Why do people choose to teach when they know they won’t get rich? Why do people choose to teach when they know that the working conditions are tough?
Steven Singer answers these questions and more. He loves teaching! There is nothing else he would rather do.
”My feet hurt, my temples throb from making a hundred tiny decisions every 40 minutes, my body feels like it’s already been through a war… But there is no place in the world I would rather be.
“Look what I’ve already accomplished today!
“I took about 50 anxious human beings and made them feel like it was going to be okay.
“I made 50 faces smile, sigh and relax…
”And in return I heard: “This is the best class!” “Mr. Singer is my favorite teacher!” “I don’t like to read or write but I’m really looking forward to doing your homework!”
How can you hear such things and not come away energized and new? How can you see such things and not feel a warm glow in your heart?…
“I go through my Individual Education Plans and see a catalogue of hurt and trauma. Babies, they’re just babies, and they’ve gone through more than I have in my whole life. And I’m more than three times their age!
How can I not come to school every day and give my very best?
“A public school is more than a building to me. It’s a temple to humanity. It’s where we go to offer ourselves to other people.
“Every action, every thought spent on these children is holy. The tiniest gesture is magnified through infinite time and space. When I help a child gain confidence in her reading, I help not just her. I help everyone she will ever come into contact with –her co-workers, her friends, family, even her own children if she someday has some.
“It’s humbling. Amazing. Staggering.
“Where else can you see the accumulated hurt of the world and actually make a dent in it? Where else can you reach out not just to a cause or an idea but to a living person?
“I’m lucky. I am so lucky. My circumstances allowed me to do whatever I wanted with my life.
“I could have become a doctor or a lawyer. I could have gone into business and made a whole mess of money. But I never wanted any of that. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help people…
“This is what I was meant to do. It’s the only thing I ever could and still respect myself.
“Some folks will tell you teaching is about numbers and data. Increase these test scores. Cut costs by this much. Boost profits, escalate the graph, maximize effectiveness.
“These people are fools.
“Teaching has nothing to do with any of that. It’s about the children. Being there for them. Being an active part of eternity.
“Thankful eyes, delighted smiles, joyous laughter. Ameliorating hurt. Igniting a tiny candle whose light will grow to encompass sights I will never see.
“That’s why I teach.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Non-educators can not understand the joy teaching brings. When the alarm goes off at 5:30 am I don’t always want to get out of bed ( especially in the dark winter months), but once I remind myself that when I get to school I will be happy I’m there. It works every time.
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Yep, that’s the reward, and it’s worth more than all the gold in the world.
However, is it even possible to educate, anymore? Now, ‘teachers’ are media manipulators and required to ‘stuff in’ rather than ‘educate’. Gosh, I’m glad I taught in a time when I had more of a chance to form human bonds with my students. Even in my time, I drifted from public education into private because of the mounting restrictions imposed in the public classroom from ‘above’ (or below?). I returned to a public classroom in my final year (much better pay because they were desperate to fill a physics position) and was appalled by the focus on standardized tests, the poor understand of the statistical meaninglessness of those tests and the intense (and harmful) culture of competition among teachers that had been promoted by the administration. I was disgusted.
At the end of the rather lucrative year (in teacher terms), I took my money and ran. This was over 30 years ago. The destruction of education has been a slow and steady process, and it signals a ‘Brave New World’ of diminished human interaction and (as a result) diminished human satisfaction.
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schools ever more a modern-day place where the “gig” economy gives no recognition to, nor holds any respect for, any skill/situation which cannot be measured by a Big Tech algorithm
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It must be very maddening to people like Bill Gates that no matter how hard they try and no matter how much money and how many economists and computer scientists [sic] they throw at the problem, they can’t come up with any algorithm to gauge teachers and schools that is not demonstrably junk.
They keep trying, of course (eg with VAM and SGP) but REAL scientists keep showing that their algorithms are basically random number generators.
This highlights the difference between real science and economic science[sic] or computer science [sic].
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Well put.
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“However, is it even possible to educate, anymore? Now, ‘teachers’ are media manipulators and required to ‘stuff in’ rather than ‘educate’.Gosh, I’m glad I taught in a time when I had more of a chance to form human bonds with my students.”
I think it is still possible to educate and even form bonds with students. It may be different now than it was over 30 years ago. I have observed classrooms and I noticed that the teachers still had a bond with their students. Times are changing but it’s not impossible to still educate their students instead of ‘stuffing in’ knowledge. Standardized testing is a big part of the school system now but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to bond and educate. It does depend on the school though. The schools that I observed and that I attended structured the curriculum in such a way that the weren’t just teaching to the test, there was some flexibility in the lesson plans.
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The satisfaction that Mr. Singer derives from teaching is a feeling I know well. It occurs when the teacher creates a community of learners. Students are happy to be in the class, and they start to take ownership of the atmosphere in the room. They start to listen to each other better, and treat each other with respect and care. In some cases teaching ELLS was like throwing them a lifeline, and most of the students knew this. My ELLs and their families appreciated the work I did with them, and most of them have grown up to be decent hard working members of society.
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this makes me miss teaching. I was forced out and it still makes me sad. I too was everyone’s favorite teacher…once upon a time.
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“Some folks will tell you teaching is about numbers and data. Increase these test scores. Cut costs by this much. Boost profits, escalate the graph, maximize effectiveness. … These people are fools.”
“These people” are worse than fools and it is a challenge to find words that describe them because no matter what words we use, we end up insulting someone or something that isn’t as horrible as “these people”. Even sewer sludge can be used for something good so I hesitate to compare “these people” to even that.
Maybe these people can be compared to a viral epidemic caused by a flu virus that ends up killing billions of people. Can anyone think of something good about a viral flu epidemic or malignant cancer spreading through the body like a wildfire?
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They are not fools.
They stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars off the schools in the future if their plans are allowed to go through.
I’d say we are the REAL fools if we let them get away with it.
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For contrast see this: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/378880-arkansas-students-punished-with-paddling-for-walking-out
Arkansas students punished with paddles for walking out: reports | TheHill
Physical violence used by school authority to punish students who were peacefully protesting gun violence against students and teachers for 17 minutes. Makes absolute sense, right?
Corporal punishment is still permitted in schools in 22 states.
The United States of Aggression is certainly “exceptional”.
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Perfectly said! Reading this gave me a lift that will last a long, long time. Thank you, Steven Singer, for putting it into words – and thank you, Diane, for sharing it.
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