Reflection on Writing

My students have just finished publishing their first writing project while learning the writing process. For many students, this is the first year that they are learning writing as a separate subject. I asked the students to reflect on their work and what they learned about writing and about themselves as writers. Here are some of the responses I got:

I learned that I am a good writer and I like to write now.

I learned that having ideas before writing is so much easier.

I learned that it takes a lot of effort.

I learned that writing isn't just like writing stories but also the way you feel and want to express things your way. I learned that it is possible to write something if I just put my head into it.

I can express my feelings, I can talk about my life that is in the present or in the past, and I can tell other people how I feel by writing.

I learned that I should work harder to come up with way more ideas.

I learned that wriiting is awesome and that it felt good doing a poem. I felt that it's good you get to explain yourself and let it out.

I learned that writing isn't easy, and you need to have a great imagination.

I learned that I might be a writer when I grow up because I love to write and I can't go one day without writing.

What's in a job

I've written a bit about the common and annoying misconceptions about why we become teachers - mainly, that it is a nice thing to do, we get summers off, etc. We've also all heard the saying, "those who can't do, teach," which exacerbates the view that teaching is something that one falls into because nothing else worked out, a career out of necessity but not by choice.

But teaching has to be by choice. Teaching cannot be just another job because it is unlike any other job. Lately, as the school year has started and almost 120 sixth grade students walk through my classroom doors everyday, the question in my mind has been what are the right reasons for teaching. I choose the word "right" deliberately because I do think there are wrong ones. The question to ask is not only Why teach? but Why do I want to teach?

In coming up with the following list, I've tried to stray away from fluffy answers. I'm interested in practical motivations for doing what we do everyday despite the philosophical reasons we might give, such as educating for social justice or to share our love of learning. I want to portray teaching as something we can be passionate about for rational, perhaps even selfish reasons instead of trying to defensively justify what we do in comparison to more respected professions.

1. Teaching is fulfilling work.

Some people don't look for fulfillment in their jobs or have forgotten why they work. What they do from nine to five is just a paycheck, a way to pass the time with friendly coworkers and be, at best, mildly intellectually stimulated. The same holds true with many teachers at my school - those who clock in at 8:30 am and leave by 3, those whose only concern is to get through the day, gossip in the hallways with other teachers, and reuse the same, boring lessons from ten years ago. They have confused teaching with something else, something easy and comfortable and mindless.

Teaching can be, on the other hand, fulfilling - your job can satisfy your intellectual curiosity and demand the best of your talents. Teaching can make you become a better person, can challenge you to think on your feet, can ask that you reconsider and improve your practice year after year. But it's not easy and it's uncomfortable. You put yourself at risk for failures but also huge successes. You are in danger of taking things personally and questioning your motives and investing too much of yourself into your work. That's what makes it worthwhile.

I want to argue that the job as teacher can offer you the satisfaction of achieving professional and personal goals, but also requires constant humility and hard work. No other job requires so much of your better self and the opportunity to directly impact the lives of other individuals. Being a teacher should be considered, to put it in the words of my colleague, a privilege.

2. Effective teaching matters.

We might think that no one cares or sees what we do day in and day out in our classrooms. The publicity we get is mostly negative. Politicians and textbook companies and some teacher preparation programs espouse the view that you can take anyone and make them a good teacher. Give them lesson plans, three months of training, and throw them in the classroom they say.

But there is increasing evidence that who we are matters and how well we can do our job matters. In fact, having effective teachers may be the single most important aspect of school reform. Here is a statistic from a Time magazine article that shows how essential a strong teacher is in the academic life of a student.

“If two average 8-year-olds are assigned to different teachers, one who is strong and one who is weak, the children’s lives can diverge in just a few years, according to research pioneered by Eric Hanushek at Stanford. The child with the effective teacher, the kind who ranks among the top 15% of all teachers, will be scoring well above grade level on standardized tests by the time she is 11. The other child will be a year and a half below grade level – and by then it will take a teacher who works with the child after school and on weekends to undo the compounded damage. In other words, the child will probably never catch up.” (Ripley, Amanda. “Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenge.” Time Magazine. Nov. 26, 2008.)

3. What we teach and how we teach it makes a difference.

I know I'm bordering on cliche, but teaching makes a difference in students' lives and, admittedly a bit intangibly, the world. We should be concerned about the next generation's ability to solve the problems that the nation and the world face, especially since nowadays we are obsessed with test scores and the capacity of our students to bubble in multiple-choice answers.

I recently reread a Harper's magazine opinion piece entitled "Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school" by Mark Slouka. He argues that the current focus on math and science achievement in schools is a reflection of a culture driven by economics. Our world is analyzed in terms of market costs and benefits, and education is a business commodity. The common belief is that schools should produce proficient workers who will grow our economy once again, hence the need for better and more math and science instruction.

The problem as Slouka sees it is that education has to be essentially about the humanities and thus inherently political. He writes:

The humanities, done right, are the crucible within which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their “product” not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their “success” something very much like Frost’s momentary stay against confusion.

They are thus, inescapably, political. Why? Because they complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance. Because out of all this work of self-building might emerge an individual capable of humility in the face of complexity; an individual formed through questioning and therefore unlikely to cede that right; an individual resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery in all their forms. The humanities, in short, are a superb delivery mechanism for what we might call democratic values. There is no better that I am aware of.

I'm not taking his argument as a rant about which subjects are more important to teach. The question is really about being aware of what we are teaching and how we are going about doing it in terms of the kind of democracy we want in the future. As a teacher, you have the power to shape humanity - to nudge children to question, to reflect, to create, to change the circumstances around them - not just to observe or simply understand the world as facts.


