The “Good Old Days” of Teaching
I am what is kindly referred to as a veteran teacher. With twenty-nine years under my belt, I find myself nostalgically reminiscing about “the good, old days” of teaching, when my profession was revered, administrators could be fearless, and teachers still possessed a precious gift; to teach children to better understand the world around them rather than to better understand how to pass their state tests.
When did teachers slip from favor? When did we become the cause of education’s woes? Is it possible that we are the easy targets on which to pin the blame of education’s failures? What about society’s failures and the ripple effect it has in the classroom? Teachers are not only disseminators of information. We are counselors, mediators, and often, we are parents. We deal with parents who refuse to make their children accountable for what they do. We deal with children who are trying to cope with situations in their homes making it difficult to concentrate or care about what is happening in the classroom. We dedicate hours beyond the work day grading and planning. We spend hundreds of dollars out of our already small paychecks on educational materials, teacher development, and reward items for our students. Yet, in spite of our best efforts, we continue to lose society’s respect.
We live in a sue-crazy and “I’ve-got-an-advocate” crazy world, and the repercussions of this are also being felt in our schools. Many administrators are understandably reticent to be too harsh when disciplining students. Unfortunately, this creates a degree of chaos, as students begin to realize that threats are often just that; threats. Maintaining control as the year progresses becomes a constant challenge often left solely to the teachers to sort out on their own.
But, what I mourn the most is the ability to teach deeply and creatively. Let me give you an example. To prepare my fifth-graders for their Social Studies Ohio Achievement Test, I must teach the following by April: regions and geography of the U.S., U.S. history from the arrival of Native Americans to the expansion and industrialization of our country, government, citizen’s rights and responsibilities, economics, cultural differences and their impact on our society, and problem solving. In addition, I am expected to review Ohio history and hope that through ESP I am able to choose those specific concepts that might be tested from the myriad of items they learned the year before. There is no time to delve deeply or explore interesting events in great detail. I am sincerely sorry for new teachers who have only known this era of test-taking. It is robbing us of the pure joy of teaching and communicating that joy to our students.
So, here I am, a veteran teacher, who, in spite of it all, still loves teaching. But a big part of me is in mourning for “the good old days”.