The Truth About Teaching

Teaching. It is an important occupation. And yet, whenever you tell someone you are going to be a teacher you are undoubtedly met with a look of, “Really? That’s it?”

Ever heard this?

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

This is wrong in three distinct ways.

MYTH #1 When somebody is a teacher, that means he or she was not or could not be successful in another line of work.

WRONG!

It’s actually the opposite. People who can’t hack normal jobs don’t last a day in the classroom, because the level of knowledge and skill in any subject area that is required of a teacher far exceeds what is required in what people sometimes refer to as the real world.

I know of one example where a young woman gave up her job as a librarian at a law firm in Boston to teach History in a small town outside of Lowell. She is paid less. The raises are smaller, and there is a lot more work.

I know of another example where a man gave up his job as a graphic artist to teach. He too is paid less. He needs to be licensed by the state every five years and must maintain his credentials by taking courses on his dime.

I know two other men who walked away from engineering jobs to teach math. They make significantly less than they used to, and are responsible for 12 classes of math students between them.

Teaching pays less, but it’s never boring.

MYTH #2 An accountant doesn’t necessarily have the skills to teach math. An editor doesn’t necessarily have the skills to teach writing. And, a biologist doesn’t necessarily have the skills to teach biology. Teaching requires a set of skills that extends far beyond a content area associated with the academy. I can’t tell you how many lawyers, engineers or businesspeople washed out of schools where I worked, going back to the private sector, because they lacked the grit, the interpersonal intelligence, the patience and the courage to continue teaching.

MYTH #3 People don’t always do things for the money or status. Teaching should pay two or three times what it pays now, based on the level of education teachers must have, the amount of work they must do and the responsibility they shoulder. But, some people are willing to accept that teaching school does not pay financially, so they can be fulfilled in some other way. I know two editors who left publishing to teach high school English and two engineers who left the tech sector, all taking cuts in pay and benefits to teach, simply because they value people over money.

The narcissistic culture we live in believes that careers in public service— teaching, medicine, criminal justice, fire and rescue etc. — leave something to be desired. “What’s in it for me? Where is the money?” they ask.

The truth about these careers is they are not about the external rewards. Instead, they are helping others. In addition to the assumption that since teaching does not pay financially, it is not important, I often hear that teaching is easy.

Half a day. Half a Year.

I would invite you, Reader, to come along with me on a deeper look into what teaching is really like, what it really entails and how it is anything but easy, especially at the beginning.

You see, I WAS a schoolteacher for 19 years before becoming a professor of education. I know that the teaching day is an unpredictable, radically unstable unit of chaos for which we plan and yet often fail to accomplish our objectives. And, since good teachers fail a lot, due to their hunger for challenge and for authentic growth, most leave teaching, succumbing to the stink that “outcome failure” puts on them in the immediate. Perhaps if the outcomes were evaluated, if growth were measured and accomplishments were tallied up a little further down the road, everyone would see the big picture of progress that we are a part of. When we simply measure our students’ growth right after we teach them specific skills, we have not allowed the skills and information taught them to be assimilated and to be mixed in the stew of their minds to combine into new understandings and then to influence their behaviors. That takes time. Time, that the simplistic assessments we use today to evaluate students and at the same time to hold teachers accountable, is not invested.

Lessons teachers try to teach today might not show a ROI for years, decades maybe. But, education policies today punish teachers whose students test poorly, and worse these testing policies scare those who consider teaching — and might even be good at it — away from the profession by bureaucratizing it. Teaching is hard enough.

One of the assignments that I give to graduate students who want to teach is a “practice lesson” where they teach a single lesson to their 20 something year old classmates, who are pretending to be back in high school. It’s totally artificial and much easier than any real life teaching lesson.

Hell, they are not working with adolescents.

