The case for teaching: make the profession desirable, not honorable
Whether we are having a casual conversation with friends, listening to a political speech, or participating in a parent-teacher conference, the way we talk and think about public K-12 teachers in this country reflects a unique cognitive dissonance. On one hand, teachers are seen as honorable public servants who sacrifice financial and professional self-interest for the improvement of our society. On the other hand, those same teachers are seen as the losers of our professional class. They are stuck in a low-earning job with no prospect of a raise beyond predetermined yearly pay increases and endure the notoriously stressful grind that is working with young people.
In his most recent Netflix special, which aired prior to his controversial press coverage in the wake of the Me Too movement, Louis C.K. addresses this cognitive dissonance surrounding our society’s school teachers with humor rooted in the ugly, yet undeniable, truth. To explore this dissonance, C.K. presents a dichotomy between how we want to view teachers and how we realistically interpret what it means to be a teacher. He begins with the former by saying, “In a democracy there’s no more noble contribution you could make than to teach in a public school.” Then, in almost the same breath he turns to the reality of being a teacher, “And in this country the people who do that, they’re f****** losers. Everybody knows it but they keep doing it. New people are teaching everyday knowing how s***** it is.” To support his point, C.K. embodies a new teacher character and questions, “How much will I be paid? About ten dollars a year. What if I get really good at it? Nothing. Nothing happens.” Despite learning these horrific details, C.K.’s new teacher character decides, “Ok I’ll try it for 25 years” (C.K., 2017). With hilarious yet sobering clarity, C.K. describes the imperfect balance that this cognitive dissonance surrounding the teaching profession produces: in the United States we dangerously rely on the goodwill of those who care enough about the future of our nation’s children to overlook the numerous and explicit downsides of being a public school teacher.
Similar to C.K.’s split interpretation of what it means to be a teacher, there is a double-speak behind the word “honorable”, or in his words “noble”, when it is used to describe a profession. While an honorable career is one that is invaluable and necessary to our society, think soldiers, nurses, policemen, and garbagemen, it is also one that very few people want as their own job. Instead of keeping teaching as an honorable profession, we should make teaching desirable.
Teaching in the 21st Century
Although this dubious model of relying on the goodwill of a select few to fill the teaching ranks has remained relatively viable for generations, it has done so by mostly relying on patriarchal limits of what jobs are appropriate for women, thus producing a steady and unwavering supply of teachers to join the profession (Hoffman, 2003). Although the demographics of teachers have not changed much in the last century, in 1910 roughly 80% of teachers were women while in 2012 women made up 76% of the teaching profession (U.S. Department of Education, 1993; U.S. Department of Education, 2016), the number of people willing to become teachers has significantly decreased. From 2009 to 2013 there has been a 31% decrease in teacher preparation program enrollment across the United States (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). This significant decrease in teacher preparation program enrollment in just four short years is rooted in a number of reasons, many of which are captured in C.K.’s stand-up act, but, regardless of those reasons, the decrease unequivocally communicates that fewer and fewer people are interested in teaching as we move into the 21st century. In short, the imperfect balance we’ve relied on for so long to attract new teachers is losing stability and, unless something changes, this trend will continue into the foreseeable future.
How to Enact Change
With this drastic decline in teacher preparation program enrollment, the question remains: if teaching is a job people no longer want, how can we attract new teachers? The answer relies on two perspectives. First, how prospective teachers view the teaching profession and, second, how society at large views the teaching profession. If, as a society, we are to redefine what it means to be a teacher from both the inside, teachers themselves, and outside, the rest of the population, then we can eliminate the cognitive dissonance that shapes our view of teachers as both honorable public servants and low-earning, professionally stagnant losers. To redefine what it means to be a teacher from the inside and out we must pivot from viewing teaching as honorable to viewing teaching as desirable.
