A reader writes:
I didn’t BECOME a teacher until after I taught for two years, left to become a stay-at-home mom, and then returned. I was one of those statistics, leaving the classroom at the beginning of my career.
But the five years I spent, watching my son grow, getting a masters degree, learning and growing myself, propelled me back with a passion to do whatever I could to help students feel confident about their own learning. Now, I’m ready to retire after a 38-year career that spanned grades K-12, from special ed and remedial levels to gifted. Three states, 7 schools, 10 principals. Thousands of students.
I became a teacher because I can’t not learn, and can’t not share what I’ve learned.
I believe our critics who tell us it’s a calling, that we’re there because we love our students (and I do) are ‘keeping us in our place’ and demeaning us with their praise. They don’t understand either concept — being called or loving the people we work with.They do understand if they were forced to acknowledge the fact we’re trained professionals with a skill set others don’t possess, they’d have to pay us what we’re worth.
Maybe the real question is not ‘why did you become a teacher’ but ‘why have you continued to be a teacher?’ That one might decide the fate of our profession as more older teachers like me are leaving, more younger ones leave and don’t return, and fewer young people consider teaching as a profession.
This year, at least three of my former students are teachers in their first year. I hope they’re prepared for the challenges, not only inside their classrooms, but also outside, from forces that don’t respect what we do because they don’t understand what we do.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good point. If teaching were one’s calling, then that would put teachers in the same camp as nuns and priests–nothing against them, mind you. However, they take vows of poverty, and foreswear many of the activities and accoutrements of the secular world. Allowing others, or even ourselves, to reference the desire to teach as a calling is detrimental to the professional status we so badly need and fight every day to uphold.
Yes, we are expected to be nuns and priests, with regard to the poverty/low pay issue.
Forget the fact that we marry and have families, for which we provide housing, food, shelter and health care, in addition to paying taxes (whereby we pay a good part of our salaries).
It is my understanding that priests don’t generally take a vow of poverty, only nuns.
Thank you for making our society a better place by your service. I envy you and admire you. I hope to teach as long as you have.
Does anybody remember the ’80’s? There was something that started in the business world called Site Based Management. It meant those at the level of manufacture were allowed, even pushed, to be a part of the decision making to make a better product. At some factories, if a worker had a suggestion to make the product better, or the process move more smoothly, s/he was rewarded monetarily, some $100/suggestion used. It seemed to make sense that those who actually did the work might possibly know something about how to make improvements on things they did every day, as opposed to someone off-site, sitting in an office.
In the education world, it became known as Building Level Decision Making. Teachers were asked for their input about how to better serve their students. If our workers and our teachers supposedly aren’t reaching the same level of success they used to, does it occur to anyone that perhaps it is how they are treated? If an employer respects his/her employees, how are those workers’ results compared to those who are in constant fear of losing their job?
Just wondering.
I attended a meeting 2 days ago with 7 people to start a Charter School. 2 of the 7 were teachers currently working in a public school.
They are fed up with what is going on in the public schools and until everyone realizes that the problems need to be addressed, I think we will see many more teachers looking for alternatives.
In the Charters, they do not have to follow the nonsense / rules and regs. imposed on the public schools by the govt.
Until you get the govt. off the backs of these schools, I sense you are going to see more of this.
Maybe the “reformers” are strangling the public schools with regulations so they can drive teachers and parents out of them.
Site based management is a method creeping back into the reform movement. In my state they are looking at it in a way to make decisions on where, how and what money should be spent.
Site based management has now turned into building level autonomy, which translated means that each principal decides whom to hire (and, if tenure and seniority end) whom to fire; also, it means that the site has nothing to say about the tests or grades or report cards, on which the school’s future hinges. The central bureaucracy holds all the real power, the power of life and death over the school.