I am a second year teacher in a high poverty, high minority, inner-city high school. This is my second year of teaching, but my first year teaching as a high school classroom teacher. As I watch the news and especially in light of what is happening in Wisconsin, I feel that the teaching profession is often misrepresented and misjudged. I would therefore like to share with you my personal challenges as a beginning teacher and touch on some of the global challenges educators like me face.
Misguided Emphasis on "Smart" Teachers
Last weekend, I watched a segment on CNN that featured a program that recruits former IBM specialists to teach math in public schools. The piece emphasized the recruitees' strong mathematics backgrounds and experiences in a math-centered industry. That's great for a guest speaker, but I was left wondering what sort of teacher training this program required.
Of course, teachers have to be knowledgable about their subject: that's a given. But do you have to be a rocket scientist to teach 10th grade chemistry? Think back to your college days. All of us had that one professor who was absolutely brilliant as a researcher and an academic, but sadly couldn't make it through a single lecture without putting half the audience to sleep.
I don't mean to disparage smart people. I'm one of them. I cried over B's in school. I didn't just double major in college, I triple majored and graduated summa cum laude. I could have gone into any field, but chose to teach and have since earned a master's degree in education. I'm not used to failing anything.
Classroom Management
The truth is that how well you know your subject is only about 10% of what goes into good teaching. For a teacher to impart any of their knowledge to their students, they first have to have strong classroom management (dealing with student discipline). It doesn't matter how brilliant you are if you're students don't listen to you. Unfortunately, classroom management is the part of teaching that beginners like me struggle with the most.
I teach freshmen. That's right: hormones with legs. Some of them have ADHD; some have reading disabilities; one has autism; some have emotional disturbances; some have children; many come from broken homes; many speak English as a second language; and most live in poverty. They'd rather be anywhere but sitting in that desk learning how to use a comma. I'm outnumbered 35 to 1. I'm 23, 5'4", and 110 lbs. I have to earn their respect everyday and re-earn it the next day.
Like I said, I'm not used to failing at anything. But teaching is hard, and I'd be lying if I said that most days I don't feel like a failure at one point or another. How many times do I have to tell a student to sit down? No, not in any seat. In your assigned seat! Why won't they listen? How many times do I have to stop my lesson because two students are talking or a girl is doing her make-up instead of listening? Every day is a battle.
"Bad Teachers"
When I hear pundits blame "bad teachers" for all our problems in education, I feel a little defensive. I've had students bomb a test I thought they were prepared for. That makes me feel like a bad teacher. I've had a fight break out in my classroom. That definitely made me feel like a bad teacher.
Sometimes I have to put things into perspective for myself. My students' scores on their semester exams show that they're making great gains, and the student who started the fight was already on parole and in therapy for anger management issues. Maybe I'm not a bad teacher. I just don't always feel like good teacher--not yet.
Dedicated Teachers
I do not like failing at things, so like many other people in my profession, I dedicate myself to improving my craft. I'm one of the first people to school each morning and one of the last to leave. I come in to school on holidays. I take papers home with me over the weekends to grade. I seek out help when I need it. I take extra classes and workshops related to teaching. I don't want to be a bad teacher or a good teacher. I want to be a great teacher. Despite its challenges, I love my job. I care deeply about my students and want more than anything for them to succeed.
But I, and my fellow teachers, could use some help.
Solutions
Smaller Class Sizes & Larger Support Staff
As I mentioned before, I have an average of 35 students in each of my classes. My largest class as 43 students. I dream of what I could do with a class of 20--the more focused attention I could give to individual students. Having fewer students would also allow me to spend less time devoted to grading piles and piles of papers and more time devoted to planning.
Having another adult in the classroom in the form of a teacher's aide would also make a world of difference for me in terms of classroom management. For instance, when I have my students work in groups, I have to constantly monitor them to make sure they're on task. It seems like the moment I go over to redirect one group, a student in another group starts chatting about the weekend or poking another student in the arm or doing anything besides the assignment.
I've often thought that if I could clone myself and position my clones throughout the classroom to keep a watchful eye, my day would run so much smoother. A teacher's aide would do just as well, but unfortunately most districts cannot afford support staff because of the economy and budget issues.
New Teacher Induction Programs & Mentors for Beginning Teachers
I have been so fortunate the past two years to have been part of new teacher induction programs that provide professional development for me as a beginning teacher. I was also assigned a mentor (a veteran teacher) with whom I meet weekly for support. These resources are so valuable to me, and I can't imagine how any beginning teacher could survive without them.
Access to Early Education
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of early education programs like Head Start. I know that probably sounds odd coming from a high school teacher, but when the majority of your students are below grade level in reading, you gain a new appreciation for students' educational history. I have students in my class right now who are lucky if they can read at a 6th grade level. They have about a year and a half to catch up before they take a high stakes reading test that will determine whether they graduate high school.
Education is a Social Issue
My students come to school every day despite all their issues going on at home. I admire their bravery. If we want to help students succeed in school, we have to help families out of poverty. That's all there is to it.
Bilingual Education
Bilingual education is an issue close to my heart. Before I taught high school, I taught English as a Second Language in an elementary school. Research shows that ELLs (English Language Learners) who are proficient readers in their native language can transfer those reading skills to English and can therefore more easily become proficient readers in English. I have seen this first hand with two of my students who had just moved to the U.S. from Mexico. Neither spoke English. One could read in Spanish; the other had never even been taught the alphabet. The school had no resources to teach the latter how to read in Spanish, so the student was put in an English reading program where she failed to make "adequate progress" throughout the year.
The conservative political argument is that students have to learn English immediately because "we speak English in the U.S." I wish they could see how much faster my student who could read in Spanish acquired the English language.
Because of laws restricting bilingual education (it is not allowed in states such as Arizona), we are raising a population of children who are proficient in neither English or their native language. About 85% of the students at my school are hispanic, and the Spanish I hear is mostly slang. Few have much if any experience reading in Spanish. The Spanish language is considered a "problem" that has to be "corrected" by learning English.
I tell my students that Spanish is an asset. The better they can read in Spanish, the better they will be able to read in English. Many of the more difficult words in the English language have Latin roots. In other words, they have a Spanish cognate (word that looks simlar).
If educators were given the resources to be able to teach these students in their native language, what a difference that could make.
Conclusion
So far, teaching has been one of the most challenging things I've done in my life, but it's also been one of the most rewarding. I hope that in reading this, you have gained a better understanding of some of the specific challenges we teachers (especially beginning teachers) face and some of the ways that these challenges can be overcome. Most of all, I hope you take away from this that even if not all of us teachers are "great" teachers, most of us working day and night trying to become great teachers. In our hearts, we want what's best for our students and try to make that possible every day.