Eric Smith, a high school German teacher, writes here about the joys of teaching.
At a time when it has become fashionable to complain about teachers, and for teachers to announce why they can’t do it anymore, Smith asserts his powerful belief in his role as a teacher.
”The main reason for my belief that teaching is the best profession is that I’m able to work every day with wonderful, young human beings. People sometimes shake their heads in sympathy when they hear I’m a teacher. They’ve heard how hard it is to teach nowadays. But, although kids have certainly changed and do things differently, they are still energetic, creative and idealistic. They’re passionate and quick to make new friends. I may be having personal worries and problems, but when I greet my students with “Guten Morgen, alle zusammen!” and they reply, “Guten Morgen, Herr Smith!” it is as if a light goes on in the darkness.
“Indeed, I experience my students as brightly shining lights. They have not yet become cynical. They still believe that they can change the world. I consider it my sacred duty to keep their idealism alive and to enable them to really and truly change the world for the better.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I told my students they were like diamonds and each diamond was unique.
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I wrote a comment on another blog about refueling our intellectual curiosity and then deleted it because it was really just a tribute to the joys of teaching. Maintaining my intellectual curiosity was not an issue. Kids are anything but static or standard, and they way they respond is always fresh and exciting. The current reform agenda has done its best to quash that serendipity that should be a part of every classroom.
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Great post. I’m excited to go back to school tomorrow.
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How wonderful. After having read so many comments about the difficulties of teaching, I’d forgotten the best things that happened. I now can recall the enthusiasm of children entering my room ready to begin or complete activities in which they were always actively involved. I always enjoyed the kids. They were beautiful.
It was the boorishness and detailed demands of the administrators that made teaching difficult. We were too often not recognized as intelligent teachers who could make decisions without administrative input. Ugh. Most of those administrators had been out of the classrooms way too long and now were going by what they had learned in some class they had taken. I believe those ‘teachers of administrators’ were even more out of touch.
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YES, indeed.
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Nobody should extinguish the joy of learning and teaching. It is the fuel that keeps career teachers going. With ever changing students, teaching is always interesting and rewarding.
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For the most part, adolescents get a bum rap. In my twenty-plus years as a high school teacher, I’ve found the overwhelming majority of them to be decent, respectful and able people worth knowing. In almost every case, I’ve even loved the ones I’ve occasionally wanted to strangle.
The genuine-ness of teenagers is a beautiful thing, and more than makes up for their foibles and frequent obliviousness.
And Good Lord, when you compare them to the adults…
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Nice piece, especially on a cold, Sunday afternoon in the dead of winter,
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Few if any of the people complaining about teaching these days are complaining about the kids. Those who have left or are thinking of doing so have held back or are holding back only because of the kids. But a lot of teachers are finding that rephorm has made their jobs so untenable that they have to leave in spite of the kids, or perhaps even because of the kids in a different sort of way – they can no longer bring themselves to inflict that kind of harm on kids. I’m glad for Mr. Smith that he is not yet at that point in his battle with rephorm.
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Good point.
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Dr. Ravitch, I was reflecting on what Eric Smith related about his love of teaching. He is not unique. Before the Common Core came into play while I was still teaching, I was blessed to be part of a caring, informed, and dedicated faculty. I could write a book about what individual teachers did for their own classroom and how they shared their expertise.
School began at 9 but some teachers were there by 7 AM; some didn’t leave for hours after the last bus pulled out.
Two teachers received a federal grant to purchase books for each primary school in the district. They developed a “Shared-a-Book Club” – books to share not only with the students but to take home and share with parents/caregivers; each primary school set up the program. Sets of books were purchased, placed in blue boxes, labeled, catalogued, and placed in a general room for teachers to come in, sign out a box or two along with a matching big book. Believe me that took many hours of the teachers’ own time to set up the system and keep it running. In each classroom was a rod specially installed to hold the students bags as they was returned to the classroom each week.
One teacher had a room in her home filled with thematic, supplemental, trade books. As the theme in her room changed, the supply of books also changed- by the cartons. Add to that, I developed over a hundred thematic bags with five to fourteen books in a bag plus a read along tape/CD for at least one book in each bag. There were books for parents/caregivers to read to their children and sufficient books for the children to choose what they wanted to read on their own. The back-packs were created at my own expense. I even went to warehouses to buy in bulk. I also took charge of book fares.
We use to have meetings after school hours, on our own time, to attend workshops. A teacher would share hers/his expertise in an area and share it with whom ever was interested. We had neighboring districts join together on a Sat. to provide workshops in various academic areas – all free and on their own time.
In our classrooms the teaching of reading was individualized via group work. Learning was contextualized; built on prior knowledge. Children’s minds were activated by bridging their prior knowledge to the new story. Students interacted with the text, fellow students, and the teacher. Stories were dramatized, higher order thinking skills were developed as well as a love of reading. There was no time wasted on drilling skills in isolations. Teaching was our life and we took whatever mean necessary to enjoy the process of achieving our goals.
When Reading Recovery first appeared, teachers went for training during the summer and came back to share and in turn train. Each grade had common planning time to share ideas and discuss new directives.
We had workshops for parents in the evening; teachers would volunteer to be responsible for a workshop. Every year we would have a school-wide program for the students that was shared with parents. The so-called special teachers – the support staff- developed the program/activities with the support of the classroom teachers.
And I only scratched the surface of the phenomenal activities involving the students, faculty, and staff. We were a family. Don’t forget, teaching in NY at the time required a Master’s Degree; the faculty had many experts on the faculty always striving for excellence.
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