When considering how to make teaching more desirable to young adults entering the workforce, the easy answer is to increase the size of the proverbial carrot on the stick and pay teachers more. Although paying teachers more would almost definitely encourage more people to join the teaching profession, the budgetary constraints of the public sector make this solution improbable and, frankly, unrealistic. Teaching in public schools is a public service, not a product sold by a private corporation, so the monetary rewards and incentives for teachers are significantly limited. However, if prospective teachers view the core value of the profession as the skills acquired while working as a teacher and the applicability of those skills to many careers, rather than income, the desirability of teaching may substantially shift in a positive direction. Although the number of skills teachers develop throughout their time in the profession is vast, I have selected the skills 260 major employers in the United States reported they would like to have in their 21st century workforce based on a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The top five skills these employers reported to desire most for their 21st century workforce are: 1) leadership; 2) ability to work in a team; 3) communication skills (written); 4) problem-solving skills; and 5) communication skills (verbal) (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2016).
Leadership
With teachers at the helm of classes ranging from 20 to 35 students, leadership quickly emerges as one of the strongest skills they develop. Not only do teachers have to manage their students’ behavior in class, they must engage the students in meaningful learning experiences, push students past fixed mindsets into growth mindsets, organize parent volunteers for special activities, and maintain model behavior themselves as they are one of each student’s primary role models. The daily leadership requirements of a public school teacher is hard to compare to other careers because the scale is so uncommon. Not many professions require you to manage 20 to 35 others your first year on the job, let alone ever. Although one might argue that those 20 to 35 people are children, not adults, and therefore cannot be compared, I would posit that if you must manage a group of people you will develop leadership skills that are not limited to age or temperament. For example, if a teacher gives an assignment to his/her class, sets a deadline, monitors progress, and helps the students as they progress through the assignment, these same skills in leading a group towards accomplishing a shared goal could easily apply to a leading a marketing team that needs to meet an advertisement deadline, leading a team of engineers as they develop a new app, or leading a business team deciding on what to include in an investment portfolio.
Ability to Work in a Team
Whereas teachers primarily develop leadership skills by managing their students, they develop the ability to work in a team by working alongside their grade-level or department teams. Although some might imagine that teachers are lone wolves who manage the domain of their classroom with unfettered independence, this situation is far from reality. Rather, teachers meet regularly with grade-level or department teams to lesson plan, discuss student difficulties and strengths, strategize long term projects, plan field trips, discuss budgetary issues, plan interventions with struggling students, and mentor or advise one another. These are just a few ways teachers spend their time together during team meetings. This collaboration not only makes the overall learning experience better for their students, it helps teachers develop valuable teamwork skills in a profession that is largely assumed to be a solo endeavour. As teachers mostly hone their ability to work in a team with other adult professionals, rather than young students, the applicability of this skill set to other jobs is clear. Just as teachers work in teams to manage the trajectory of a school year, investors work in teams to strategize a financial quarter and doctors work in teams to discuss unusual or rare medical conditions.
Communication Skills
In teaching communication is paramount as the amount and range of people you communicate with daily is vast. Outside of the classroom, the most common way teachers communicate is through email. Whether they are sent by supervisors, parents, or colleagues, teachers must stay on top of their emails daily and spend a fair chunk of their non-teaching time writing and responding to emails. These emails typically impact or affect scheduling, lesson plans, organizational strategies, student behavior, and the academic outcomes of your students. Thus, email itself can become somewhat of a juggling act. While many professionals have secretaries or admins, teachers are their own admins and spend much of their time away from students communicating electronically all the while developing their written communication skills.
In the classroom, the most common way a teacher communicates is, unsurprisingly, to his/her students. Regardless of the age of the students, a teacher must learn how to communicate clearly, concisely, and with enthusiasm because, despite the maturity of the students, the concepts the teacher communicates are almost always new to the students. Thus, teachers have to practice effective written and verbal communication daily to connect students with new and often difficult material. As adults we often take for granted that everything we say or write will be understood. However, if you are communicating with a student, you have to anticipate their misunderstandings and prepare alternative modes of communication to reiterate what was originally shared. Further, the communication teachers and students engage in often exits the realm of academics and delves into social-emotional territory. In such situations teachers must become counselors and help their students through difficult times in their lives.
