Being a Teacher

I have alot of fond memories of my years growing up in Pennsylvania. While Mom and Dad expected the kids to do their share of chores around the house, they also were more than ok with me spending the rest of my free days playing with friends all around the neighborhood.

I remember lots of tennis ball baseball through the summer, pickup football games in our big field, and expeditions into the mountains that began not far from home. When I think today about how many kids do so little playing around the neighborhood, when I begin to wonder why so many of our kids are so much more house-bound than I was when growing up, the normal culprits come to mind. There are the video games, the internet, cell phones, and of course the fear that so many parents have of unsavory characters who might want to bring harm to their kids.

But I think there's another big difference these days that is just as responsible for our kids keeping closer to home. And I think this difference has a huge impact in another place - the school.

When I was a kid growing up, I learned very quickly that if I managed to get in to some mischief in the neighborhood, my parents would be receiving a call from any other adult in the area who discovered the mischief. And when that happened, I could be sure that my parents would bring me to task for it. Mom and Dad would not have questioned the neighbor who called. Mom and Dad would not have accused the neighbor of falsely accusing me or in any other way suggested that the neighbor was out of line for suggesting that I had done wrong. I would have been called on my behavior as reported by the neighbor and punished appropriately for what I had done.

Period. End of story.

A similar dynamic was carried out in terms of the relationship between my parents and my teachers and administrators at school. All it took was a call or a note home that indicated something I had done wrong, and my parents would almost immediately take corrective action. I'm not suggesting that my parents were not interested in my side of the story - they certainly were willing to listen. But if what I had to say did not directly refute what my teacher or principal had reported, there would be consequences. My parents were not interested in excuses on my part, and my parents had absolutely no interest in buying in to a suggestion on my part that a particular teacher or principal was somehow unreasonable or biased against me.

Let me tell you today it is a rare parent indeed who places such trust in their childs teacher or principal.

Now I know, the media is full of horror stories of bad teachers who have done dispicable things. These stories, which are brought to our attention so much more often and easily in today's technological age, have made many parents automatically skeptical and mistrusting of educators in general. Today it is far more likely that a parent will expect a teacher or principal to explain his/herself than that they would expect their child to explain his/herself.

I have had parents come to my school irate and boiling with vitriol towards me because I dared to call their child on their unacceptable behavior in school. I have had parents get mad at me because their son or daughter was not completing their assignments and as a result were failing or near failing. I have heard many times of parents who would find that their child had been skipping school or reporting tardy frequently, and then would proceed to write or come up with sick excuses rather than have their child suffer the consequences for their choices.

For nearly 7 years I taught beside a very experienced and extremely hard working and capable teacher who feared actually giving a student an F, solely because earlier in her career she had been pressured by administrators (who had been pressured by parents) because of holding students accountable for poor academic performance in class.

There are still parents out there who approach the educational process the way my parents did, please don't misunderstand me. More and more as time passes, it becomes easier and easier to tell who those parents are, because their kids are the kids who excel at school. They are the kids that you do not have trouble with, who regularly attend school, who do their assignments and turn them in on time, and who treat the adults they work with on a daily basis as professionals worthy of respect.

Ah, respect, the magic word. How many times have I been told by a parent that respect is something that must be earned, and not something that is automatically given? Too many times to count. And yet, it was not always this way. When I was a student, teachers WERE automatically given respect, not just by students, but by parents as well. I was raised being taught that your elders were automatically to be respected and treated with such. I fear that today, this is rarely the case.

Education is best when it is a partnership. And that partnership is one between teacher, student, AND parent. It is a partnership where each should be able to expect that the other will be respected and treated with propriety and dignity. It is a partnership where the adults involved must be working in tandem to ensure that the youth involved are learning ALL the lessons they have to learn through those growing years - lessons both academic and of life.