The title references '92's election (It's the economy, stupid!) and is not meant as a general pejorative to idiots everywhere. So, take no offense. Though, in a way, it does capture my overall conviction about building a new education system: it's all about teachers.
Let me throw the gauntlet down right here, right now, maybe even use it first to slap a few faces out in Kos-land--knowing that every major education study confirms what I am about to say: there is nothing, nothing, more important for producing positive outcomes for kids at school than the quality of the teacher in his or her classroom. Period. End of point.
We have a first principle. Chisel it in:
A great education system is wholly dependent upon great teachers.
Now, let's get after it. This diary is part of a series leading up to Ykos; it will dance arm in arm with this question: Who should become a teacher?<a</p>
Everyone Does It
A wise but unknown education author (yeah, me) once began his paean to the life of teaching this way:
We are all students, we are all teachers.
Taken with Hillary's now apocryphal tome, It Takes a Village, we must first admit that, in fact, each of us is a teacher, potentially, actually and continuously. And as important, each of us is a student, continuously.
Experience demands a response from sentient beings and you can't "be" in the world without touching it, and, in turn, being touched. (We hope.)
It is a small point, but a profound one:
Teaching and learning are not about hierarchy.
They are each a process, and doing them well means having a sensitivity to making that process whole, rich and meaningful, never reaching an end or beyond need of further engagement.
Thus, teaching is not a mysterious alchemy, nor disconnected from life, nor housed in some sanctified parlor away from the masses. You do it. I do it. We all do it. (Like sex, except no one wants to talk about it!)
So, in terms of teaching, everyone does it (sic), and, anyone can do it (really sic).
Yet, because modern society demands a level of specialization and organization, we have a category and a profession known as "teaching", and endeavor to find the right people to bring kids along in a safe, healthy and efficacious manner.
Fair enough.
Who should occupy that role?
Let's pause here to think about this: is there anything more precious, more intense, more caught up in a complicated nexus of strong feelings/emotions/fears than what happens to children--and especially to our own children?
No. There isn't. That's why pedophiles are reviled, Amber alerts exist and stories about child rescue, whether from disease or predators, become front-page news.
So, imagine now that you are going to give your child to someone, every day, and ask that someone to bring your kid(s) back in the afternoon, completely safe, satisfied, stimulated, enriched, connected to others and generally more able and competent than when you let go of their hand in the morning.
Seem like a lot?
It is. Especially for a person who may have as many as 20 or 30 or 40 little someones in one room at the same time.
The enormity of the task of teaching is undeniable; the potential for very great or very terrible things happening is ever present.
In addition, more than ever, politicians, business leaders and academics are trumpeting the overall value of education for our economy, democracy and society. Commission reports, foundation studies, research findings--ad nauseum--all point to the same thing: the need for kids to experience quality learning is crucial to all of us. Forever. Until death do us part.
And, balancing the unlimited private and public fears/needs/expectations for education on their shoulders, at the very heart of the messy human process of learning, stands a teacher. A single, solitary, sentient being. Most often, alone in a room, ready for the first wave early in the morning, and still there when the last leaves late in the day.
The Teaching Paradox
Parker Palmer says this:
Teachers stand at the crossroads where the private and the public meet.
Palmer encapsulates the essential paradox that is teaching: it has tremendous salience and importance for maintaining and fortifying civil society, while at the same time, rests completely on the shoulders of a lone and completely vulnerable individual.
Whoever aspires to teach must embrace this fundamental paradox. One, you are hugely important as an actor in the public sphere; but two, the thing that allows you to do that successfully is personal, a private awareness/approach toward what you are doing.
I call that a teacher's personal sense of mission.
Why does it matter?
Because the crushing weight of public responsibility versus personal sensitivity can easily and completely break the will of a teacher who has a tenuous sense of what they want to accomplish or just a private need to disengage from the clamor of America's public.
Too many things happen: an angry parent, kids fighting in the hall, bond issues, strained collegial relations, an oppressive administrator. A less determined teacher can easily get swept away.
