A Lesson from a Retired Teacher

Let’s do a little experiment today. Gather twenty-five of your acquaintances and put them in folding chairs in the biggest room in your house. Now pick an interesting topic, one that you know all about. Plan all you want to and spend an hour telling the group about the topic.

Tough, huh? Now bring 25 different folks in and do the same. Do this five times today and then tomorrow and then for another one hundred and seventy-eight days. Unless you are a teacher, you just don’t know how hard that can be. 

During what the public calls a “normal” teaching day, most teachers have to prepare at least three different lesson plans. From the early morning moment that they enter their school, teachers have to find ways to motivate a classroom packed wall to wall with energetic kids. This is no sardine can of identical students. Every child brings different abilities, different skill sets and different life experiences into the mix. In a single class, a teacher will often have self-motivated students from stable safe homes alongside others who are just glad to get out of the house unbruised.

Public school education can fairly easily be broken into three levels requiring three different sets of skills. 

For the Elementary teacher, the three-lesson plan idea goes out the window. In the first few grades, the teacher is responsible for teaching reading, math, and science plus several other disciplines. They are also tasked with teaching shoe tying, socially acceptable restroom etiquette and proper spoon use, plus line standing, seat staying and cry stopping. There is more, so much more. An elementary class often has the feel of a nest full of hungry baby birds, each vying for attention. A five-minute restroom break is as close to heaven as these sainted teachers get.

Middle school students change classes for different disciplines but don’t think that means that teachers have only one preparation. When a middle school teacher tells you she teaches history, she may mean fifth, sixth and seventh grade history. That sounds like three preparations but consider that skill levels in every class vary widely. Each of her classes will probably have special needs students at both ends of the spectrum. Her lesson plans must be scaled to accommodate each one of the 25 -30 children in her class. The notion of Helen Crump lecturing a class of smiling, well-behaved ten-year-olds is as dated as a rotary telephone. 

Not only are middle-schoolers different in ability, they are at vastly different stages of physical and social maturity. The middle grade teacher must be part social worker, part psychologist and the possessor of infinite patience. While one child is still playing with Barbie, another is trying to be Barbie. Middle school is the combat zone of teaching with more fights, broken hearts and tears than any other level.

Although during my career I worked in every setting from elementary to college, high school was my habitat. High school teachers have to do less social skill training but must be masters of their teaching area. No matter how brightly the teacher’s lamp of knowledge shines, there will always be students in class who are brighter still. I consider myself a pretty good intellectual sparring partner, but there were always students whose thinking ability put mine to shame. The high school teacher has to count on having a store of information and experience to challenge these minds while coaxing less gifted students toward success. Every high school teacher has to compete for attention with cars, make up, boy/girl friends and social insecurity.

There should be statues dedicated to teachers and if there are, there should more.

Because this is my love letter to teaching and teachers, there are three areas I will not deal with in this writing: Discipline and Documentation and Testing. This is not because I don’t have strong opinions, but because the subjects are so complex they deserve their own space.

The year 2020 has changed all the rules.  Teachers, who had a difficult job already are called on to do their magic in the worst of circumstances.  There are two basic scenarios that every teacher has to face during this pandemic. 

One scenario is to enter a classroom with students who may or may not have been in contact with Covid 19 and who do not fully understand social distancing.  Everyone who has had classroom experience knows that a student who is ill will, without fail, feel compelled to whisper the problem into the teacher’s ear. With on-site instruction, the teacher risks not only personal exposure to the virus but also to the chance of taking it home to his family. The teacher is still expected to personalize the learning experience for students while finding ways to minimize direct person-to-person contact.

The second scenario is on-line learning.  Each teacher faces the prospect of using computer technology to instruct students who, along with their parents, may have minimal computer experience. Glitches are common and frustration is mutual. Lesson plans have to be completely re-structured for on-line teaching and worksheets or supplemental materials must be produced and made available in advance for home use. As a consequence, teachers have to create on-line lesson plans as well as in-person lesson plans because the situation may change at a day’s notice. 

I am in awe.  Teaching is so intense, so involved, and so personal. Teachers must build relationships of trust and create atmospheres of confidence. Students at every level interact with such energy that teachers are emotionally exhausted by the end of a normal workday. I cannot imagine the stress of uncertainty that many teachers feel and yet I know that they are daily encouraging their students and reassuring them that life will return to normal.

We always bandy about the word “Dedication” when we talk about teachers as if calling them dedicated is enough to compensate for low pay and high expectations. We are fortunate to have such people caring about our children but the dedication must go both ways.

We must realize how seriously teachers take their responsibility to guide students toward success in life and we must remember the effect that one or more teachers had in guiding our own futures. Along with parents, a teacher may well be a child’s hero. Praise them, pray for them and for future’s sake, tell your lawmakers to pay them well.

They are shaping the world to come.