Teaching Doesn't Get Easier But It Does Get Better!

This week’s article summary is Teaching Never Gets Any Easier But It Gets Better

 

I read it back in early October but felt it more appropriate and inspirational as we settle into the second half of the school year.

 

As we all know, great teaching involves both art and science, sometimes relying on research-proved best practices and other times on our instinctive feel.

 

Yes, teaching is hard work and has gotten more difficult as today we are more responsive to differences within our students and are more alert to evidence of their learning.

 

Yet as the article states, while teaching “won’t get any easier, it will get better because you will get better.”

 

I’ve been an avid baseball fan for more than 50 years. My first memory of baseball is watching the 1967 World Series (Cardinals v. Red Sox) in a 4^th grade PE class--back then even big games were played during the day. Our teacher wanted to watch the game on his portable TV in his office off the gym, so he conspiratorially told us 15 boys that he was canceling class because watching the World Series was a better learning experience than running laps. I was mesmerized by Bob Gibson’s intimidating presence on the mound and the ferocity of his pitches as he struck out a slew of Red Sox.

 

Even though I’ve watched thousands of games through the years, it’s not unusual for me to see something in a game that I’ve never seen before—it might be the interpretation of an obscure rule (like running in the baseline) or a violation of what’s considered the unwritten rules of the game (like showboating after hitting a home run). Even this week in the off-season, baseball has seen three managers (one even before he managed a single game) and a general manage fired for cheating (which oddly is not technically illegal in baseball) with technology (which is illegal to use during games).

 

Like baseball, teachers often see something new in school and their classrooms. Yes, there are routines and the commonplace to every school day, but there are also those new experiences that bring a smile to your face or completely stupefy you. Just like in baseball, I often catch myself at school saying, “Well, that’s a first for me!”

 

Through the years as we gain more and more teaching experience, we begin to more clearly see the full forest of education but just as important we appreciate the uniqueness of each individual tree and their different nourishment needs. Experienced teachers see both the macro the micro.

 

For me, the dynamism and optimism of a school (particularly an elementary one) is what continues to energize me. I enjoy that balance of art and science and macro and micro issues and of seeing and experiencing something new almost every day.

 

Baseball may be my avocation, but education is my vocation—and I don’t know what I would do without either!

 

Let’s have a magical second half of the school year—with a lot or normalcy and routine but with some quirky, weird, unique experiences too!

 

Joe

 

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I used to think that at some distant point on a shimmering horizon—five or 15 or 25 years into teaching—suddenly it would get easier.

I would know exactly how to teach struggling readers to read. I would handle misbehavior with the masterful, no-nonsense tone of Mary Poppins laying down her expectations. When I got a new student with out-of-control behavioral issues, I would jump at the chance to stretch myself for a new professional challenge. I would never again see glazed boredom settle over each student’s face like a limp rubber mask. I wouldn’t once lose my temper, no matter how many times my students refused to listen or work quietly at their desks. When that long-anticipated day arrived, I would wake up to a magnificent transformation, my methods suddenly as effective as fictional karate master Mr. Miyagi’s.

Here’s the harsh truth I have finally accepted: That day will never come. This job is never going to get any easier. I am who I am. Teaching is what it is.

I still struggle to help some readers unlock the baffling intricacies of print. I still stifle an internal sob when I get a new student whose misbehavior defies both kindness and stern words. I still watch my students get so bored that they gaze at the cracks in the ceiling rather than pay attention to my lesson. I still get so grumpy with them some days that I sound like the Soup Nazi in “Seinfeld”—“No reading on the class couch for you!”

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been teaching or how much you care about children. This job is hard. Especially if you’re one of those teachers who finds no comfort in the mantra “I’m doing my best” when your students aren’t making the growth they need, and instead you hear Winston Churchill’s gruff voice in your head: “It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.”

It won’t get any easier but it will get better, because you will get better.

You’ll learn to look at your class and see each individual clearly: that entire evolving constellation of needs, strengths, interests, and personality traits within every child.

You’ll learn to balance responsibility with delight--to make sure your students work hard each day but get to laugh hard each day, too.

You’ll get better at both the art and the science of teaching. Knowing when to follow your instincts and when to question your beliefs, when to trust yourself and when to ask for help, when to give your methods time to work and when to try something different.

You will bring your thousands of hours of experience to bear on each new situation, whether it’s a child who still can’t read or a child who won’t stop crying and come out from under her desk.

You’ll stop seeing all these tests, rubrics, and standards as an end in themselves, and recognize them as the means to a greater end: helping children live the lives they dream. Helping them find joy and meaning in the imagined worlds within books, the orderly possibilities of numbers, the elaborate architecture of the natural world, and the mysterious galaxies within themselves.

You will teach little brothers and sisters of former students whose families have come to love you. You will be standing in line for movie tickets when you hear a timid, delighted voice say, “Mr. Minkel?” and you will turn to see that the marvelous boy you taught in 3rd grade has grown up to be a marvelous man.

You’ll learn, like Odysseus does in Homer’s Odyssey, that the trials of a day, year, or an entire career can become sweet in the telling—that the absurd situation that made you gnash your teeth this morning is kind of hilarious as you tell your spouse about it that night.

You’ll discover, as Henslowe promises in "Shakespeare in Love," that it really will all turn out well in the end—Pritha will learn to read, Abigail will stop crying and come out from under her desk—though just how it will work out is always a mystery until the end.

A new school year will arrive in your fifth or 15th or 25th year when you realize that the answer is not to try to make the job any easier, but to open your heart even wider.

Children you have come to love will still struggle. You will still confront the pressures and demands of a job that often feels impossible. You will continue to doubt your abilities, and the strength of your spirit.

You will never manage to reduce the magnitude of those hard things through effort, skill, or years of experience. But you will do something even greater. You will make your love for these children and this work so vast that all the frustrations, failures, heartbreaks, and exhaustion become smaller in comparison to the mass and gravity of that mighty love.

That’s all we can do. It’s enough.