And we need to acknowledge right now that this is the staggering weakness of our current educational system: fully 50% of new teachers leave the profession after just five years on the job. Not to mention the costs of this weakness: an estimated $2.2 billion in retraining---Every. Single. Year.
Anyone can teach, but then again, not just anyone will stick with the job, or especially, do it very well. (Sorry, no space to deal with the whole issue of incompetent teachers--though it is a BIG issue. Another diary?)
Mission Um, Possible
So, the key, we believe, to successful teaching is developing a personal sense of mission. What that is and how it gets inculcated is, happily enough, largely personal, and, unfortunatly, somewhat random. Don't look for it in a book, nor expect it to be handed to you in grad school. More likely, it is caught up in a complex series of factors related to one's upbringing, relationships, experience at school, personality--what Palmer calls "the inner landscape" of a teacher.
However, that does not mean there aren't common principles that make one disposed to being a teacher--particularly a successful teacher with a robust mission. Let me briefly sketch the contours of what I think "mission" consists of.
Service
First, someone looking to teach needs to have some notion of "service" to others. I'm all for more pay for teachers, but let's not allow that failing to confuse a crucial point: the needs of the job require an internal sense of motivation, not an attachment to ever increasing external rewards.
It's not my opinion alone, but the point is this: you can't do this job with the personal care, sensitivity--even love--required if you are always looking to "get" something tangible in return. Like with any relationship, there are huge chunks that are performed "selflessly", without expectation of immediate reward. And as in any relationship, what is "personal" about it is what is most treasured--whereas what is done out of institutional necessity, social obligation or public demand more often feels forced, fake and unfulfilling.
Let's look at a few core characteristics around the tasks of serving others:
- Listening
- Empathy
- Healing
- Awareness
- Stewardship
- Commitment to the growth of others
- Building community
I'll argue about this till I am blue in the face. It does not mean that teachers need live in poverty; I advocate that they be fully compensated. But, for now, I insist: a sense of serving others transforms the job, and transforms the individual in a selfless way that fits with the kinds of tasks teachers perform.
Moreover, as the wise education author quoted above once wrote (me, again), there are "take away" benefits for students who experience the kind of selfless service extended by teachers:
But the bare truth is that no one can inspire a person to become a teacher like another teacher. Not money, not June-July-August, not little children with lost expressions on their face. Like a kind of religion, you have to feel it before you can believe it. A Socrates leads to Plato leads to Aristotle, and so on... It may be the fundamental way humans transmit what it means to be human.
I rue the day when a teacher stays after to help Johnnie because he or she is hoping to make more money. Do we really want to communicate to children that we only care because we get money in return? Yuk.
And a pox on bureaucrats and politicians crass enough to hang bonuses around the necks of student test scores. Look what happened in Houston recently... If that isn't the most idiotic thing ever...
Integrity
A second wholly necessary ingredient for becoming a teacher is integrity. The word speaks to "wholeness" in a person, the ability to bring into alignment all aspects of their actions, values, relationships and intention. We want whole human beings to teach children because kids will see and emulate that themselves.
Traditionally, schools were very protective of the "honor" and "moral turpitude" of teachers (mainly women) because they believed it might infect children.
In 1946, my mother, Betty Anne Reiten, worked in Enderlin, North Dakota and could not go downtown, even during the day, without a female escort. (Ironically, the next year, 1947, in Melrose, Minnesota, she slept with another woman in a double bed for the entire school year because the bording house that put up teachers only had so many rooms. Hmmmm...)
And here, I think, we risk overlooking a very key aspect of what integrity means. It is not about being "perfect", or without fault, as communities of old believed. Rather it is about being honest and true to the "whole" experience of being alive. Parker Palmer:
Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not--and that I choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: Do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or regect them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.
In this sense, a would-be teacher is a person who is honest with themselves and others, loves truth, and most important, takes the events of the day and knits them into a fabric that brings "wholeness and life rather than fragmentation and death," in the words of Palmer.
At its core, this is about having a heart as big and open as the sky. Working with human beings opens one to the best and worst of people, the highest highs and the lowest lows. You should not aspire to this job unless you embrace all of it and committ to leading conversations forward, taking slings of arrows with as much consideration as a bouquet of flowers.