This list isn't finished, but it's a start to something I have been thinking about quite a bit lately. It is meant as a reflection on what I think is at the core of an effective teacher and reminds me of why I do my job.

I'm not a brainwasher

I'm angry that in this huge blow-up over President Obama's speech to the nation's students on September 8th, there is little to no mention of the role of teachers. Aren't teachers the people who are going to be making the actual decision to show the speech in their classrooms? The conversation has been degrading to say the least: We can't trust the teachers to discuss the speech in a meaningful way, so we either need to tell our kids to stay home or convince the school administration to make the decision for them.

The controversy has revealed the patronizing, stereotypical view of teachers held by the media and some politicians - that teachers aren't smart enough to make curricular choices in their own classrooms, that teachers are raging liberals, that teachers will take lesson plans from the White House verbatim and plop them down in front of the students for lack of anything better to do.

Even worse, the conservatives' "concern" shows extremely low confidence in our kids' ability to think for themselves or in the value of teaching kids to think for themselves. According to some, it is better for children to be told what to believe by their parents and to shield them from ever having to face challenges or questions to their beliefs. Who is doing the brainwashing here? No matter what we adults, parents or teachers, personally believe - we can make sure that children have the ability to think critically about information they are bombarded with and the positive guidance to make choices about their future plans, much less their political leanings.

As a teacher, I want my students to know what it means to live in a democracy. To become informed and active citizens. To know how to weigh perspectives and form their own opinions. Equating the President's speech to socialist indoctrination is antithetical to democracy and exposes the lack of trust in teachers and schools to educate our children. Actually, it should make us think once again about the purpose of education and how much better our democracy could be with citizens who know how to listen to one another.

Because it's nice

In an op/ed piece by a former teacher in the D.C. area, one of the reasons she gives for leaving the profession is the public's view that teaching is, to put it simply, a nice thing to do. She writes, "Teaching is an admirable and, well, necessary profession, they say, but it's not for the ambitious." The young, go-getter types of our generation are ambitious and crave the "social recognition" for the hard work we do. But the treatment of teachers as bleeding-hearts instead of driven activists, she claims, leads to burn-out and high turnover.

Although I don't think this is a justification for leaving the field of teaching, she does bring up an important misunderstanding about why we teach. There are two connotations of "nice" used to describe teaching. On one hand, people might be making a reference to our character - being a teacher reflects what a kind and caring person we are. There is a range of ideas in play here, from our love of children to how teaching is, according to my aunt, a job particularly fitting for a woman (and all that implies).

While it may be a valuable characteristic of a teacher, niceness is a separate issue from effectiveness in the classroom. Being "nice" has little to do with the necessary experience and training, authority, creativity, reflectiveness or ability to improve one's own teaching. Ironically, both students and their parents say they want a teacher who is nice in this sense. I think we can be personable of course, but we need to shed light on all the other, more intellectual aspects of teaching just as the public needs to demand more of their teachers. I look forward to the day when a child can list more specifically the qualities she wants in a teacher: someone who has high expectations, will challenge her, supports her strengths and areas of improvement, makes learning relevant and exciting, and works hard.

The other connotation which I feel is the more controversial issue here has to do with ethics. When someone says teaching is the nice thing to do, they also mean it's morally upstanding work in less than ideal circumstances, especially in the inner-city. People envision Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers. The problem is that it implies teaching is inherently "gritty," that the ability to overcome the little professional support, crumbling schools, and safety issues and still, heroically succeed is what defines good urban teaching.

Yes, teaching is ethical work, and many of us go into the profession because of the belief in equal, public education and social justice. But we don't like to be seen as martyrs. Give us your trust and support, elevate our profession to one based, like others, on skill, talent, experience, and motivation. I'm tired of being nice.

A Reason for Teaching

A professor of mine once told a story of how he accompanied his wife to a formal dinner party one night. Surrounded by lawyers, doctors, and other young professionals who complained bitterly of the long work hours but obviously loved the challenge of their jobs, my professor stood waiting for the inevitable question - So, what do you do? The group paused their conversation and turned eagerly towards him. I teach third grade, he said. People nodded, patted him on the back in sympathy or in a show of support, and looked down into their drinks awkwardly.

When I'm in similar situations, I get two types of responses. Oh, it must be so difficult! Why do you do it? is one. The second response is one I despise: Well, at least you get your summers off! I have never been able to come up with an articulate comeback for either comment. Maybe because it's impossible to be concise.

So the question is, what do we teachers do exactly? And why? The motivation for going into most other professions seems pretty clear cut. To help people who are sick, we assume, or to ensure justice, or for the money, to put it bluntly. To create a product, to be involved in politics and change, to be someone important in the business...But teaching? The reasons are vague and border on becoming excuses for not doing something more glamorous.

It seems to me that if the nation is going to learn once again to trust its educators, then we can start by being able to explain to the public why we teach. And if we are going to raise the quality of teachers and the preparation they receive, then we should have strict guidelines for who becomes a teacher in the first place. In other words, if you are responsible for a year of learning in the life of the thirty or so children in your classroom, then you better have a damn good reason for going to work everyday.

By the way, to finish my recollection of the story, my professor smiled at the party guests and continued - I teach my students how to read and write and how to think about a problem. I teach them what it means to be a good person, to love learning, and to reach for their dreams. That's why I do it.

And later, he would write, "We have to refocus on teaching as intellectual and ethical work, something beyond the instrumental and the linear. We need to understand that teaching requires thoughtful, caring people to carry it forward successfully, and we need, then, to commit to becoming more caring and more thoughtful as we grow into our work."