The Tyranny of Report Cards
Wow! What a way to start off the new semester. You have captured, in two short paragraphs, the dilemma of today's teacher. The system that you mentioned is not designed to give you the freedom to truly educate. I could spend the entirety of this post on that last sentence, but I would rather focus on what you as a teacher, working within this particular system, can do to bring some real tyranny-free education to the young people in your charge.
The first thing I will say is that you are not alone. Over the last ten year the one thing that has struck me more than any other is the number of people I have met who have, in so many words, expressed that same struggle. The field of education is full of well meaning and inspired people looking for a place to do some good in the world. It sounds cliche, maybe even naïve, but the idea of “giving back,” of “helping the next generation” is alive and well in the hearts and minds of so many of our nation's teachers. Unfortunately there is one thing, Peter, that sets you apart from so many of the teachers that I have come across. The majority of people who enter the field of teaching do not last longer than three years. Three years! And when you ask them why they leave, it is not because of the children, or the hours of grading and lesson planning, or even the lack of respect and low salaries in the field. They are leaving because the system does not allow them to do the work that brought them into teaching in the first place. The system does not allow them to be educators.
Now that I've spent two paragraphs telling you how much I agree with and recognize the struggle you face on a daily basis, I'd like to try to say something that could be useful. It seems clear to me that you know the kind of teacher that you want to be. You want to be in education. You want to guide the young people you work with in the direction of each of their own curiosities. You want them to be learners, explorers, inventors, and you want be their supporter, their guide, the narrator that leads them each through their individual educational journeys.
As the commercial says, “Just Do It.” If you're not yet comfortable with chaos, get comfortable with it. If you're used to controlling children, let them loose. If you want to get to a place where you can guide your students through their own processes of educational exploration, then you need to take yourself through that process. Become an expert in your own learning, in your own interests. Recognize the ways that you learn, understand that some of your students will learn that way, and some of them won't. Become an expert on your students. Study them, learn who they are as people, understand what drives them, find out what their interests are, get to know their parents, let the parents tell you what they see from their children. When we take the time to get to know the young people we work with, when we think about them as people, full people, we will learn how to reach them.
I will end with a story from my life. It is a story of two parent teacher conferences. When I was in school, the third grade curriculum spent a lot of time focusing on spelling. The fourth grade was dedicated to geography. When my parents showed up for my third grade conference, my teacher expressed to them how surprised she was when she found out that I was the co-chess champion of the class. "I didn't even know he played chess," she commented.
The next year, at the parent, teacher conference, my fourth grade teachers sat down with my parents, checked them out to see if they would get what she was about to say and said, “Jonah is a little eccentric, isn't he?" “Wow,” my parents said to each other later, “finally, a teacher who gets our kid.”
To this day I am a terrible speller, and I love traveling and geography. I think we can all do the math on that one.
Keep the questions coming.
Jonah
I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers.
Posted in on Jan 30, 2010 - 07:14 PM
I want to teach in a classroom where children will learn important things without a lot of well-meaning intervention. I want a classroom in which students have choice, and can pursue their own projects that involve clay and blocks and paint and weaving and cooking and hammer and nailing. But I don't think I know how. I've been teaching for 10 years and I think all I know how to do is control children. I've been "in the system" long enough to know about "behavior management" and allotting equal time for Math time and Reading time, Writing time and Science time, etc.
How does one become a teacher who is comfortable enough with the chaos of learning to let students study bridges or snowy owls for 3 months at a time? And how does one do it without getting fired? Aren't all schools, even private progressive democratic schools subject to the tyranny of report cards?
- Peter, Elementary School Teacher, Minneapolis
Wow! What a way to start off the new semester. You have captured, in two short paragraphs, the dilemma of today's teacher. The system that you mentioned is not designed to give you the freedom to truly educate. I could spend the entirety of this post on that last sentence, but I would rather focus on what you as a teacher, working within this particular system, can do to bring some real tyranny-free education to the young people in your charge.
The first thing I will say is that you are not alone. Over the last ten year the one thing that has struck me more than any other is the number of people I have met who have, in so many words, expressed that same struggle. The field of education is full of well meaning and inspired people looking for a place to do some good in the world. It sounds cliche, maybe even naïve, but the idea of “giving back,” of “helping the next generation” is alive and well in the hearts and minds of so many of our nation's teachers. Unfortunately there is one thing, Peter, that sets you apart from so many of the teachers that I have come across. The majority of people who enter the field of teaching do not last longer than three years. Three years! And when you ask them why they leave, it is not because of the children, or the hours of grading and lesson planning, or even the lack of respect and low salaries in the field. They are leaving because the system does not allow them to do the work that brought them into teaching in the first place. The system does not allow them to be educators.
Now that I've spent two paragraphs telling you how much I agree with and recognize the struggle you face on a daily basis, I'd like to try to say something that could be useful. It seems clear to me that you know the kind of teacher that you want to be. You want to be in education. You want to guide the young people you work with in the direction of each of their own curiosities. You want them to be learners, explorers, inventors, and you want be their supporter, their guide, the narrator that leads them each through their individual educational journeys.
As the commercial says, “Just Do It.” If you're not yet comfortable with chaos, get comfortable with it. If you're used to controlling children, let them loose. If you want to get to a place where you can guide your students through their own processes of educational exploration, then you need to take yourself through that process. Become an expert in your own learning, in your own interests. Recognize the ways that you learn, understand that some of your students will learn that way, and some of them won't. Become an expert on your students. Study them, learn who they are as people, understand what drives them, find out what their interests are, get to know their parents, let the parents tell you what they see from their children. When we take the time to get to know the young people we work with, when we think about them as people, full people, we will learn how to reach them.
I will end with a story from my life. It is a story of two parent teacher conferences. When I was in school, the third grade curriculum spent a lot of time focusing on spelling. The fourth grade was dedicated to geography. When my parents showed up for my third grade conference, my teacher expressed to them how surprised she was when she found out that I was the co-chess champion of the class. "I didn't even know he played chess," she commented.
The next year, at the parent, teacher conference, my fourth grade teachers sat down with my parents, checked them out to see if they would get what she was about to say and said, “Jonah is a little eccentric, isn't he?" “Wow,” my parents said to each other later, “finally, a teacher who gets our kid.”
To this day I am a terrible speller, and I love traveling and geography. I think we can all do the math on that one.
Keep the questions coming.
Jonah
I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers.
Tags for this entry:
comments
