Teachers Fight Back

I’ve been reading the book, “Class Warfare, Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools”.  I think that I’m supposed to draw the following conclusions: 1. Most inner city teachers are either incompetent, lazy, jaded, or a combination of all three. 2. Teacher unions are evil organizations whose main job is to protect incompetent teachers and maintain the status quo no matter how much it hurts the students. 3. Teachers routinely give up on inner city students and are holding back their progress. 4. All poverty-stricken inner city kids could be Harvard law school graduates if they just would have had an inspiring teacher. 5.  The Democratic party has been in a giant conspiracy with teacher unions for years and has thwarted every attempt at school reform. 6.  We need young, single, energetic, brilliant, teachers who are willing to do “whatever it takes” to make sure the students of our impoverished areas succeed no matter what the obstacles.

The book has interesting stories of several brilliant Teach for America teachers who at first failed as teachers in their first few years, but by being relentless, creative, and completely unselfish with their time, they turned into the greatest teachers imaginable and all their students became Rhodes scholars, or so it would seem. Here is an interesting passage about one of the teachers,– “Levin’s success was the result, it turns out, not only of his determination to connect with his kids, even if he had to visit them and their parents at home each night,—-”.

The narratives describe how these brilliant young teachers did “whatever it took” to ensure the success of their students. I have written about this very concept before by mentioning that every inner city teacher needs to be a Jaime Escalante.

Here is a shocking admission from me; I never did “whatever it took” to ensure the success of my students.  No, I had a second job to go to when I taught.  I had a family of my own to take care of. I had responsibility for my parents and other relatives that needed caring for. I had many after school extracurricular activities to take care of.  I never visited the homes of my students, their parents, or anyone else.  I never spent endless hours tutoring my students after school or on weekends. I only planned all my lessons well, tried to be creative, engaged my students, was enthusiastic, and was diligent about home reports. I was just an average teacher who put in an average amount of time and I could have done way more to do, “whatever it takes”.

I think this book is excellent at defining what the “whatever it takes teacher” needs to be like. That teacher needs to be  unmarried and preferably not in any relationship that takes up time.  They need to put their students first above all else, even their family. They need to be under thirty and be indefatigable when it comes to the work at school. They need to use their “free time” to continue to address the needs of their students. They need to be incredibly creative and come up with ideas that will allow them to engage even the most incorrigible students.

The “whatever it takes” teacher needs to be like many  small business owners. Most small business owners put in endless hours of work, and their work is often their life.  Their work is what brings them joy and satisfaction. Everything else in their life is secondary to their work.

I had “whatever it takes” teachers while I was in elementary school. There were fifty-five  kids in my eighth grade class and the “whatever it takes” teacher made sure almost all of us were successful. That “whatever it takes” teacher was unmarried, seemingly had no relatives, spent most waking hours working on school related work, never took a lunch break, belonged to no union, rarely if ever even went to the washroom, supervised our recess, never had a break, was never sick or ever missed a single day, saw all our parents on a regular basis and could have whipped any inner city school class into shape in no time. Yes, she was a nun. That is exactly the type of vocational person we need in our inner city schools.

There really is only one question to ask any prospective inner city teacher. Are you willing to do “whatever it takes” to make sure your students succeed?  If you can’t agree to that, then please don’t apply to these schools, because you are just going to turn out to be one of those incompetent teachers who has a life outside of the classroom. We don’t need average teachers in our inner city schools, we need people willing to make their job a vocation. There’s a world of difference between a job and a vocation. Just ask Sister Celeste, she’d be happy to tell you what a vocation is all about. She’s ninety-four years old and still going strong in the convent retirement home if you want to talk to her. In fact, she might not be able to handle a class of fifty-five today, but she could probably give a class of twenty a run for their money!