A Teacher's Morning Coffee: Unanswered Questions

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Unanswered Questions

I shared with my students a “Motivational Friday” last week entitled “Questions I Want Answered.” The questions started worldly. For example, Scientists say the universe is expanding, where is it going? And, How can a country allow a Hitler, Stalin, or a Pol Pott brainwash them? The questions narrowed to more specific, personal inquiries such as Why do I do what I do everyday? What difference can I make? And, What is my role in society?

I am certain scholars can give me reasoned answers for the first set of questions, yet the more personal questions can only be answered from within. In relation, I can ask one type of question about education that can be specifically answered, but the ones I struggle with the most are internal:

1. With the talents I’ve been blessed with, am I in right profession?

2. With “No Child Left Behind” what do I do with the students who choose to be left behind?

3. At what point do I say, "It's just a job" and protect myself from the emotionally attachment of student success/failure?

4. Do I put too much blame on myself?

5. Why does one disappointment impact my mood more than one success?

The most recent question I’ve battled derives from my students’ consistent need for entertainment. I know that learning may be difficult for my students, tedious at times, and perhaps hurt. Not all concepts come easily and too many of my students give up when learning becomes more like a chore than outside stimuli they are accustomed to finding in video games and computers. As far as I can tell, the majority of my students have a “if it’s not fun then it’s not worth my while” attitude when it comes to learning.

The questions that I am battling today are: Is my role as a teacher to entertain so that my students learn new concepts? Or do I teach students that learning is a necessity and self-actualization is actually the reward and, therefore, the entertainment. Too often it appears that when I fall short in entertaining, the cell phones come out and texting commences.

I understand my students’ need for entertainment, but somehow I must convince them that unless we define learning more than just in-the-moment entertainment, then they will wither as they have trusted the feeling of learning and not the act of learning.

I don’t know how to achieve this right now. If I did, I’d currently have students in my classroom eager to get help; instead I sit typing in a listless classroom materializing my own educational thoughts. I’m learning teaching is not easy and not a feeling I wish upon anyone. Though the feeling of success is euphoric, the feeling of failing to show the value of education to all my students is debilitating. But I don’t cling to the feeling, I cling to the act, and with that I will continue to pursue my students and meet them in their current state of seeking entertainment and carry them into a land where active learning becomes entertaining.

And so I do not give up hope.

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Dear Teacher

Dear Teacher,

Let us open our memory to when we were students seeking our degrees in education. Be it college or grad school, from day one we were taught how to teach. Between demanding methods of teaching, classroom behavior management, curriculum development, and the like, our professors modeled the ideal classroom. We presented lessons to our peers, critiqued deliveries, and role played numerous classroom scenarios until we all had an idea (or at least we thought) of what faced us in our journey ahead.

In the chaos of student teaching, interviewing, graduating, and so on, some of us forgot why we entered education in the first place. We simply did not choose jobs; we chose a vocation that impacts the rest of the word. Our souls have great purpose in what we are doing and there is something within all of us that moved us toward the classroom. Teachers thrive in the classroom, what we have to offer is more than subject material; we long to share ourselves.

Our belief in one student can change the world, yet we were unable to materialize our beliefs in our "how to teach" courses. Believing in students is an understanding of why we chose teaching as our careers. It is difficult to believe any of us chose this vocation without the ambition of changing student lives. Propelling one student beyond the content material is the difference we make as educators. As teachers, we must teach in such as way that our students can reflect upon their education and use us to mark history.

State testing and the bureaucracy that comes with our evaluations, tenure, and outside judgment will continue to haunt us all. Though rarely talked about and certainly not fully developed in our educational training, our desire to reach the adolescent heart is omnipresent. You are not alone in your quest to lead students to a greater peak in their learning, one higher than any state test can measure.

We have chosen an emotional occupation; the days may be long, the journey exhausting, and the victories difficult to see. Throughout this blog we will find meaning in our teaching through why we teach and allow it to transform how we teach our students.

Come on the journey with me to discover why we became educators. There is something deep within calling us to pursue more than the subject we teach. Our hearts long to be part of a story more important than standardized tests and student success hinges upon us being masters of that story. Rarely have we been given a chance to listen to our heart and reflect upon why we teach. Together we will pursue the source of the ever flowing spring of educational desire.

We are in a career in which we receive little monetary compensation. We are frequently berated from lack of tangible success and often blamed for the problems with America’s youth. Yet we are connected emotionally to our occupation. We love it….but sometimes the system kills the passion we had entering education and brings us a new reason to educate, to pass the test.

What happened to our initial motivation? What stole our spirit and how do we get it back? In the end, it is not really about dollars and dimes, what parents think of us, or how well our students remember Romeo and Juliet or the Pythagorean Theorem; it is about giving ourselves to our students. And when we give ourselves, there we will find true joy, there you will find motivation to keep teaching. There you will find the purpose in what we do.