So, You Want to Teach...

With a state board of education so completely out of touch with what actually happens in many classrooms and a complete distrust of educators paired with a lack of faith in their competence, teaching has become a place where there is no room for error because everything is measured and judged on a severe scale. The panic instigated by the State's labels of "unsatisfactory" or "unacceptable" spreads from the top down, and a new teacher no longer has the opportunity to learn from mistakes made. All the pressures about standardize testing have created an expectation that a teacher be perfect the minute s/he walks into a classroom. Therefore, over the past school year I came to the conclusion that if anyone voiced an interest in teaching, my advice would probably come in the form of, "RUN! Run as far away from teaching as you can and NEVER look back!"

That kind of advice would never spring from the idea that I hate what I do or think that it is a dead end career. In fact, I LOVE what I do. Teaching is a huge part of how I define myself. Actually, my principal said it best when I mentioned getting out of teaching. He said, "For you? That would be blasphemy." I'm just struggling to make it to the end of a rather difficult year. All the measuring and data and practice exams and planning and comparisons and percentage points and subgroups has me at my wits' end. Ultimately, we have ended up teaching to a test in an attempt to help students pass and graduate. It is against every honest teaching bone in my body to teach to a test. I just sort of spiraled into this pit of depression and irritation when it came to education.

However, this past Saturday I attended our UIL Academic District competition because I am the Ready Writing Coach. For the first time, my team was actually set and prepared. (We even had the most adorable shirts made calling ourselves The Ink Ladies and using pink and black as our colors.) My event was first thing in the morning which meant I got to sit around and watch students all day as various events happened.

After the science competition, the six members of the team hung out at my table because two of my team members also happened to compete in science. Just observing these students was amazing! It turns out that they were genuinely interested in what they were doing. I watched and listened as they discussed concepts spanning chemistry, biology, and physics. They shared solutions to various problems and sincerely wanted to help each other understand ideas. It made my heart happy to be reminded what an excitement for learning looked like. No amount of time consuming (and often time wasting) checkpoints/benchmarks/whatever has hindered their love of learning. These students have been fired up by solid teachers (their Science Coach is pretty awesome). These students are engaging in their educations! These students are why I teach, and I cannot forget that.

Regardless of the crap I might have to trudge through in education, I am in it for the kids. My students make the day worth while when everything else seems to be spinning out of control. Because of this past Saturday, if a person showed interest in teaching my advice might be more like, "Why? For the kids? Because that is the only acceptable reason to become a teacher in the first place. Otherwise, it isn't for you."