OPINION

Published Monday, December 15, 2003
Let the Teachers Pee
By Abbie Groff
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

She started the day by walking in the back door of the school two minutes after the first bell. She greeted her students with a “shut up” or a morning swat with the yardsticks-taped-together (as it had a further reach, and at her age, she needed all the advantage she could to land a blow on her spry little thirteen-year-olds). Walking by her classroom made me cringe, as the students ran wild and she dozed behind her desk in her special leather office chair she had purchased with her classroom resources money (a small sum given annually to every classroom teacher from the state education budget) several years back. She was retiring at the end of the year. She was a bad teacher.

Yet there was something about her that I couldn’t comprehend, that just didn’t fit my definition of a bad teacher. Her kids loved her. And what was even more confusing to me is that she loved them. She gave them hugs all day long, and in private conversations would defend even her biggest troublemakers as good kids, good students. To top it all off, the parent with whom I had the most difficulty communicating would head down to her classroom after yelling at me to just sit down for a friendly chat. Yes, these things confused me, so I reconciled them in my head the best way I knew how – I dismissed them. After all, I was a good teacher, and she was a bad teacher because clearly her classroom did not operate as well as mine. She should have left the job long ago, but was just sticking around until retirement, much to the detriment of her students and the school, or so I firmly believed in my own self-righteous mind.

I must be crazy right now to even be considering returning to the classroom – especially a classroom in the school that drove me to vow after only three years that I would not be a classroom teacher ever again. I’m starting to view my year here, however, as a sabbatical – a really expensive sabbatical, but a sabbatical nonetheless. The most valuable piece of reflection has come of my experience helping and observing in a Boston elementary school similar in many ways to the one I left in Mississippi. It’s telling to be able to see my previous situation reflected back to me and to digest it in a much more objective manner. One thing in particular that I have observed (and that I’m somewhat kicking myself for not seeing and believing sooner) is that the good teacher, bad teacher dichotomy is a false one.

I was trying to communicate this revelation to a friend outside of the school of education recently and was met with the standard response of those who have not taught: “Those who can’t do, teach. Why not go into teaching? After all, you get school breaks and summers off, and you don’t have to be any good. Those teachers’ unions will protect you.” This is the common perception. I’ve heard it countless times and disputed it just as many, for to be a good teacher, one works eighty hour weeks during the school year planning, preparing, assessing, teaching, and any other myriad of responsibilities within the school yet outside of the classroom. Summers are dedicated to professional development, college classes, preparing for next year, or working a second job to supplement a teacher’s salary. As for teachers’ unions, none existed where I taught. I got to deal with angry parents, inappropriate administrators, and extended work demands on my own. I ate lunch with my kids, took them to recess, and on the frequent occasion that the Specials teachers didn’t show up for work, went without any prep time. I didn’t drink anything between the hours of 8 p.m. the night before school and 3:30 p.m. the next day because I had no time for my own bathroom break. My situation is not unique – such conditions are common to low-performing schools, the tragedy being that the teaching environment ultimately affects the students, who need good teachers twice as much as their counterparts in high-achieving schools.

Such a schedule burns one out very quickly. The lack of support in the classroom, the disparaging perception of the general public of the demands of the profession, the constant stream of new initiatives and paperwork and guidelines compound each other until a teacher is faced with a choice – find a new job or continue teaching without giving everything to it, for that may just lead to insanity. I cannot and will not ever believe that many – if any – teachers enter the profession to be a bad teacher. A doctor does not become a doctor to overlook her patients’ needs or make them more ill than when they came to her. Yet what would happen if a doctor had no nurses or assistants to help address their patients’ individual needs, to keep track of patient files, to assist in procedures, and to double-check and provide feedback on the doctor’s decisions? What if a doctor couldn’t use the bathroom between the hours of 7 a.m. and 3 p.m., had no time during the day to review patient files, and then got paid $23,000 a year? Would that doctor want to continue in the profession? The patients would never get the care they deserved because there would be no support in place to enable the doctor to provide it, no matter how hard she were to work to achieve it.

Thus, the issue of good teachers and bad teachers is one that must be addressed, but not in the manner in which the dialogue currently exists. It is not an us/them issue – it is an Us issue. Instead of continuing to skewer teachers who are failing to provide their students with the education they need and deserve, we must examine what brought these teachers to the point of ineffectiveness and how we can change schools to reverse such a process. The teacher at my school with the leather chair and penchant for naps during the day was a good teacher once. Yet the force that drove me from the school to my expensive sabbatical this year caused her to become dispassionate and disconnected from her mission in the classroom. High-quality environments and working conditions foster the growth of high-quality teachers. Excellent teachers provide an environment for student success. Student success, as the ultimate goal of education reform will not be realized until teachers are free to pee when the urge strikes. Before we can accomplish the feat of leaving no child behind, we must first ensure that we leave no teacher dehydrated.

Abbie Groff is a masters candidate in the International Education Policy program.