Jon Schoening’s Educational Blog

Why do teachers do what we do for average to below average pay nationally with little respect for our profession and/or suppposed meager importance on the grand scheme of things in a capitalistic society such as our own?

We do not do it for money. We do not do it for presitge. We do not do it for glory.

Teachers live for the moments when the light bulb goes off in a student’s mind, when the underdog overcomes a challenge, or when we see our efforts inspire a student to achieve something for which they did not even seek out to achieve or believed they could. It is when a student smiles because they read their first word or their first chapter book. We do it for the students and the communities we have committed our lives to educate. We create possibilities, not profit margins. We have the power to create dreams as well as hope. We invest our time and energies in the future, not futures markets or speculation. We invest in people, not portfolios. That is what we do often without regard for our own needs or well being. It is often a thankless profession, because the return interest on our investment does not occur for decades to come. We may never see or hear the appreciation, but it is there in the hearts of all the students we have touched over the years.

Parental Involvement in a school is imperative and we have read that it is a huge influence on the effectiveness of a school, but involving the entire community, that is something that bridges gaps of misunderstanding and mistrust.

Why can a school not be the center of community, a conduit for promoting activism, understanding, and pride? It can, but it takes a serious commitment by all staff involved. That is not something that a handful of teachers can accomplish on their own. At my school, we have teachers volunteer to put on community events after school, tutor on Saturday’s, and go out into the community to put on different events with our students. It is an amazing thing to see. They do it without asking to be compensated in anyway. They just do it because they have the opportunity to do so, administration sets that expectation (not a requirement), and everyone goes along because that is the norm at our school. I have never seen anything like it until I became a part of this staff three years ago.

It is a double-edged blessing because the more parents and the community are involved in your school the more scrutiny a teacher is going to receive. You just have to be a professional and back up what you do with research and experience. Involve parents in the problem solving process makes them a partner in what goes on in your class. I have found that some criticism I have received has been constructive and sometimes the criticism is not so constructive. Sometimes a parent is blowing off steam and venting frustrations. That is okay. I don’t take it personally. I would rather have someone inside the tent peeing outside than someone outside the tent peeing in.

The idea of getting the community involved in your school in any way possible is to break down walls, open lines of communication, and ultimately build bridges. Your community is going to make investments of some type somewhere, why not make it your school.

A school’s culture is influenced by many factors, many of which, actually mostly of which you have zero control over. The truth be told you have little power to control anything other than your perception and interaction within your school. Negativity and low expectations are a cancer among a staff of teachers. If you teach in a community that is living in poverty, there is nothing you can do about the income level of your students, but you can set high standards and give the students a sense of pride in their accomplishments and accolades. You have no control over what happened to Little Suzy before she got on the bus that morning, but you can control what happens when she gets to school. If the staff is not collaborating, then you need to provide the opportunity and make the invitation. If the atmosphere is toxic and negative, then you have the power to ignore such attitudes and become that beacon of joy and positive light. Inspire not only your students, but your peers as well. Don’t let circumstances outside your control steal your joy. Change can begin with one person’s vision and example.

I think I have a strong community of learners because we do a great deal of partnership and small group learning which in turn implies and forces the students to take a great deal of responsibility for their learning. I love the idea of the circle time to discuss issues in the class and allowing the students to talk things out; I have done this on a small scale with little squabbles between a few students but never a whole class. I embrace the idea of students taking on the responsibility of behavior, but there is the catch. This seems strangely similar to the phonics vs. whole language debates: behaviorist vs. constructivist behavior management. I think you must employ a little of both.

I think their should be some level of respect for authority in the classroom- a teacher does not have to act like the only moral authority in the class, but at least give the impression as having good morals, judgement, and makes good and fair decisions. Children have to know that someone in the class is in control. They have to know that when something is going on in the classroom that is inappropriate that someone there has the authority to put a stop to it quickly and effectively. There is a level of trust that your teacher has everything under control. You can’t wait for a circle time for every squabble, interruption, outburst, or insult. Pre-teachers should be given both points of view and practice both philosophies.

Whole language vs. Phonics (ding-ding), that was a mess. I remember as an undergraduate having a professor strongly pushing whole-language instruction. I also remember receiving whole-language instruction in school. It was a just as big a struggle to understand in the second grade why we did reading the way we did as it was as a Junior in college. There is so much data out there that promotes a blending of the two philosophies; the whole argument kind of reminds me of the Budweiser’s commercial- taste great, less filling! Where is the problem? Do both.

I think the reading instruction has improved since I was in school; I truly see kids reading more, having more opportunities to read, and having more reading materials to read. I recall in elementary school if you had a book late you got a late fee of a dime a week or something like that; and if you could not pay the money, you could not check out a book. Needless to say, I didn’t spend much time in our school library checking out books.

The standards, communities, and society may change, but our philosophies, if grounded in truly rigorous and substantiated research, should not.

It is so intriguing to see the pendulum of educational philosophy and pedagogy swing back and forth from the Primer schools of the United States infancy to Industrialization to Social Re-constructivism back to Basics focusing on Math and Science in a space race to Social Reform again to another Back to Basics to the 80’s and 90’s to NCLB. Where are we going to land next? We are driven by our culture, our politics, and our communities in all decisions concerning education. Each generation will have a different idea of what and education should be. It will always swing back and forth. It has to because no two generations are the same. Some will be more conservative than the next or vise versa, but how much has the good teacher changed. Each generation has stories of teachers that inspired them to go further than they had before. Each generation has a memory of a teacher that helped them grow as a person. And, yes, each generation has a memory of a teacher that drove them crazy and left a negative impression. In that respect, education does not change- the teachers do not change. It is not the pendulum that is the most important aspect of our nations educational system. Maybe it is the teachers “teaching to change to world” one student at a time.