Teaching as a Profession: Classroom Reality vs. Expectations

From Idealism to Reality: First Impressions of the Classroom

While in college I had originally hoped to become a guidance counselor, or perhaps a social worker in the school system on Long Island. But I could see that jobs in counseling were few and far between, and so I planned to become an effective teacher and through that medium try to make a difference in our society. My degree and certification will be in general education and special education at the middle school level, with an extension in elementary education.

Perhaps I was an idealist — my major was Social Studies and Sociology — but my instructor in one course emphasized to our class repeatedly that idealism is what made America a great country from the very founding of the Constitution. He said that idealism, combined with hard work and educational pragmatism, can be the keys to a successful teaching career.

Meanwhile, the average liberal arts college student — or any college student — cannot possibly know what life will be like in the working world until he or she gets there. I am no exception to that rule. For me, I thought there would be more camaraderie among teachers than I have actually observed. Granted, I am on the lower rung of the ladder at a Long Island middle school, working as a teacher's assistant, but I have had access to the views and strategies of tenured teachers and believe I have a reasonable grasp of the working attitudes and styles of a number of middle school educators.

There are certainly teachers who care deeply, who work with colleagues and staff to find solutions to school problems, and who go out of their way to help students with personal as well as academic issues. But for many teachers, year after year becomes drudgery, like any other job, and you can see the weariness and even cynicism in their faces. Spend any amount of time in the faculty lounge on certain days and you will hear more negativity than positive thinking. That said, in fairness, any job can become tedious, and perceived unfairness will provoke complaints from time to time.

Still, I thought that even veteran teachers would be full of passion to meet the needs of their students. Most students are full of energy and desire to achieve, and they look to teachers as role models — a view that, admittedly, many teachers do not seem to hold of themselves. A fair share of teachers see themselves primarily as authority figures practicing their own brand of pedagogy. In my experience, many teachers are far too dogmatic and traditional, unwilling to try new strategies or experiment with more contemporary instructional models.

After all, schools are the places where the individuals who will inherit the world — who will become the next generation of national and community leaders — receive training that is pivotally important to their careers and lives. As I said, idealism is a good thing, but it must be tempered with reality, and working in a middle school is a deep dive into the reality of education in America today.

I had my own middle school and high school classroom experiences as reference points, plus many college courses in education-related subjects, but I was not fully prepared for what I would encounter in the classroom day after day. Frankly, I love being in the classroom, but it can feel like a foreign environment compared to the training one receives in preparation for being there consistently.

Inspiration and the Power of Four: A Framework for Helping

One day, during a break, I went into the faculty lounge and overheard two teachers discussing a very personal matter involving a colleague who was believed to be gay. I was seated well away from them, and they were unaware I could hear, but uncomfortable as it was, I listened for a few moments while skimming a newspaper. These two teachers certainly do not represent the views of the majority of faculty at my school, but I had to wonder how many others carried similar biases against same-sex relationships and gay people in general. Later, I recounted this experience to a trusted friend outside the school, who told me that such views are likely held by a significant portion of the population, so it should come as no surprise that some teachers share them.

After my break, I returned to my classroom and began helping a young Latino boy work on his matching exercise. The beauty of my job is that all of the attitudes among teachers and staff that may not align with my vision of what education should be become irrelevant in the face of the immediate needs of a child who is struggling to match the word "forest" with the word "wood."

I am a person for whom inspirational speeches carry great meaning in my life and career. I am always moved by a great speech that connects the dots for me regarding my professional goals and my desire to make the world a better place. Several years ago, Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks proposed that a whole generation of recent college graduates could and should, in a metaphoric sense, become heroes — and he offered a simple yet luminous formula for doing so.

Hanks delivered his poignant, creatively powerful speech at Vassar College commencement exercises. While telling graduates they did not need "advice," he emphatically told them what they did need to hear, which he called "the most important message thus far in the third millennium." When I watched the speech replayed on C-SPAN a few days later, I was mesmerized when Hanks said: "You need to hear a maxim so simple, so clear and evocative that no one could misconstrue its meaning or miss its weighty issue."