This process of planning effective communication, anticipating misunderstandings, redirecting your communication style, counseling students in need, staying on top of an ever changing schedule, and responding to countless emails per day are advanced communication skills and can be applied to a number of professional settings. For example, explaining to a client the benefits of a product and how your product outperforms the competitor’s, counseling a colleague when he or she is having a difficult time in his/her professional or personal life, and promptly responding to endless emails from clients, supervisors, and colleagues.
Problem-Solving Skills
In nearly every career you have to please either clients, supervisors, or both. As a teacher, crafting a diplomatic balance between your clients (children and their parents) and your supervisors (principals, assistant principals, and district-level administrators) immediately becomes critical each school year and is central to teachers developing high-quality problem-solving skills. In terms of your clients, you must ensure that you are meeting the individual needs of students, which are varied and vast with each group you receive, and meeting the needs of parents, which usually consists of keeping an open line of communication, addressing each of their individual requests for their child, and maintaining a professional composure during difficult or sensitive conversations. In terms of your supervisors, you must make sure that you are meeting your regular and frequent assessment deadlines including, but not limited to: state tests, district tests, and performance reviews, while performing a host of additional duties that live somewhere between required and optional including, but not limited to: yard duty, piloting new curriculum or programs, staff meetings, professional development trainings, union meetings, committee meetings, and committee presentations.
As you might imagine, the interests of your clients and your supervisors may at times conflict. For example, if you have a district assessment deadline which aims to produce a standardized measure of your students’ academic competency, yet you have been meeting an individual student’s needs by teaching them content below what the assessment measures, you have to give the district assessment to appease your supervisors knowing your client, the student, cannot yet perform at the level the assessment requires. As a teacher, you will continue teaching this high-needs student at the level most suitable for his/her learning and develop your own formative assessments to track their progress knowing that the district assessment has not helped your efforts. Conversely, you will still use the district assessment data as a measurement tool for many other students’ progress, and the district supervisors will similarly use this data, thus preserving the value of administering the district assessment. This nuanced understanding of how to please both your clients and supervisors while still making those decisions valuable to yourself is something that teachers regularly perform and it shapes them as true problem-solvers. This is just one example of myriad situations in which teachers must employ critical thinking and problem solving to meet the demands of their profession. As problem solving is necessary in nearly every job, it is not difficult to see the applicability of this skill to a number of other professions. Regardless of what job you choose you will at some point, if not constantly, have to please your clients and supervisors while ensuring that those decisions also help you progress through your career.
If we can attract new teachers with the skills they will develop as a consequence of joining the profession, we need industry leaders outside of education to warm up to the idea that teachers are multi-talented professionals who have all of the 21st skills employers seek. If we can enact a societal shift in the way we view teachers from inside and outside the education world, the teaching profession can embody what it’s title suggests: that teaching is a profession performed by professionals.
Conclusion
Although some may view my proposal as something akin to Teach for America, where underprepared young college grads use a short teaching stint as a vehicle to propel their careers outside of education. This is in no way what I propose. Rather, I seek to elevate the desirability of teaching by highlighting the skills credentialed public school teachers develop throughout their time in the classroom. Thus, the ultimate goal is not to use teaching as a vehicle to join another profession, but rather it is to introduce the prospect that there is immense value to the skills you develop as a teacher which far exceed the image of a low-income loser stuck in a 25 year, monotonous career. If, as a teacher, your skills are seen as applicable beyond your career it removes the shackles of an “honorable” career and makes the career desirable. If teaching is seen as desirable, the profession will become more competitive and attract stronger talent. In turn, we will better serve our students and teachers will finally join the professional class they have been ostracized from for so long.
References
C.K., L. (2017). 2017. Retrieved from https://www.netflix.com/title/80161109
Hoffman, N. (2003). Woman’s “true” profession: Voices from the history of teaching. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
National Association of Colleges and Employers (2016). Job Outlook 2016. Retrieved from http://www.naceweb.org/career-developmentand-predictions/job-outlook-2016-attributes-employers-want-to-see-on-new-college-graduates-resumes/
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics (1993). 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education (2015). Higher education act Title II: Enrollment in teacher preparation programs. Retrieved from https://title2.ed.gov/public/44077_Title_II_Issue_Brief_Enrollment_V4a.pdf
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics (2016). Digest of educational statistics, 2015. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28
