Ah, back to school. Every year it’s met by parents and children with a mixture of excitement, dread, hope, and, for teachers, probably anxiety about exactly what increased nonsense they will be forced to undertake—all for the sake of “the children.”
We all know teachers teach. And, truth be told, 90% of those teachers are fantastic. Hear me loud and clear: they are FANTASTIC.
They are not incompetent, mean to your child, purposefully rude to you, too hard, too easy, too strict, too lenient–they are fantastic. Does each teacher have his or her own personality that you may like or dislike more than others? Do you wish he or she would do things the way YOU think they should be done? Perhaps. But I’m going to rip off the Band-Aid and tell you things, from my personal experience (I spent 14 years in the classroom), teachers face every day.
I used to tell my students that what they see me doing—teaching–is about one-third of what I actually do. And truly, that fraction is a bit high. It was more like one-quarter. The physical aspect of delivering information is a minimal part of the job.
There’s a reason teachers’ stress levels are so high. Teachers are blamed for so much WRONG with students—but just brace yourself for why.
Big Education is Big Business
Education is a business just like everything else. Textbook companies, education programs, technology programs—all of these industries have salespeople and quotas to meet.
When conservatives and those not entrenched in Big Education lament the fact we can’t get “back to basics,” know that companies are pushing NEW! BETTER! FASTER! ways of delivering curriculum—and that a district’s curriculum changes about every two to three years (to the tune of MILLIONS of dollars) when it’s determined the NEW! BETTER! FASTER! program is more effective.
So, in addition to the hundreds of “professional development” workshops teachers are expected to attend, teachers are constantly being “trained” in the new program that will allegedly do what all the other programs failed to do: help reach students.
Couple that with the absurd notion that, because each child has a different learning style (no, really! that’s what the gurus claim!), each child needs specific “differentiation”—namely, an individual lesson plan for 22 students, and by God, that better be in your extensive lesson plan and, by God, you better implement that every day–and already you can start to see how a teacher’s time and energy starts getting stripped.
Basic Skills are Mocked
Now let’s tackle the en vogue concept of “higher level thinking.” You think, why would a conservative think pushing students to think at a higher, not rote, level is a bad thing? In theory, it is not. But a district-wide hyper-directive of teachers including “higher level thinking” into each and every lesson is unrealistic, and, for K-3 students, can be extremely confusing.
Educators know well the Bloom’s Taxonomy Pyramid. The theory is sound and states that students in lower primary grades (K-3) need to be taught memorized skills: spelling patterns, math facts, sight words, parts of speech, etc.
Without those basic skills, higher level thinking and concepts will be out of their grasp—and that’s where you see a lot of students truly struggle. They have NOT been taught basics because their teacher has 47 other directives from her administrators and districts on OTHER things they deem more important that should be highlighted: i.e., “higher level thinking.”
There’s a popular theory going around now, and if you’re a parent trying to teach math to your child, you might have encountered it. Straight algorithms, or 2+2=4, are seen as not challenging a student.
The NEW! BETTER! FASTER! thinking goes that children need to work with models of numbers (rods and cubes, pictures, etc.) instead of memorizing facts. After they master how to draw a “number sentence” can they move to a straight algorithm. This is totally assbackwards. Teach the algorithm first, then move on to explaining WHY it makes sense. But many districts demand that students are taught picture first, then algorithm.
So, constantly changing curriculum, district-wide directives on how to teach (forgetting their educators already completed either a degree in education or a credentialing program), a belief that teaching basic, memory skills doesn’t challenge students…what else is tying your child’s teacher up in knots?
(Side note: Don’t EVEN get me started on how it takes a Bible’s worth of documentation and an Act of Congress to get a kid retained today.)
The Game of Lesson Planning
How about the shell game known as lesson planning? You ask: what’s the problem with lesson planning?! Again, in theory, nothing, and it is necessary. But most districts require extensive lesson plans that can take teachers hours to prepare and administrators who then take the lesson plans and send them off to their bosses at the district level.
And guess what teachers REALLY do with those lesson plans? They use them as a guide, and then they basically teach from what routines they have already established. That is, of course, unless they see an administrator enter their room when they will jump to attention and start the brilliant lesson plan song-and-dance so as to not lose their jobs.
Teachers actually get to teach about one-third to one-half of what their lesson plan dictated they teach.
The Great and Powerful Standards
Which brings us to….DUM DUM DUM….Standards.
I see you over there, shaking your head, lamenting my mocking of the Great and Powerful Standards. Again, in theory, standards for teachers are necessary and nobody is claiming there should be none. But take a gander of what the State of Texas requires teachers to teach within the school year. Go ahead—dive in: http://tea.texas.gov/index2.aspx?id=6148.
