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Seven years ago I was a high school teacher. I lived and
breathed for my students. I worked 65 hours a week and was named
to "Who's Who Among America's Teachers" twice in six years. I
had many friends who were good teachers, too. We were all young,
in our mid-to-late 20s, and we loved our jobs and gave it
everything we had.
And it worked.
You'd never hear us complaining about "lazy" or "unmotivated"
students -- our students worked hard, learned well, and did
everything we could have asked of them. They repaid us with
gratitude, with compliments, with loyalty. Now we're all gone --
none of us teaches anymore. What happened?
I'm not a teacher anymore because I wanted to spend time in the
evenings and on weekends with my children, instead of doing
clerical work like entering grades and marking homework.
I'm not a teacher anymore because it didn't make sense to work
65 hours a week for $28,000 a year when I saw friends with the
same amount of education working less hours for two or three
times as much money; because rushing to before-school yard duty,
lunch duty, teaching five classes and then attending a faculty
or department meeting made me feel as if I worked in a white
collar sweatshop; because I spent so much time doing paperwork,
yard duty, and other things that were unrelated to teaching;
because I never had a moment of free time between September and
June and never had a dollar in my pocket in July and August;
because I spent years and thousands of dollars going to
state-required, nighttime teacher-education classes that usually
taught little but consumed valuable time.
You'll notice that I'm not citing the students as a problem, and
I never would because they were rarely the problem.
Administrators, occasionally; parents, occasionally; but rarely
the students--they were my greatest joy.
The cost of the departure of my associates and I from teaching
is sizable -- 150 students a year over 35 years times 10
teachers -- that's more than 50,000 students negatively
impacted. How many millions more are hurt by similar departures
in schools all across the country?
In War and Peace the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy
wrote that the success of an army depends not upon its generals
or its weapons but instead upon the will and strength of the
individual soldier in the field. I believe it is the same with
education -- success or failure depends above all upon the
strength of the individual teacher in the classroom.
I've seen many good teachers at bad schools succeed, but I've
never seen a bad teacher at a good school succeed. An effective
school or school district leadership does one thing above all:
It keeps good teachers in the classroom. Our schools are like an
army whose best soldiers, year after year, are deserting. I have
three solutions:
Give teachers secretaries or teacher assistants. College
professors have teacher assistants. A lawyer, a doctor, or an
accountant has a secretary. If I've graded 150 assignments, why
can't somebody else enter them into the grade book and add up
the grades? If they're simple assignments, why can't someone
else grade them? Why can't somebody help me make copies or do
basic research?
Reduce the workload. Most schools have six or seven periods and
the teachers teach five or six classes. Any teacher would be far
more effective teaching three or four classes, instead of five
or six. There is no educational or academic reason why teachers
should teach five or six classes -- it's simply a matter of
money.
Keep "preps" -- the number of different classes we must prepare
for -- to a minimum.
Just as my departure hurt other parents' children, the problem
has now come back around to hurt my children. My little boy has
had problems in school, in large part because he is a little
boy. Until recently he had a wonderful teacher who was patient
with him, worked hard, and related well to the kids.
Unfortunately for us, she got pregnant and just had a baby. She
says she'll be back and maybe she will be, but she'll never be
the same. She'll never work 65 hours a week again because she'll
want to spend time with her own child. As her child grows older
and she has more children, she'll either leave teaching or not
work as hard and do a mediocre job. Either way, she's probably
finished as a top-drawer teacher. My son and countless others
like him will suffer for it.
This column first appeared in the
Los Angeles
Daily News
(5/27/01).
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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