Bullies

Used to be, anyway, that you became a teacher because you didn't want to engage in something competitive. You wanted to engage in something giving, something elastic, something which had very little to do with the marketplace per se. Now the mood in schools is one which encourages teachers to try to best each other on their classroom decorations. (My favorite English teacher in HS had a flag and a poster of the girl with the earring way before it was a book/movie attitude. That was it.) I will never get used to decorating -- not in HS, anyway. But, I can understand it with younger kids. And I can make something sensible usually for older kids. This just wasn't what I imagined when I made my little lesson on describing a fire truck over 20 years ago in a Methods class.

This wasn't supposed to be a profession in which someone checked your product results. How can you control a child? You can teach a kid all year and he/she can throw up the day of the test? A kid can know something last night, but lose it out of fear this morning. And some kid who is good at picking out patterns can get a higher grade than he/she deserves. It wasn't supposed to be about ego. A good teacher knew his/her students were improving both through tests, through his/her writing, through his/her questions and behavior, etc. Now a kid can be a rotten snot all year, get a 4 and suddenly THAT kid is the emblem of your prowess. Nevermind he didn't do any homework and he hit several kids over the course of the month. He got a 4. He was yours and he got a 4. As many teachers have already noted, who will WILLINGLY want to teach kids who are not likely to be 4's? What better way than to get rid of the teacher you least like than to hand him/her a class of 2's. Unless all serendipity is at play and you are a genius and at your best, it could be a really hard luck year. So 70 percent of them get high 3's, 15 get 4's and the other 15 high 2's. Of the last group, there are issues with attendance, homework, deaths in the family. You did a yeoman's job, but you failed. Gee, if I had a cookie that sold a bit better in 85 more places I think I'd get a raise....

Used to be, you might want a class of "2's". You might really like to take these kids on and get them into reading and writing. A lot of people did. They didn't think of the kids as "2's," but just slower starters who got infinitely better.

And if they didn't get infinitely better, you kept at it. You looked for the student's strengths, too. We aren't honestly going to tell every student that there is a job out there for him/her related to/requiring advanced academic degrees. I wish I could say that. I'd be posting the statistics everywhere. Do we realize we are pushing ourselves into two crises: one which has to do with anchoring ourselves to what may be misleading exams; the second has to do with misleading ourselves that this is our greatest crisis.

Our economy is still in a coma and in need of revision if it's going to allow for a greater distribution of wealth through capitalism. That and cleaning up oil spills alone could be the substance of a curriculum for juniors, high school and college.

Worst of all, none of our kids BELIEVE. I don't mean in supernatural beings. I mean, they don't hope. They don't trust. They hit back because no one is going to take them for a sucker. Even when they say they won't, they still do. Or they cry.
They cry without consolation. See clips from the in-progress documentary THE BULLY PROJECT if you want to see it up close. http://www.thebullyproject.com/_/Bully_Project_home.html

There but for you go I

All right, it's a song from Brigadoon.

It's more than that. It's a lesson that took me a long time to learn.

When I was a young teacher, I was pretty judgmental. It's easy when you're new and self-assured because you haven't had your ideas shaken yet, to look askance at others. In fact, it was not until I was punished myself, that I fully understood the folly of even pretending to know what another person's classroom is like, what his/her intentions are, and finally, what level of effectiveness he/she reaches.

This year I have found myself much on the other end of things, so much so that I am incapable of fighting back because I have no idea what ground I stand on. If there is one word of wisdom I could give to any young teacher is to avoid judging others, at all costs, if only because of how much bad Karma it has brought me.