Teaching

(Or: Why I'm not sure I want to be a teacher)

For years now I've wanted to work with children. The first job I got with an elementary school, I couldn't wait to make it to work. It was an amazing, life changing experience. I worked with people who truly cared about the well being of the children under their care. What amazing people.

Then I got a different job. And I started to see things. Things mandated by the state and the district. Things that people who have never been the leader in the classroom thought were really good ideas. Easily qualifiable measures of effectiveness.

The only problem being, in the land of learning there are no easily qualifiable measures. What works for one child will not work for another. Each person is unique with unique learning needs, and despite what some seem to think children are the same in that regard. Each one has it's own needs, interests, and desires and the trick of educating them is to use those as the template to create a way for them to learn.

That's not what we're doing though.

We're hammering test after test to see where they are and then punishing the teachers and the school for not doing well enough. Never thinking that stripping the resources from a place that's doing poorly isn't the way to make it do better. We're treating our schools like factories that we can keep track of the  "quality standards". But it's not like they're human beings...

I'm going to say something that I probably shouldn't. America (and Utah in particular) really doesn't give two shits about children.

We don't.

Because as soon as they're born we think it's somebody else's problem. We refuse to treat teachers like they're trained professionals. They may as well be teenage babysitters for all the respect they're given. We treat education like it's a poorly run factory that's supposed to churn out citizens, and then we are completely surprised when that doesn't work.

I mean this is America right? The corporate model and treating everything as a for profit is the way of things right? It's the best way because of the grim "Invisible Hand" of the all powerful market.

But children are not a profitable industry. Not in the way that we think of things being profitable. And they really shouldn't be. There should be no profit in education aside from the growth in a society that comes from an educated populace. We all benefit from education, just nobody can make a clear dollar out of that. Long term strategies are always destroyed by short term thinking.

A lot of people across the state and even across the country are right in the middle of High Stake Testing. Tests that are meant to show a students progress according to the "common curriculum". These test will determine if some people lose their jobs.

That's why all of these cheating scandals come to light. Because this situation has completely incentivized cheating. If I'm going to be treated as a lying cheater who lies and cheats why the hell shouldn't I just actually commit the crime I'm assumed of?

I don't condone the behavior, far from it in fact, but I can completely understand why.  In what other profession is it okay for you to lose your job over something you have very little control over? It seems that folks tend to get up in arms over stuff like that. But not in education. Here we're already a bunch of "lazy lying cheaters", who need to clearly told every possible way we can cheat so we don't do it. Because our jobs are on the line, and so help you if that student wasn't paying attention or had a bad day, or you couldn't get through to them due to deep seated personal conflicts, or you had a rough year... YOU are responsible and should have taught HARDER. And don't you dare think of cheating to save your job, insurance, and the funding to your school... because "cheating is wrong".

Why is education different? Why don't they rise up and try to make a change? Become more than glorified test dispensing babysitters? The answer is actually really simple. For the really good teachers, the higher ups have leverage.

Really good teachers care about children.

They want what's best for the children that they've grown to love and care for. They want to see them succeed and so they put up with all the rough parts of the job. They love their students with the kind of transformational love that seeks to make them better people. To make them stronger, smarter, healthier citizens not just of their city but of the world.

Yes, we get to teach, and teaching can be the most rewarding job there ever will be... But everything has it's limits. The poor pay, the disrespect, those could be overlooked by the truly dedicated to helping students. But now... they're starting to strip us of the power to teacher.

The world is changing, and the way we educate has to change with it. The future isn't more tests. It's more critical thinking. In the united states almost everyone has easy (or easyish) access to the internet. And through the internet you have access to the entirely of accumulated human knowledge. Memorizing the facts of which President died when is irrelevant when you can google it from your smartphone faster than you can remember it.

This means we need to change the focus. We need to step away from the easily testable bullshit that clogs up our time to ACTUALLY learn things. Important things like critical thinking, logic, compromise, and skills that will be useful in the outside world.

I want to be a teacher, perhaps more then I want almost anything. I want to help guide the most at risk, flawed, and broken little creatures in the world so that they can reach their fullest potential. I think it's the greatest gift that I can give to the world outside of arguably my writing. But even I, with a true passion for the profession and deep desire to teach and help children, am starting to seriously reconsider my options. There's got to be a better way...

I just wish I could see it.