Back to the Future of Teaching
Posted by PLB Registrar · 1 Comment
Teaching has been on my mind a lot. In writing on changes in teaching lately, “Why did you go into teaching? and “Using the Apple iPad in the Classroom” and also about technology in education my thoughts have been turning toward the bigger picture of teaching as a professional career.
A few years ago I visited with a teacher I knew who actually taught in a one-room classroom on the prairie just like in “Little House on the Prairie” at the beginning of her teaching career. While I only knew her in her final years, literally decades after she retired in her sixties, I was intrigued by what it must have been like for Mrs. Cutler to teach all grades in one classroom. Actually, that one classroom was also the whole of the school building and she was the entire school staff.
Imagine… She had to bring in the wood for the wood burning pot belly stove that served as the furnace for the school. She and her students had to clean up the classroom at the end of every day as no janitor was coming in after classes ended. And technology was limited to pencils, paper and a chalkboard.
Add into that mix of responsibilities teaching students in all grades and all subjects. Yes, Mrs. Cutler understood individualizing instruction to meet her student’s learning needs long before it became a topic of education research. This was her reality.
And, in this reality, she changed lives.
I remember a story one of her grandchildren shared with me. One night, after she was retired, she received a long distance phone call from a man who had been in her class decades earlier. He told her how much her extra effort working with him every day after school to help him learn to read changed his life. He had grown up, gone to college, started a family and was now a minister. He believed that he would not be a minister if it was not for her help back in fifth grade.
Today, we have metropolitan schools with more students than the populations of many small towns. Computers are everywhere. And in some respects, teachers and schools are asked to do more than ever before, much of which may not even relate to teaching.
And yet, every day when a teacher goes into a classroom, he or she has the opportunity to change a student’s life just like the one-room classroom teacher did in the early Twentieth century.
This week’s questions for you:
- How has teaching changed and stayed the same during your teaching career?
- Do you think students are different or the same today as when you started teaching?
- What changes do you see in the future for teaching?
I hate to say it, but I don’t see a future for teachers. I have loved teaching every one of my 46 years in what used to be a profession. Now I see my colleagues in public education treated more like indentured servants than professionals–all of societies ills are brought to their doors to be cured, but what paltry rewards they used to receive are severely diminished. I never really minded the low salaries–often wasn’t even sure what I made–but I thought I was doing something useful and had a measure of respect in my community. Now the respect is gone, the paltry salary is frozen or declining, but the demands grow daily more difficult. I can not any longer in good conscience recommend teaching to any student for whom I hold any regard. What a betrayal that would be! Talented students should not be subjected to the denigration currently heaped on teachers. By the way, I used to teach with a fourth grade teacher who taught in a one room school and she constantly noted that it was much easier than the homogeneous mess we have now–the kids taught each other–she had it easy.