Monday
April 14, 2008
NPR’s Tell Me More program last week interviewed three teachers about why teachers leave, why teachers stay, and how teachers cope with challenging situations.
One of the teachers interviewed, Joanne Wilkerson, is a 30+ year veteran teacher. She made two comments that made me stop the playback.
If you do not see [teaching] as your call, or something you were...almost...born to do, then it can be very difficult and very frustrating.
Later:
As human beings we like immediate gratification, and there are some teaching situations in which you’re not going to get immediate gratification. It may be ten years later. And another thing is sometimes when you work with children there is so much emotional involvement, especially as you become attached to them, and I think not everyone is cut out to be a teacher.
On the one hand, yes, not everyone is cut out to be a teacher. And teaching is, as I said just the other day, much more than a job.
But, still, something about these comments bothered me.
Somehow it feels like this viewpoint really discounts the impact of effective teacher training, mentoring, and professional development, chalking teachers’ staying power up to a mysterious “it” factor. (You’ve got it or you don’t; you can’t learn it).
I also wonder if teaching, at least the first few years, is sometimes more difficult and frustrating - or at least disappointing - for those teachers who feel called to it. The pressure to succeed at the thing you were born to do is pretty high.
I realize that I am simply not the kind of person who thinks of my life in terms of a “calling.” My argument with Mrs. Wilkerson may be nothing more than a clash of rhetorical style. But I think it’s a clash that’s prevalent in the teaching world. When we think about attracting new people to the profession, people who may want very much to teach without feeling “born to teach,” I think it’s important that we make a place in the rhetoric for them, too.
The full interview (17 min.) is here.
Related post on TEN here.
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