Or, at least, being willing to acknowledge (even if just to yourself) hurt, joy, pain, sorrow, success--all of it a single tapestry depicting the plain of human experience. Everything must fit; everyone belongs; all of it is a chance to know more. The whole is "integral" to the person you are and the job you are doing.
The Heart of a Learner
Thus far, I've painted a pretty idealistic portrait of teachers--as in: "Cripes, I could never make it as teacher with those kinds of requirements." Well, if you're feeling that, this last section is for you.
Because, in truth, everything I've discussed so far CAN BE LEARNED. (Though, one's "internal lanscape" is what it is.) And, unfortunately for students in the United States, most often, they are learned: on the job, on the fly and on the cheap. You see, we don't do teacher-training very well; and we don't handle new teachers very well; and we don't do teacher staff development that well either.
Here's a worthy nugget for you public school trash-talkers, the ones who show up in threads telling us how easy we got it: summers off, seven hour days, teachers as the problem. Carry this to bed with you and keep it under your pillow: most often (I say "most often") good teachers turn up in our schools despite the system that trains and supports them, not because of it.
(Hey trash-talkers, this makes criticism of teachers and teaching one of the most ignorant, short-sighted and destructive pursuits in contemporary America. Along with a slavish insistence on production test numbers, your general contempt for teachers ends up discouraging and driving out some of the best. On behalf of needy students everywhere: THANKS A LOT.)
The fact that we have good--even masterful--teachers, in spite of the system, is sad but true. On the other hand, it suggests a vast opportunity:
If we ever learn to really prepare, train, grow and support our teachers, we would be able to do a much better job educating kids! Maybe that's a take-away policy plank from the whole Ykos experiment: what if we really put the system to work at growing teachers?
What makes teachers successful in spite of the lackluster system we've created around them? The will and determination to figure out what works. In effect, the best teachers come every day with the heart of a learner, determined to succeed; or failing that, to at least learn more.
I know I make this easy, but trust me... when you show up your first day, there are 30 kids climbing the wall, and your lesson just ran out of gas with 20 minutes on the clock, you don't say to yourself: "Hmmm, okay, I'll just kick back and learn from this." It ain't like that.
I should know. My first year I was luncheon meat to students. What did I know about teaching? And what did they care about French and Spanish? And what did the administration care what I did as long as complaints were kept to a minimum and no felonies occurred in my wing of the building?
But you know what? I decided the very last day of school I would not quit. Not on those terms. I sat down and wrote out goals just like I had as a boy. I wanted to be the best teacher I could. Years later, I decided I wanted to become a master teacher. And I worked it. Going to workshops, reading, listening to kids, picking up tricks here and there and from God knows where.
And better I got. I learned to enjoy learning to teach because it made my life better and I could see where it was helping students. I grew by will and intention, not because anyone encouraged me or supported me or told me it made a difference. (Sorry if that rings of solitude, but the system is not designed to foster excellence; only to avoid catastrophe.)
Not that a Master Teacher ever makes that claim. I certainly wouldn't. Too many still see prize lessons go down in flames to ever relax our way into titles or judgments about having "arrived." Nope. That's what a heart of a learner does. You are always just a little on edge; just a little unsure. And that curiosity to see what will happen is the perfect drive to keep a teacher on her toes, on her watch, for the next best moment to make some magic.
Remember how I started this whole mess?
We are all students, we are all teachers.
The very best never forget that. Nor do they ever forget the journey: the distance they themselves have traveled. Or, that learning, at heart, is about transformation.
And maybe that's the ultimate key to who becomes a teacher.
It's the ones who remember that they themselves were once unskilled and unformed. That in that moment of need someone came to them in a public forum and offered assistance, good will and a kind heart. And, that made a crucial difference in transforming them toward being a whole person.
Such a person internalizes the mission and understands how crucial it is to pass learning on. That it is their turn to lead now, to take young people down the path and invite them to see and experience where their goodness lies.