Another One Bites the Dust
At an
early age, we are often asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The
answers vary and change over time. Age five, “I want to be a fire fighter.” Age
10, “I want to design cars and be an engineer.” Age 18, “I don’t really know
what I want to be.”
I was
no different than most children. My career ambitions transformed from wanting
to be a WNBA player, to a news anchor, to a teacher. I would have never dreamed I'd become a teacher, but as I grew, I became more self-aware and knew that I
loved working with little children. I innately wanted to help others, and as I
entered college and began taking education courses, my passion and excitement
only grew. I graduated in 2006 with a
Bachelor of Arts in Education from Illinois College, and was ready to take on
the world and make a difference in children’s lives. I was passionate, I was
committed, I was innovative, I was excited. I was one of the lucky few who
found a profession that I was genuinely and wholeheartedly happy with. I felt
that I was where I was supposed to be, carrying out God’s plan for my life.
What went wrong? Why, at age 32, am
I suddenly bitter, exhausted, unmotivated, and waving the white flag? I’ve been
asked this question a lot. In fact, I was asking myself this question a lot in
the final days leading up to my decision to make a career change.
The answer is complex, and I am not quite
certain I’ve even come to a conclusion myself, but I know that I needed a
change and could not keep up with the life style I was leading as a teacher,
mother, wife and friend. Note that teacher came first in that line-up. It just
does. You see, when you enter into the field of education, you’re not just
signing up for a job. You are signing up to be a teacher who takes on the lives
of 26 individuals each year. Your job is to not just help them learn the
required objectives and content, but to teach them how to be a good person, a
citizen that will contribute to society and succeed in life. And they aren’t a
one size fits all deal. Each class is full of a vast array of personality
types, learning
styles, needs and interests. And you love each and every one of them just
as your own. The guilt I felt as a working mother was intense. The fact that my
job was taking care of other children only intensified this guilt. I wanted to
put my own family first, but it was a balancing act that I never figured out.
In accordance with guilt, education
reform is a constant which brings forth new policies being put into place that
increase the demands and expectations of teachers, with little funding available
for schools to educate staff and implement the policies successfully. The implementation of common core
for instance, isn’t necessarily a negative change that has recently occurred in
education, but it is a change. A change that has completely transformed how we
teach most content and that has upped the ante for expectations of students.
Teachers are trying to change curriculum, assessments and lessons, and their
jobs and overall evaluations are dependent upon their students’
performance. In my ten years of
teaching, I survived the implementation of common core while watching my class
sizes increase from 20 students to 26 students.
I guess it’s not that I didn’t love
teaching anymore; it’s that I just couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t keep doing what
I was doing, meeting every student’s needs, and find the time to assess,
document, communicate with parents, and complete the rigorous teacher evaluation
cycles.
Teacher “burn out” is a real thing.
Teacher wages are nothing to write home about, yet the expectations of a
teacher are unattainable. As wonderful as it would be to be to successfully
teach a classroom of 26 students and meet all of their needs, IEP’s, 504’s, and
individual modifications included, it just isn’t realistic. Yet this is what we
expect of teachers. I believe in inclusion, I believe in teaching concepts in
multiple ways in order to help students learn at a deeper level, and I believe
in assessing and using assessments to drive instruction and communication to
families. But teachers are just one person. Education reform needs to take all
of this into account. While we want to do what is best for students, if we
don’t start thinking about what is also best for teachers, we won’t have
individuals in society who can fill this role.
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