But, these teaching candidates have to start somewhere, and this is often their first teaching experience. Afterward they debrief, reflect and discuss what happened as a class of future teachers. And, then that student whose turn it was to teach that day writes a reflection. This is one of those reflections. Eventually, these candidates practice teaching with real live adolescents, but first, they must survive teaching for 40 minutes with young adults.

I taught a mock lesson as part of my master’s degree program in education. This should have seemed like a piece of cake; after all, they weren’t even real high school students but fellow graduate students studying to be teachers like myself. As I reflect on my first teaching experience however, I am struck by the lack of feeling I had immediately after I had finished. I wasn’t sure how I did, or even what I did, honestly. It was like when adrenaline kicks in and average men are able to lift cars off of people trapped underneath; they can’t remember how they did it. If there is one feeling leftover somewhere in my subconscious it is the overwhelming realization that this is HARD. It is hard like nothing I have ever known. I have done difficult things in my life, personally, academically and professionally. When I was eighteen, I had a baby that I have raised on my own. Two months after she was born I got a full time job and two months after that I entered college. I was able to approach all of these obstacles with determination, ambition and confidence, because I didn’t want to be another statistic. Teaching is harder than all of that. When I approached teaching my lesson I was also determined and ambitious and confident in what I knew and how I had planned the lesson, but there are so many unknown factors when you enter a classroom that no amount of planning can anticipate. It is not about one child but hundreds. It isn’t about your profession or education but theirs. It isn’t about what you want but what they need. You can’t control how things will turn out every time you stand in front of a classroom.

Broadly speaking, teaching presents obstacles that almost no other profession presents. First of all, you are responsible for the education of children. How effectively (or ineffectively) you teach them could very well determine, or at least influence, the path their lives take. That is an enormous and daunting responsibility. In addition, you are more than just their teacher (in many instances) and you are often teaching more than just your content area.

Students are people. And young. They have issues outside of school that often seem (and sometimes are) bigger than a classroom could ever hope to remedy; yet for all of the turmoil, inconsistencies or changes occurring in their lives, school is a constant. As a teacher, you are often a beacon of salvation, a figure of routine and consistency. Though playing these roles in the lives of our students is not spelled out in the job description and we get in more trouble for them than we get credit. And, it is inevitable that we must play these roles and, actually, they are a large part of being an effective teacher. We cannot hope to teach these children if we do not foster healthy relationships with them.

Teachers face obstacles every day that other professionals will never see in their entire career. First and foremost, for all of the planning and anticipating we do when we plan our lessons we can never ever ever be certain of how things will work out when we actually try to put them into practice. Once the class has begun, however, it is too late to go back to the drawing board and start over. There is no, “oops this didn’t go the way I thought. We’ll try again tomorrow.” There are twenty faces staring at you waiting for something to happen and you have to do something.

This is what I was most nervous about and what unsettled my mind the entire lesson. What if they hate this? What if they refuse to do it? How can I change my planning if I lose them? Alarmingly, I had no good answer for any of these questions. I was essentially flying blind; I had a plan but not much by way of a back up. My lesson went fine and I was luckily not confronted many of these issues, but if things had gone wrong I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do. I understand that things like this take time to acquire, but my uncertainty makes me nervous, even more nervous than I already am standing in front of a room full of people. What I have concluded, unfortunately and unsatisfactorily, is that it takes time and practice. Baptism by fire is the only way.

This is just a reflection of one experience and a mock experience at that. It still dredged up all of these feeling and realizations about the teaching profession. How, after this, can anyone say that what teachers do is easy? Teachers literally have the weight of the world on their shoulders. They are literally responsible for the future. They literally have to perform in front of hundreds of people every day with little time to prepare. All I ask of you, Reader, is the next time you meet someone and they tell you they are or want to be a teacher, do not roll your eyes. Do not shake your head and think to yourself, “that’s the best you could do?” Do not scoff at them, believing they are choosing an easy profession. Rather, thank them for their service. Shake their hand for the responsibility they are about to take on and commend them for choosing to enter one of the most difficult careers ever in existence.