Being In The Classroom Is The Best Part Of My Day

Jejak PandaJumpa Lagi Kita Diblog Kesayangan Anda
ceme 99 onlineOne of the most frequent complaints I hear from teachers these last few years is that more and ever more is being demanded of them.  (I would say ‘us,’ but, at least for now, I don’t think it’s quite as bad in higher education).  We’ve seen gradual mission creep for years.  We’ve been expected to teach not just the content of our subjects but skills in reading, writing, thinking, computing, research, et cetera, et cetera.  I doubt I have to spell it out for most readers.  You know the drill.

But to this we have now added untold layers of assessment, data collection, data analysis, and data-driven instruction.

As one former colleague used to say, “We’re still supposed to have the kids read books and write papers, right?”  Another used to say, “Once you close your door and it’s just you and your kids, that’s the best.”  He’d utter this like a chant to remind himself what he loved about teaching and why he taught in the first place.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I got a sad message from a former undergraduate a couple weeks ago, a brilliant and talented high school English teacher, just entering her fourth year.

She wrote, “I'm so burnt out.  I get these frantic urges to just run like hell to anything else.  It's such a deep feeling of dread going into school.  It's not the kids or the people I work with at all.  Being in the classroom is the best part of my day.  But I've grown so tired of the bureaucracy and red tape and paperwork and phone calls and meetings and evaluation forms that tear me away from the actual teaching and learning part.  I feel like I'm suffocating in paperwork.  Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but man, is it supposed to feel this way?  Maybe I need to move on.  My needs and my ambitions are bursting at the seams and I feel my impact is so menial.”

At about the same time, I received a different message from a former high school student who has become an elementary school teacher.

This young woman wrote, “I just wanted to share with you a story from school today.  I had asked my students to bring in their most prized possession to get to know one another, and one of my fifth-graders brought in a letter from the Connecticut Writing Project, congratulating her on one of her pieces being honored [in Connecticut Student Writers magazine].  She was so proud of it she was absolutely beaming, and when she asked me to read it afterwards, I saw it was signed by you!  I just wanted to let you know how far your impact is spreading and that you most certainly made a ten-year old girl very confident in her abilities as a writer.  So from one teacher to another, THANK YOU!”

This note, of course, delighted me.  I’m happy that we made this little girl feel such confidence in her ability, and I’m proud of my former student.  (I’m always so proud when my former students go into teaching).  But in the context of the other note, I felt a little sad, too.

Principally, I'm very cognizant that this ten-year old and her teacher were deeply moved by something from outside any curriculum.  Something creative.  Something unassessed.  Something that is not collected, disaggregated, analyzed, charted, and used to inform teaching.  Which is in most ways a good thing, except that I fear the creativity, authenticity, joy, and pride so central to this student’s experience are becoming increasingly separate from the core focus of most classrooms, and certainly separate from most of the initiatives born of this current reform movement that has held us in thrall for the past decade.

The experiences of these two young teachers underscore two things for me:  the obvious limits of reform, especially corporate reform, and the positive influence teachers can have upon their students, even if it has to be exercised surreptitiously once we close our classroom doors and are left with just our kids.