify,
teaching to restore nobility to the profession. I fell in love with teaching in
my early teens as I first saw the opportunity teachers had to educate, engage
and make a difference in learning, lives and schools.
Back in the 1970s
teaching was still considered an honorable profession, and it called out to me.
Let’s change the
focus of education reform, attend to all three legs of the stool, and put
people like me on the team in charge of the teaching pillar.
Here’s what I would
do:
- First, I would stop spending millions of education reform dollars on designing new systems of instruction and measurement every few years at local, state and federal levels.
- Redirect this money to teacher salaries and meaningful professional development for teachers and administrators, including department chairpersons.
- Work, over the next five years, to raise the starting salary for teachers to $75,000. This, no doubt, will go a long way to attracting and retaining the brightest and the best.
- Require a certified master’s degree in education for all teachers, and fund or heavily subsidize it for the brightest applicants with the talent and passion for teaching.
- Recognize our effective teachers and weed out those who don’t belong.
If we do this and
make effective teaching a priority, we might much more quickly race to the top
and leave far fewer children behind.
Caroline Lewis spent
22 years as a science teacher and school principal.
DA Daily, August 6, 2016, District Administration 35 Nutmeg Drive, Suite 205, Trumbull, CT, 06611. (https://www.districtadministration.com/article/can-we-make-teaching-profession-noble-again)
Whether, or not, Ms. Lewis' perspective and solution regarding returning teaching to its "noble profession" status is correct, or not, is not the important point in our conversation. What is important, if the people to which we are entrusting the educational formation of our youth to are not viewed in such a "noble" light, then how on earth can we expect to grow and improve as a people? As with any socially related issue, pretending there are easy solutions is simply delusional. If Ms. Lewis is correct in her assessment that teaching was once in our history held in such high esteem so as to be considered "noble," then had we not better sort through the pertinent issues post-haste, and restore teaching to its appropriate rank. If not for our sakes, then for the children's sake it is critically important that we at minimum attempt to do so. In light of diminishing ranks of top notch teachers, as proposed by Ms. Lewis, there is an urgency to this message.
