A Surprising Reason I Love Teaching

Teachers are often asked why they teach, especially considering the comparatively low pay and lack of respect. And most have some answer about loving children and how rewarding it is to help others. Which is all true.



But one of the reasons that I love teaching, especially at my school, hadn't occurred to me until I read Daniel Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth Behind What Motivates Us.

(Well, I say "read" but really I checked the audio book out from the library and listened to it on my commute to and from school. The library and audio books are two of my favorite things in life!)

The book wasn't amazing. It was very much meant to be persuasive, not painting a balanced picture. And Pink does this thing in all of his books where he "coins" new terms that do not need to be coined because there is already a word for it. But it did make me realize why I love teaching: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Those are things that when I decided to go into education, I didn't think of at all. I just knew I liked the teaching experiences I had already had teaching swim lessons and tutoring. But they make a huge difference to me in the enjoyment of my job.

Pink's argument is that those three things--autonomy, mastery, and purpose--motivate people. He pitches those ideas for the business world and advice to managers. And presents some pretty compelling evidence.

In my teaching job, I get plenty of autonomy. I am the only one who teaches my classes, so I don't have to coordinate with other teachers in my department. I can go at the pace my students need and give them extra practice when and where they need it. I don't have a supervisor making me do things his or her way. I don't have to turn in yearly lesson plans and stick to them. At my school, I feel that I am viewed as a professional and expert at what I do. And I get to make professional and expert decisions and judgments in order to best accomplish my objectives.

Speaking of objectives, I feel I have a purpose in my job. I get to set up goals within the framework of the Common Core curriculum, figure out how to assess them, and the best methods to teach them.

And as far as mastery, I get feedback on my performance. Yes, of course my principal comes in to evaluate me, but the meaningful feedback is in how my students perform on my well-designed assessments. And their attitudes toward me, my class, and their education.The one drawback is that there are so many demands and responsibilities that you can't start to achieve mastery of anything until you've been teaching a few years. That's one of the reasons I advocated in a previous post for fewer preps and more planning time for new teachers--so they can start to master a few things early in their careers in order to stay motivated.

Preparing New Teachers for the Negatives

I know you are sensing a theme in my posts of advice for new teachers. I think that's on my mind because right now I have a (pretty amazing) pre-service teacher in my classes with me. It has me thinking about things I wish I knew before I started teaching. Today will be the final installment along those lines. I've got some other topics to cover in upcoming posts.

College can be tough, but future teachers should be prepared for some of the things that will make their commitment waver, no matter how much they love teaching.

1. Public Opinion: It's tough to hear people talk about how easy teaching is while you are working 50+ hours a week and spending your evenings, weekends, and summers planning, grading, and taking classes. It hurts when you've got $50,000 in student loan debt and you've earned a Master's degree and people still think they could step in today and do your job. And it's difficult when people assert that because they pay taxes, they are your boss and should be able to tell you how to do your job.
2. Administration: Your administration (and colleagues) can make or break your teaching experience. Some schools encourage innovation, plan meaningful professional development, and support teachers as a top priority... and some schools require scripted curricula and superfluous standardized testing, demand daily lesson plans, and enforce no discipline. 
3. Parents: Even at the high school level, you can run into problems with parents. Anyone can procreate--even drug addicts, con artists, and people with varying degrees of mental illness. Before I began teaching, most of my relationships had been with generally positive contributors to society. They were all in college with me or working at a job with me. But when teaching, your students will have all kinds of parents: from "helicopter parents" whose child can do no wrong to drug-addicted felons who are allowed custody off-and-on. You don't always get to deal with logical, rational people.
4. Lack of Resources: ALL schools lack resources compared to a private business. Some more than others. If you teach in a school in a high poverty area, students won't bring their own paper and pencils. And most schools don't supply basics like that. So if you want your students to be able to write, you will be buying those yourself. Some schools have projectors and Smartboards; some have only chalkboards and don't supply chalk. But you'll never teach in a school that has all of the resources you need to teach your best.
5. Overcrowded Classes: Along the lines of lack of resources, you will also have more students than would be ideal to teach effectively. Students can benefit greatly from small group and one-on-one attention, but that is rarely possible. Sometimes you may not even have enough desks for all of the students, even in "wealthy" districts. And if your administration doesn't enforce basic discipline, you might be spending the majority of your time managing behavior instead of teaching.

