Mat Armaral, Teach 4 Real - The most annoying aspect of teaching, to me, is the continual assumption, by almost everyone I come into contact with in and out of the world of education, that I’m not doing my job. It is a weird place to be. It is like I walk around with this dark shroud around my shoulders that hides from everyone the fact that what I do in my classroom just might be working. It is an assumption of worst intentions—not best.
This troubling undercurrent is also perpetuated by our own colleagues. Teachers are very, very skeptical of other teachers. If they are popular, they are thought to be too easy, or too close to the kids; if they are rigorous there is a sense that they have all the good kids, or that an AP schedule is much easier to teach; If you teach sheltered, low-performing students, you are looked at as a low-performing teacher (especially by testing standards) because your kids don’t perform well on anything. Teaching is a damned-if-you-show-up profession....
There are so many odd things about being a teacher, but this is perhaps the most important because teaching as a profession suffers from a PR problem. Education is looked upon by the American public as being a failure. People have it in their heads that things couldn’t get any worse when in fact things might actually be better than they’ve ever been. That is what Diane Ravitch’s last book was about: We’re actually doing a better job of educating everyone than at any point in human history...
The Washington Post reported this week that black, Hispanic, and American Indian students have been graduating at increased rates over the last three years. Their Wonkblog also shows that while graduation rates as a whole are also going up, it is especially pronounced amongst those groups. What that means is that the Achievement Gap, that ever-elusive Achilles Heel of education, is actually closing a little bit. Ed Week also reported that this is also true of “disadvantaged groups”, which means low-income and ELL students are increasing their graduation rates faster than the overall population—another positive sign that is very, very new.
We have to remember that things were worse in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In the ‘90s black people were being shot by police for no reason, but nobody was talking about it but black people. In the ‘90s we didn’t even know what an Achievement Gap was, did we? There certainly wasn’t the focus on our disadvantaged minority students like we see today. Today we are making real progress in that regard.
That brings me back to teachers. I go to many professional development seminars, and every seminar has a tone that feels like each presenter is saying this: “Clearly what you are doing isn’t working, here are things you need to do so that one day perhaps your students will be getting a proper education.” Keep in mind this is usually being delivered by someone who isn’t a teacher, or was once upon a time. You always get the feeling they are telling you that one day you’ll do your job the right way, but it’s obvious, because you’re a teacher, that is not going on right now...
Good doctors and lawyers know they are good. It is verified by the people they work with and the people they represent. Can’t teachers also admit they are good at what they do? Let me back up by saying that I am in no way under the assumption I am the savior of education. I can name a dozen teachers without even thinking who are much better teachers than I am. Can you admit that too? I think we all should be able to say that no matter what job we do. I’m not claiming to be the best, but I am claiming that I’m damn good at what I do and almost all of my students would agree.
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