You can spend hours going over this thing. It’s a mile wide and an inch deep, and because Texas is Texas, they eschewed Common Core, but it’s essentially the same thing. It’s just Common Core, Texas Style.
It’s daunting.
Because liberals run Big Education from the top down, so many of these problems teachers face can be squarely placed on their shoulders.
Mocking rote memorization in primary grades, the shell game, Cover Your Ass lesson plans that take hours to prepare, the constantly changing standards and curriculum (not to mention the hoops teachers jump through to keep their jobs), hours of meaningless “group work” during hours of meaningless professional development—most of these are liberals’ handiwork.
The Discipline Problem
And then there’s the discipline problem—which has liberalism written ALL OVER IT.
Remember the days of actual discipline like sitting a child in a corner, taking away recess, putting a child’s desk in the hall for him to work, a swat on the butt (or, better yet, calling mom to come administer a real ass-whoop), “writing lines” (“I Will Not Do X” 500 times), the stigma of meaningful in-or-out of school suspension or expulsion? Bye bye. Those days are over.
Teachers have one hand tied behind their backs at all times. Teachers are blamed for their lack of “classroom management” and given no real weapons with which to fight.
What’s worse, parents and administrators blame the teachers for not being able to control an unruly discipline problem when everything that has been proven to work is now forbidden! And don’t think for a second that today’s student doesn’t know EXACTLY what is allowed and what isn’t.
I’ve heard primary school students threatening to sue a teacher over disciplining them. One crappy kid can ruin the entire class—not to mention four or five. One year at a Houston inner city school, 17 out of the 21 students I had were off-the-chain unmanageable.
The Two Types of Parents You DON’T Want to Be
And where you find an unmanageable, awful student you’ll most likely find a parent that’s pretty much the same.
While most parents are supportive and fabulous, there are noticeable exceptions.
There are two types of parent you do NOT want to be: The Helicopter Parent and the Uninvolved Parent. Both parents make a teacher’s life hell throughout the year.
The premise of both parents on opposite ends of the spectrum starts the same: my child is an angel. Or, I know my child is no angel, BUT. And! There’s something wrong with the other children. They are bullying my sweet, precious child. As my CHILD’S ADVOCATE (that’s a big one for these parents) I demand to know what YOU the teacher are doing to PROTECT MY SWEET ANGEL.
The Helicopter Parent starts off cloying and artificially helpful. “If there’s ANYTHING I can do….” This invariably will turn into daily emails and calls about slights from their teacher or other students their precious angel had to deal with that day.
A Helicopter Parent will demand full attention on their child, forgetting the teacher has at least 20 other students to teach every single day. They will expect daily reports on what their child did that day, and if their child is a discipline problem (most children of Helicopter Parents are), they will demand to know if the other students are being held to the same standard as their precious angel. Helicopter Parents talk smack about the teacher around other parents but are sweet as saccharine to the teacher’s face.
Trust me, Helicopter Parents: we see you coming a mile away, and the countdown until your kids (and by extension, YOU) are out of our classes starts on Day One.
And then there’s the Uninvolved Parent. Uninvolved Parents can’t be bothered. Their child misses the bus—and free breakfast–every day because mom is still asleep, and then has to roll out of bed in her pajamas to drive the kid to school an hour late every day.
They then expect the teacher to stop what she is doing, welcome the child back to class, and have breakfast waiting for them so they can eat at their desk while the other students are busy working.
Uninvolved Parents expect the teacher to not only teach, but to parent their child. Children of Uninvolved Parents tend to score lower on daily work and tests, and many are severe behavior problems. No surprise here: they are getting zero attention at home, so why not try and get some (albeit negative) at school.
The irony of the Uninvolved Parent is, like the Helicopter Parent, they too will blame the teacher for pretty much everything their child negatively experiences during the day.
Now You Know What Every Teacher Thinks, But Won’t Say
It used to be teachers were revered, even awed. God, prayer, and morality were a daily part of the school day. Discipline was expected and meted out fairly. Teachers and administrators could get out their paddles and spank a kid right there in class—then their parents would finish the job at home. They weren’t blamed if a child got their feelings hurt—parents and children knew this is a rite of passage of growing up. Developing a tough skin is an important life skill. Teachers were allowed to actually teach instead of doing the 236 other things districts and administrators threw at them on a daily basis.
Liberalism ruins everything it touches, and sadly, education is no different. But here’s hoping parents get a glimpse in to the life of a teacher—and act accordingly. There is no reason to have an adversarial relationship. Understand what they face and be the support that they, and your child, needs.
Now get out there and have a great school year!
(Angela Box holds a teaching credential from California State University Dominguez Hills. She was a 14-year full-time and substitute primary teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Houston’s Spring Branch Independent School District, and Houston Independent School District)
