I've just left active teaching after 12 years, and it was my choice.
In the same week that I resigned, the movie "Waiting for Superman" came out. I haven't seen it, although I intend to, and I am grateful that it is drawing public attention to the problems in education. However, I'm disturbed by what I have heard is its' focus.
I understand that it posits the notion that the problem with our schools is a glut of bad tenured teachers that are kept in place by the unions. In my time as a teacher I have certainly seen bad teachers. I have seen them kept in place by a system that doesn't want to court trouble or admit its' mistakes. However, for every bad teacher, I have seen 30 good ones. And I have seen them crushed by forces that they have no control over.
I am a very good teacher. I know this because I have seen positive outcomes for my students in any way measurable, and some not measurable. I didn't leave because of bad teachers. I left because of lack of support from the administration, and the home environments.
I was given a school of 500 kids, and asked to make an art program from scratch. There was no access to a sink, (which limits the work you can do considerably) no learning materials, no access to technology and a budget of $500 for the year.
The classes themselves were uncontrollable. I have had difficult students in the past, but never an entire class that refused to sit in their assigned seats. I've never had a class wherein a student threw a chair and told me to F*** off, and I sent him to the office, had him come back, saying, "They told me I should apologize." I've never had a situation in which I got between two students exchanging actual blows, and they were sent back to my room with a "peer relations" expert taking them both in the hall for 5 minutes worth of chat consisting of , "Hey brothers, you don't want to be fighting each other, right?"
Perhaps the student body is such that things like punching each other and throwing chairs are not major offenses. But, frankly, that makes my role that of warden, not teacher. During these classes, I was seeing the students sitting quietly, desperately wanting to learn, and wishing the disruptive kids would stop. I would have dearly loved to teach those kids. I never had the opportunity.
Is this a problem with administration? I think so. I think firm lines need to be drawn, defining what is unacceptable behavior. Is the problem with the home? Yes, many of these kids come from poverty, from homes that have their own problems and for whom school isn't a priority. Is the problem cultural? There is some of that, too. Is the problem "bad teachers?" It's the smallest part of the equation.
What I have seen, through my years, and through five different school systems, is that teachers try. Anyone who thinks they have it made because they get the summers off don't realize how much work it takes to plan and implement lessons, to grade assignments, and to be in constant touch with parents, not to mention the constant professional development classes.
Teaching is the one career wherein you know you need an advanced degree, and must constantly be bettering yourself professionally, but are paid on par with unskilled labor.
Anyone that continues in the face of all this, is, indeed, Superman.
