The Trials of Teacherdom
I challenge all educators to read this missive with a fair amount of self-scrutiny. As you read, ask yourself whether you commit some of the educational atrocities perpetrated by the teachers mentioned below. Incidentally, “these teachers” are a composite of untold numbers of teachers I've known over the course of my career.
I regularly speak with educators filled with nearly equal amounts of contempt and paroxysms of guilt while describing their difficult students, or those students who fail to conform to conventional notions of studentdom. These educators make reference to the halcyon days of yesteryear when students were obedient, pliable and completely engaged. Further, they lament the surfeit challenges accompanying teaching students who lack the motivation, emotional resources, and basic nuclear family structure needed to seamlessly assimilate information.
These same teachers are critical of parents who send their children to school without warm meals. The parents, these teachers say, allow their children to eat Hot Cheetos, drink Pepsi, and, with impunity, eat M&M’s or other unhealthy fare first thing in the morning, without concern for the consequent behaviors produced by this diet. Often, these teachers will openly lambaste students and criticize parents for allowing the consumption of such deleterious foodstuffs.
When giving assessments, these teachers bemoan how students fail to give their best efforts, going so far as to say the students just don't care. For example, when students are tasked with completing a 50 item test that measures their aptitude in a given area, they sometimes make random marks without actually trying, say these teachers. Moreover, these teachers claim students often exhibit an indifference towards completing homework; it is often sloppily done, incomplete or altogether disregarded.
Respecting homework, many teachers wistfully recollect a time when students dutifully completed their homework and actively sought additional assistance in order to clarify any misunderstandings. Completion of homework, claim these teachers, is a good measure of a sound home environment and shows an accurate level of parental involvement and concern. After all, parents should be there to assist students with uncertainties regarding academic content, right? When these teachers receive homework that is incomplete, sloppily done or disregarded, they believe this is clear evidence of parent disinterest.
These teachers often complain most vociferously about lack of parental involvement at school. Sure, in elementary school many parents are participatory, but what about middle and high school years? And, why is it, these teachers wonder aloud, do these parents only come to school to view sporting events or to challenge perceived slights against their child(ren)? What about coming to school to discuss the child's academic progress?
The aforementioned concerns are experienced by teachers everywhere, irrespective of the socioeconomic standing of where they teach; however, these challenges are most glaringly and acutely observed in impoverished environments. And, truth be told, the denizen of those areas tend to be non-white. Consequently, this becomes a discussion about race and cultural competence.
I would ask all educators to be self-evaluative and determine what culpability, if any, they have in contributing to this malaise, this pandemic set of challenges that plague students nationwide (perhaps worldwide). Further, rather than offer suggestions to curb some of the attitudes expressed above, I challenge teachers to serve as investigators, problem solvers for the spate of challenges experienced by educators everywhere. In short, how can teachers teach students while also confronting their own institutional racism, gender and poverty bias, classism, etc.?
