Reflections on teaching

“Why in the world the world did I choose to be a teacher?” I ask myself that sometimes, more often lately it seems, and it’s not because I’m reveling in the joy of my profession. I’m frustrated. I’m overwhelmed. I’m tired. And sometimes, I think I’m giving up a little.

Teaching in today’s schools with today’s apathetic students is wearing me out. I feel like Sisyphus, constantly working and never getting anywhere. This year, I find myself protecting me sometimes. It’s purely about survival. Why? Because regardless of how hard I work or how much time I spend on preparing for class, the reception is the same. I realized that I could kill myself with work or I could let it go. So I did. I feel better about my workload, but the part of me that cares about doing a good job hears the nagging voice saying, “They don’t know anything because you’re not teaching them.” The rational part of my brain tells me that I’m giving them everything they need, but they’re not taking advantage of it. I was trained in college to motivate students though, to instill in them an overwhelming desire to learn such that they don’t think about doing anything else other than their work and learning for the pure joy of learning. I see that desire in my kindergartener but all vestiges of that joy of learning have been leached out of the souls of my students by the time they darken my door. They’ve lost their love of knowledge and find only minimal motivation in grades. Everything is a system of punishments that we inflict on the students and ourselves as teachers. It’s a vicious cycle that we’ve gotten into and we seem incapable of getting out.

I often put my children somewhere or give them an “alone” task when they seem a little out of control. Sometimes, not always, it works. When it does, it’s like a reset button has been pressed on their consciousness. I know what their reset looks like and I rejoice in it when it works. School needs a reset but I’m not sure what that would look like. How far back would we need to go to get to a better place, a place where we can start over? How do we change the mindset of millions or even the few thousand locally? How do we get everyone to agree, to decide on a common path and forget the old bitter habits we’ve all developed, students, parents, and teachers alike?

I’ve read in many places how teaching and the orderly progression through the grades and years punctuated by breaks allows teachers and students to start over periodically. That’s not completely true though. All of us carry the vestiges of the years with us. They accumulate over time until we are mired in a muck of our own making, incapable of breaking free, letting go, and resetting ourselves. We’re doomed to repeat our mistakes in the endless cycle of school, constantly spiraling downward. This is the reason kindergarteners love school and teenagers dislike it. This is the real reason for teacher burnout. It’s not in our heads. It’s the pressures, the students, the lack of support, etc. that have turned us against the love we had.

Having taught for over ten years, I’m also a firm believer that students really are getting worse. My oldest daughter made an observation about all teenagers based on watching my oldest niece. She said, “All teenagers ever do is play with their phones.” I couldn’t agree more. The no phones out fight is one I have chosen to stop fighting. How can I compete with the iPods and other distractions available to my students? I can’t. I don’t know how. Honestly, I don’t think it’s possible. I’m not sure whether bringing more technology into the classroom is improving or exacerbating the situation. On one hand, the technology can be used to make lessons more engaging (in theory) and student-friendly. On the other hand, not every lesson lends itself to integrating technology and requires more actual effort on the part of the students. The non-technology lessons and technology lessons alike are all greeted with the same apathy after a while. It’s disheartening.

Is the effort worth it on the part of the teacher when the majority of students show no interest or appreciation? One thing I’ve observed about students is this—the students who want to learn will learn regardless of the efforts of the teacher while the students who don’t seem to care won’t care whatever happens. To protect myself, I’ve started putting a little less of myself in my lessons for the particularly apathetic and annoying classes with bad manners and potty mouths. It’s a matter of self-preservation on my part. I find that I’m less upset when things go badly if I haven’t labored over the preparation. That’s not to say I don’t present the correct information to my students or that I don’t make them do anything. I give them the work they need to do to learn but as the years pass, fewer and fewer seem to want to take advantage of what I offer. It makes me sad. It makes me feel beaten down. It makes me ask myself, “Why in the world the world did I choose to be a teacher?”