Hanks then launched into a metaphor drawn from a computer simulation analyzing the problem of daily freeway congestion. By removing just four cars out of every one hundred, the simulation suggested, rush-hour gridlock could be reduced to a reasonably smooth flow of traffic. "Four cars out of one hundred are not that many," he said. "Two cars out of every fifty — one driver out of twenty-five." By that point in the speech, I found myself thinking: maybe four teachers out of one hundred — one out of every twenty-five — could make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of students.

Hanks called it the "Power of Four": "So, if merely four people out of a hundred can make gridlock go away by choosing not to use their car, imagine the other changes that can be wrought just by four of us — four of you — out of a hundred." It is not a "statement," he continued; it is a "request" and a "plea." It is a four-letter word, he asserted — "a verb and a noun… a message, once made familiar by the Beatles — those Northern English lads who embodied the Power of Four. Help. HELP. HEEELLLLPP! We need help. Your help. You must help. Please help. Please provide help. Please be willing to help." A friend was watching the speech with me, and we looked at each other, wholly enthused and motivated to go out and start making a difference. My chosen field — teaching — is how I intend to answer Tom Hanks' call.

"Help bring reason and respect to discourse and debate… Help and you will abolish apathy — the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil," Hanks continued. I was listening intently when he added that "life outside college is just like life in it: one nutty thing after another." I have found that true in one sense, but in another sense life outside college demands skills one does not necessarily acquire in school. I believe Hanks wholeheartedly when he says it is the college graduate's job "to keep going. Your duty is to help — without ceasing." I continue my education in pursuit of a post-graduate degree, and I remain committed to helping each student in my classroom.

John Dewey and the Philosophy Behind My Teaching

President Barack Obama spoke at Arizona State University around the same time and embraced many of the same themes as Hanks. "As a nation, we'll need a fundamental change of perspective and attitude," he told the graduates. Americans leaving college "need to build a new foundation — a stronger foundation — for our economy and our prosperity, rethinking how we educate our children, and care for our sick, and treat our environment," Obama said. He, too, invoked the word "help": "That is why we are going to need your help. We'll need young people like you to step up. We need your daring and your enthusiasm and your energy." I will continue to offer my enthusiasm and energy — and I hope to be daring enough to keep learning new skills and strategies for the benefit of my students and community.

Before describing specific classroom experiences, I want to express my own perspective on teaching and education. I have always been impressed by the thinking of John Dewey, widely regarded as the "Father of Public Education" in America. I have also been influenced by the more contemporary work of Albert Bandura, well known for his theory of self-efficacy and positive goal-setting, which offers valuable guidance for both students and teachers in the classroom. Dewey was a trailblazer who had the vision and courage to articulate important values about public education even when those views ran against popular opinion. He is to the institution of public education what Thomas Jefferson is to the Bill of Rights.

Dewey believed in teaching children how to think and how to become problem solvers. I believe deeply that every teacher should also be a trailblazer alongside students. Many — if not most — students have had teachers who were indifferent to or ignorant of their cultural backgrounds, uninterested in their families' socioeconomic circumstances, or inattentive to their need for individual attention. By reaching students who have previously been alienated from their teachers, a sensitive and alert educator is genuinely blazing trails.

Dewey believed that education extends well beyond what it can do for the individual. Education, in his view, "is the fundamental method of social progress and reform" (Dewey, 2002). He also believed strongly that schools should work to produce "thinking citizens" rather than "obedient workers" — a principle I have tried to apply in every situation I encounter as a teaching assistant, helping students learn to think through problems and develop their own solutions.

Dewey had little patience for waste in education. In Chapter III of The School and Society, he addresses "Waste in Education" — not the waste of money or material things, but the waste of human life. He argues that school systems are "isolated" and that "all waste is due to isolation" (Dewey, p. 78). It is a warning that resonates strongly in the context of special education, where isolation — from the mainstream curriculum, from peers, and from meaningful expectations — can be especially damaging.

Conclusion: Commitment to Student-Centered Teaching

I am devoted to doing the best possible job I can, and the students in my special education class know I care, that I am knowledgeable, and that I am there for them day in and day out, no matter their willingness or ability to produce on any given day. To restate the core principle that guides my practice: John Dewey emphasized that students should be taught how to solve problems — not simply to memorize names and dates from textbooks. If I can help my students — who face far greater challenges than I do — to solve one small problem each day, and teach them according to Bandura's self-efficacy model of goal-setting, I will have done my job as a trailblazer.