What I Wish I Had Learned in College

Teacher preparation programs need to prepare students for all aspects of the teaching profession, not just the teaching part. Below are some things I wish I had learned more about during my undergraduate years.

1. Communicating with Parents: You can love working with kids but teachers spend a lot of time communicating with adults, too. Teachers-to-be need to learn how to deal with conflicts with parents.
2. Being Professional: Sure, all of my professors told me to "be professional" but I think teachers-to-be need to be explicitly taught what that means.
3. Politics: I wish I had known how much politics was involved in teaching! Not only normal "office politics" but also government politics, union politics, and campaigning for school levies.
4. Special Education: General education teachers absolutely should have a least one class that teaches about the special education world, in particular how laws and IEPs pertain to them. ALL general education teachers have students with IEPs in their classes and districts can get into big trouble if their teachers don't follow the letter of the law regarding special education.
5. Reading and Writing: This is a topic for multiple blog entries, but the short version is that English teachers are trained in literature and composition, not teaching reading. ALL teachers need to be taught how to teach reading and writing within their content area.

Finally, no college course is more valuable than time in the classroom with teachers and students. I learned more during my student teaching and first year of teaching than I learned in four years of college. 

It is especially helpful to spend a significant amount of time with several teachers and types of schools and classrooms. Teaching can be wildly different depending on the school. Pre-service teachers need to see some ideal schools and some schools that might scare them away from teaching. 

Ways to Support New Teachers

After my first year of teaching, I was ready to quit. I literally went on several interviews for non-teaching jobs and actually accepted one initially before deciding to give teaching another year. And most of us have heard the ubiquitous statistics that roughly a third of teachers leave the profession within the first three years and almost half leave within five.

I'm now very happy and successful teaching. I'm sure my colleagues would agree that I'm an asset to the teaching profession. So what can schools do to make sure they don't scare good teachers away?

According to NEA's article "Why They Leave," the main reasons teachers leave are government mandates, lack of support from parents and administrators, lack of respect for their profession from the community, and lack of influence in decisions that affect education.

In addition, funding is always a problem. Many teachers don't have the resources at their schools to do their jobs properly. At a recent staff meeting, we watched a video about the perfectionism that Apple encourages in their employees, but teachers often have to go for "good enough" due to lack of resources, support, and time. It's frustrating to always be scrambling to keep up and juggling multiple responsibilities and never really perfecting anything.

But some things can be done locally. So if schools can make it work, following is my list of suggestions to help schools retain good teachers. Obviously, these would be great for all teachers, but when resources are short, we can at least make them a priority for new teachers.

1. Smaller Classes: New teachers should have reasonable class sizes, even if it means distributing a few extra students to veteran teachers. Veteran teachers should not get the best classes, best resources, and top priority just because they have seniority. They should unselfishly support the newbies.
2. Fewer Preps: In secondary schools, new teachers should only be teaching one or two different classes if at all possible, so they can work to perfect some things that first year.
3. Useful Duties: Why have new teachers spend an entire period supervising lunch? If the school can make it work, allow new teachers to observe other teachers and read and reflect on professional texts as their duty.
4. Safe Environment: Create an environment in which new teachers feel safe asking for advice. Everyone knows you won't be really good at teaching your first year, so let new teachers know they don't have to feel like a failure if they aren't perfect. Encourage them to reflect, evaluate themselves, and ask for help.
5. More Accountability: If there is adequate support in the first four areas on this list, then hold those new teachers accountable. Pop in for unscheduled, informal observations and give constructive feedback. Give them deadlines for when they should have those essays graded and returned. And if they have to turn in any lesson plans, reflections, curriculum maps, etc., have someone actually review them and give feedback.