Teaching Soap-Box 1

“If I can’t _____________, I can always just teach.” The first time I heard this sentiment expressed I was a college education major and it offended me. Twelve years later, I am a veteran teacher. When I hear someone conclude a thought with, “I can always just teach” I still want to smack them.

As a college student it was offensive to me because it implied I was frittering away four years studying a discipline that other people could “just do.” It minimized my classes, my presentations, my field experiences, my talents.

Now that I have more than a theoretical knowledge of what it is to teach, our society’s attitude toward teaching is even more troubling. It no longer offends me; it frightens me. What other profession lets you start work first, and get trained later? Simply having been a K-12 student does not provide one with the skills required of a teacher any more than the experience of having a cavity filled qualifies one to be a dentist.

In this current economic crisis, my county’s school system has been inundated with applicants. Well-intentioned people, frightened people, looking for job security in troubling times are filling out applications hoping they can “just teach.” My compassion is stirred for these people. Our state has been hit hard by unemployment, but turning to teaching for health benefits, and not for a desire to see children learn, is short-sighted. Similarly, there is a shortage of health care workers in the South, but I don’t think folks have lined up at the hospitals hoping to “just be a nurse.” No state would let people off the street start handling syringes and dispensing medications before they completed training and met licensure standards. As long as people are allowed into classrooms without adequate training and without licenses, our state and local boards of education allow the cheapening of teaching to go on.