THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF TEACHING
Teachers shape the minds of our nation's children _ thus shaping their future. Children's Express staffers sat down with teachers for a wide-ranging discussion on their jobs, their rewards, their visions for education.
JOANIE: I would take the classroom out into the community. Get it out of that little boxy room and take them outside the building.
MIKE: I think you can use a sense of humor as much as possible in the classroom and I think you can also try to do as many active kinds of projects as possible _ where kids are moving around, using their hands. Even though I teach language arts, I like to have kids build things, and I like to have them do something actively and then tell me about it. Write about it. I think any time you get them out of the classroom, that's the best possible way. But I think the biggest problem with teaching as a profession is that you're stuck inside those four walls and nobody wants to be there. ...You're isolated.
JIM: I would be shot by some teachers for saying this, but I would get rid of some teachers. . . . Traditional teaching is, "I've got an agenda, a way, in mind that it (assignment) should be done. I'm going to tell you to be creative; but if you don't do it the way I have in mind, you're not creative. I don't think the teachers that teach that way ought to say that.
JEFF: A lot of traditional forms of learning _ a lecture or just worksheets from the book _ don't do anything for creativity. If you don't use creativity repeatedly or you're not forced to think of new ideas or do things in different ways, I think you lose it. It's kind of like an appendage or an arm or a leg that doesn't get used. Eventually there's atrophy, and it stops working.
JIM: I see the job of teaching as being a guide and an adviser, not an imparter of information. I'm one of those people that when a student asks a question (a factual question), I usually won't just simply give them a straight answer. But if it's a question that requires a little thinking, I'll use the other questions to get them to come up with the answer because I think students have the answers.
JIM: Cheating is not a problem because of my style of teaching. Very, very few of my assignments and tests have a single right answer. I do a lot of essay type and project type evaluation. My tests don't consist of a piece of paper. . . . My tests may take three weeks to do because they've got to create this project based on a unit we've been studying in social studies. You can't cheat on that.
JOANIE: As a math teacher last year, we worked in groups totally, and it's very hard to cheat when you're relying on your partners in your group; and all the tests were open book. I mean I had to teach them how to learn not to memorize facts, and they had to know how to use a calculator.
JIM: I think a major flaw in our educational system is . . . that we don't often ask the students what they think is best for them. How often have your teachers come to you and said, "Would you feel more comfortable with a performance-based evaluation or with this paper and pencil test?"
AMY: The best thing about being a teacher for me is just the feeling of satisfaction that I get when I feel like there has been a success for a particular student. . . . If you feel like in some way you can improve their life or their attitude, you know you feel like you have really made an accomplishment. That's the best thing about teaching.
CHRIS: I love teaching. I love working with kids, but unlike a lot of jobs you always see your results at some point. I always wish that I could keep in touch with students throughout the years, just to see what they are doing now. Just to see . . . if my teaching was effective for kids. I would love to see more about what our results are. I think that's a kind of a negative.
LINDA: I think the most positive thing is that you get an education while you're educating other people. Every day I learn something new, if it's just a fact about one of the children. . . . That's a really positive experience when they come back and say, "This is where I am now and this is what I learned." The last day of school a boy brought me a rose and said, "Thank you for teaching me English." That's good.
CURTIS: I think the negative side of the thing is the frustrations that teachers go through to achieve their task. We're teaching the masses, and we're trying to educate everyone in the public schools, and sometimes that's really difficult.
LINDA: You'll find out the kids are abused at home and they want to come home and stay with you because they think that you would be the perfect parent. You don't know how to respond to them.
CHRIS: You really feel helpless at times and you really want to bring them home and get them out of that situation.
ERNIE: I think a lot of times when you find a student really has the ability you encourage them. You give them pep talks and everything else, and they still don't perform. . . . You still think as a teacher, as an administrator and as a person that you can help that individual kid. And he disappoints himself and disappoints you, too.