Teaching

Teaching can be a thankless job. There are plenty of rewards, but at the end of the day, they are weighed down by hours of correcting papers, inputting grades, preparing and then tweaking the day’s lesson, calling parents, and meeting the needs of administration. This doesn’t include the worries or concerns about individual students or a class that races through your emotions when your head finally hits the pillow. No good teacher ever thinks that he or she has done a perfect job at the end of the day unless s/he considers the process it takes to learn how to do something well.

Teachers new and old

That’s why after gathering experience and knowledge about learning, teachers burn out. However, there are advantages to teachers burning out and leaving the system. We want to keep our educators fresh. We want them young, awake, and enthusiastic. Every school system needs new blood, a fresh perspective, a generation that is closer to the students we teach. However, we need the wisdom of the older teachers. We need the teachers who know how to talk to parents, to manage students. Teachers who can waltz into a classroom and conduct a symphony of learning.

The teaching puzzle

So where do we find the right balance? When I started teaching, creativity was a huge piece of the teaching puzzle. The standards were the same standards that we have today. The government and the school administration did not mandate the system. The teachers, those of us in the trenches, did. We knew what our students needed to learn, and since we had the time and flexibility, we taught until the students met them.

When teachers play it safe

Today, teachers are overwhelmed by providing proof that students meet the standards and creativity may be taking a back seat. If teachers teach to the test and use the textbook to do so, then they can play it safe. Teaching becomes a multiple-choice test. Students can, through the process of elimination, prove what they know by learning how to answer the questions that they know will be on the test.

Teaching from the text to the test

If I was starting my teaching career today, I could open a textbook on day one, and move right through it all year, testing my students along the way to prove that I was doing the job. There would be no risk; the students would fill in the blanks, spew out information on the tests and move on to the next grade. Everyone would be happy, the teachers would have pre-made lesson plans, parents and administration would know what their child was expected to learn, and there would be a neatly packaged packet of data for everyone to see at the end of the day.

Teaching energy

What is missing in the textbook model of teaching is creativity and investment on the teacher’s side. When a teacher creates a lesson that involves critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration, s/he invests in the process. Her energy is part of the learning process itself, and that is exciting. When the teacher’s excited, so are the students. Everyone is engaged.

The standardized teacher

The standardized edition of teaching and learning could and should complement creative, innovative critical skills techniques. Some schools manage to do this. They understand that the process of learning is as valuable as the final product. They use standardized tests to measure student progress, they align the mandated standards to each lesson, and their students can pass the state test at the end of the year. What makes critical skills teachers and students successful is that the material they learn becomes a part of them. The test is simply a tool to measure their basic knowledge and to prove that the school has done their job in teaching the standards.

Risk takers

Learning requires engagement, creativity, and investment. Most of all, it requires taking risks. Teaching requires the same. The standardized textbook model of learning discourages the teacher from taking risks and trying a lesson that demands that the students do more work than the teacher.

A teacher is a mentor who hands over a learning challenge to a student. The students take the reins from the teacher and drive it home. Sometimes this means that the students fail – that the final product does not merit an A+. Sometimes it means starting all over again, or revising until the students fully understand the process. Sometimes it means abandoning the problem altogether and learning from our mistakes.

The ultimate journey

Assessing a student’s progress has its merits. It keeps everyone honest. So, let’s have at it. Let’s meet these standards. Let’s prove to the world that we are producing students who can prove their knowledge. But let’s hold their learning to the flame at the same time. Let’s make sure that the teachers serve as guides to the learning process, which includes failure. Let’s allow ourselves to fail sometimes so that when we do take the big test and get it right on the third or fourth time, students know how they arrived at the answer. Let’s teach our students that it is the journey and not always the destination. It is on the journey that they learn to learn.