Retired New York City Teacher Norm Scott explains here why experience counts.
He writes:
I’ve been watching D-Day movies and finally saw Saving Private Ryan. In pretty much all war movies we see the big differences between grizzled war veterans and the rookies who are often scared to death. It is so clear how important experience is in warfare. I mean what commander wouldn’t want troops who knew the ropes?
In education we often find just the opposite where newbies are preferred. Low salaries. Non-tenured. They won’t talk back and will often do anything asked by administrators, no matter how stupid. And wise in education combat zones like those grizzled sergeants. Too many principals love newbies who they can manipulate.
Over the past few decades the idea that experience makes a difference for a teacher has been disparaged by the ed deformers. Note the growth of Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows where you get 6 weeks of boot camp and are sent into the world to make guinea pigs of students while you learn the ropes.
I was one of those. In 1967 grad students were losing their deferments and going into a 6 week boot camp for new teachers and teaching for two years was a way out and I took it and became a newbie teacher. You know those war movies where the guy is sweating and wracked with fear – Corporal Upham in Private Ryan is the prototype – a coward afraid of combat. I was Upham my first year of teaching. Facing a class of children and keeping them under control was my greatest fear. They were often off the wall. I was envious of these little ladies in my school who had perfect control. When I finally learned how to control a class it was one of the major achievements of my life. I never would have survived as a teacher if I couldn’t. Well, I could have become an administrator.
My friend Arthur Goldstein, who is an ESL teacher and the union leader at Francis Lewis HS, one of the largest and most overcrowded in the city, for the past 15 years has written a very influential education oriented blog called NYC Educator sharing a lot of insights into the many facets of the process and often mystery of teaching.
I wanted to share an excerpt from his posting on June 12 about the coming end of the school year. Arthur has given his finals but still has to keep the students interested. He gives them a surprise test with questions such as: When was the War of 1812? Where does Chinese food come from? What color is the white board? He wondered about a student who got one of these wrong.
Arthur has many decades of teaching and here he gets to some of the essence of why experience matters for teachers.
[Arthur writes:]
“One of the things Cuomo didn’t consider when pushing the miserable evaluation law is what it’s like to bomb in front of 34 teenagers. This, of course, is because he’s never taught, and he’s never been through what we go through each and every day. I don’t know about you, but I fear that more than I fear some supervisor with an iPad. I remember it happening to me in my first few years. I remember watching other teachers and wondering exactly what they were doing that I was not. Why are their classes calm while mine is off the wall? I’m not sure there’s an easy response to that. I’d say things got just a little better when I started calling houses. And maybe I’ve grown more confident or authoritative over the years. Mostly, I have more experience and more go-to lesson plans. If I see something not working I can usually push it in another direction and try something at least different, if not always better.”
That’s it. Arthur has the experience to see what is not working and has the confidence he can figure things out. Like the great pitcher whose slider is not working but adjusts. Not to compare teaching to baseball. Or combat. Welllll, maybe. One of my old pals and colleagues, Rockaway resident David Bentley used to tell the story of his first year in a tough school in 1967-68 when a class of children was so out of control he walked into the office of the principal, a tough old bird named Sophie Beller (Lagosi was her nickname) and told her he was quitting and would rather go to Vietnam. She sent him home for the day to recover and he ended up becoming one of the great teachers in my school. Ahhhh, that good ole experience does count.
Refreshing!
Yes, indeed EXPERIENCE COUNTS! Think of Sully landing the engineless passenger plane on the Hudson River. Duh … I want a PILOT flying the plane.
I also want a REAL classroom teacher teaching kids, not some computer program or some workbook script written by those far away from the classroom.
Senior teachers often have history on their side. Many times “newbies” believe they have discovered something amazing. It is the voice of experience that can shed some much needed light on something done in the past to help the newbies avoid an epic fail. They often provide much needed guidance and direction.
Nobody wants a new surgeon or car mechanic. Most fields value expertise and insights that experience provides. Only in teaching led by penny pinching corporations is being “green” valued. Corporations really do not care about the students. They care about impressions and perceptions that legitimize their brand. Corporate amateurs are threatened by teachers that have a voice. They do not want to hear from teachers. They want to imprint them with their brand. That is why their ultimate choice is a robot. No salaries, sick days or pensions! The big price the student pays is little learning.
I went to Vietnam in 1966 and fought in that war. That means I know what war is like.
And when I retired after thirty years of fighting in the U.S. public school classroom wars that have only gotten much worse, I decided I’d rather volunteer to fight in Afghanistan than return to the classroom. Even at 73, there might be a use for me in a combat zone outside of the U.S.
If CalSTRS went broke and I lost my retirement, I’d volunteer to become a human bomb and walk into a crowd of Taliban or al Queda terrorists and blow myself up before I’d return to the teacher abuse in our K-12 classrooms in the U.S. where I think teachers are treated worse than human waste flowing through the sewers.
Thank you, Bill Gates, and all the other putrid billionaires like the Koch brothers and the Walton family for destroying what once was a profession to be proud of.
So…my 35 years of teaching Latin…mean that I can probably teach Latin in 2019?
Well, I’ll be…
I regret not having learned Latin. The only Latin I know is from the movie title Quo Vadis, the bits from my Asterix comics (read in German)—especially Ave and cervesa, and from the movie The King and I.
Norm reminds me of the other role teachers play – mentors to the newbies. Much as I loved teaching, my first year in middle school left me in tears at the end of most days that first marking term. A colleague sat me down in an old chair in the closet that served as our office and handed me tissues until I could stop crying long enough to go home. It wasn’t until I was a parent I appreciated how much she sacrificed time with her one-year old for me.
This is an essential role that the reformistas have tried to usurp from us and one we must fight for. No one else has that first hand experience and expertise.
The headmaster who hired me—or more accurately, told me I would be teaching at his school—wanted me to be an arrogant, know-it-all both to shake up the older teachers and to get my comeuppance from them. He understood that we each had something to teach each other about being a teacher. And he was the ringmaster. I didn’t see it then, but boy do I see it now, especially after what so many of you have taught me about the craft of teaching. Had he not died in my second year, I think I’d still be a teacher and I would likely have become one of the grizzled ones who would have to both mentor and deal with the young punk teachers.
I have mentored several new teachers. I enjoyed their enthusiasm and willingness to learn, and I have learned a few things from them too.
Best line, “Well, I could have become an administrator.” Eloquent. Spot on.