Skepticism a Sad Shield for a Teacher : Education: When a child’s learning light goes on, a teacher revels in the joy. But children and teachers are struggling with new burdens that make it a ‘scary time’ to be in education.
To the casual observer, my newest crop of third grade students would seem no different from the 18 others that have come before it. Bodies are little, teeth are missing, and summer feet are again stuffed into shoes. The T-shirt war is raging between Terminators and Michael Jordans, but a few errant Ninja Turtles have managed to straggle in.
The casual observer would appreciate the challenge of instructing wiggly energy, and then assume that I will succeed. After all, it’s my job. I am a teacher.
However, I recognize a more difficult struggle ahead because I have been a teacher for so long. Battered by the difference between hope and possibility, my confession is that some children will not be touched this year by all I have to offer.
My vision has dimmed from the sparkle of my early idealism to the stuff of my experienced reality. Times have changed the children I teach, aging their perspective and scarring the whimsy that used to prevail. I now know that a few will be tragic victims before they ever walk into my room. Their psyches will hide shrapnel I can’t remove.
My skepticism is a necessary defense against the burn-out that drains the excellence from my profession. Without it, I, too, would flee the pain I feel in not reaching all my students. With it, I rejoice in reaching those I can. I compromise by being the best I can be, knowing that for some it won’t be enough.
There will be many triumphs, however, and that is the inherent glory of teaching. Joyful learning explosions, when the light of realization flashes across faces, connecting the dot-to-dots of new understanding. I live for my students’ laughter and the intimacy we share. I treasure the smiles and the hugs, saving the “I love you, Mrs. Hamlin” pictures as the momentary tangibles that will survive my fading memories later.
But I am anxious about the students each new school year brings to my door, some as orphans of societal ills that are left in a basket. They will bring with them a plethora of needs, many that I expect, but some that will be troubling surprises. Compounded by the increasing scarcity of educational resources, I question my ability to fulfill with less.
It is, indeed, a scary time to be in education.
One of the greatest classroom obstacles I will face this year is the ramification of poor parenting. Our society is suffering from a growing inability to parent its children well. It is deplorable that such a critical expectation is not being done responsibly by those who assumed it by having children.
Studies and commissions analyze the myriad of reasons why so many parents are floundering, but sometimes I only hear the litany of excuse. My job description is growing as I pick up the parental slack. In order to succeed at mine, I have to assume another.
Often parents detach themselves too soon from the influence of their guidance. Good parents, as well as bad ones, sometimes fail to set limits or to be consistent for as long as they should be with their children. They do not demand the respect they deserve, or teach the courtesies that could be the salve for an uncaring world.
As impotent parents, the moral heritage that should be defining a future generation is being lost.
Some parents give up because they tire of competing with societal factors they think they cannot change. Others do so because they are absent, stressed, or maybe just plain lazy. The reasons do not really matter, however. The impact upon children is not changed by why.
In abdicating their responsibility, such parents are forcing their children to grope for values from somewhere else. Too often the entertainment industry fills the void.
Many of my new students will relinquish their innocence as they succumb to electronic violence and sexuality. They will run home to log hours in front of animated war zones and the erotic writhings of MTV. They will soak up the lust that videos and radios exude.
As children, they will become chameleons of colors they should not yet know.
I am frustrated by parents who anesthetize the value systems and imaginations of those I am to teach. It is the electronic usurpation of young creativity, the insidious invitation to mentally disengage, rather than to think.
Furthermore, mindless viewing hours amassed by students lead to a tenacious passivity that needs to be shattered before I can do my job. They contribute to an urgency for more titillation, and feed a grievous tolerance for violence. I have to combat the expectation that the teacher is there to entertain.
Worried that tomorrow’s leaders will someday be guided by lessons of morality learned in front of their childhood television sets, I will counter by teaching problem resolution skills that will hopefully override those of aggression.
Another possible, more horrific impact on my new classroom is the abomination of poor parenting, the rise in child abuse cases. Sexual, physical, and emotional wounds that are not ready for academic ointment but simply need a place to be safe.
I have had increasing numbers of abused students, foster children, and those who are being raised by non-parent family members in recent years. In most instances such children have already suffered the tragedy of bad parenting, and endure the terror of their uncertain futures.
They are children who need to be better than what they have already known. I am a teacher who may not be able to reach them in time.
Each year I perform educational triage as I assess monthly, weekly, even daily, those students who have a chance to progress academically, those who are clinically lost, and those who have been so severely injured emotionally that all I can do is to make them comfortable. I am a Red Cross unit, in a war that has no name.
Gone are the days when summer’s nostalgic close simply meant a return to the propagation of educational rubric. As I stand in front of a new classroom of little bodies, I do not yet know the needs they have brought to me, or where our year together will take us.
What I do know, however, is that I am a teacher. I am one of the king’s men, who will spend another year trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
