This morning in the Washington Post I read an essay by Sarah Fine, a soon-t0-be former teacher, about why she can no longer stay in the teaching profession.  Teachers leaving the profession after a couple of years or even, as in Ms. Fine’s case, several years is the biggest drain to our educational system.  At the end of her essay Fine states that having teachers who teach for more than a few years “is critical to school reform.”  I would amend that and say it is critical to education period whether reform is needed or the school is doing well already.  But I also felt there was some dishonesty in this article. Not so much that Fine was deliberately dishonest but that I had the feeling she never really questioned why she was teaching in the first place.  For me the latter half of the article contained the nut of truth – that is that the profession lacks the prestige and accord that makes it a worthy choice for an intelligent, and well-educated person; that teaching is seen as “a second-rate profession”; that people she meets on planes or trains condescend to her choice. These reasons seem to be the stronger reason for her leaving. I dare say it is a reason many leave.

Time and again I have come across this complaint in teacher blogs – especially, I hate to say, first year teacher blogs that begin with such enthusiasm and then move towards griping and complaining and a cynicism that does nothing to help education or the profession of teaching.  All too often I see little insight, very little self-awareness or true introspection, and instead a list of complaints about everything that is wrong with their school (except for themselves, of course) and education in general.  Fine offers no ideas on what needs to be done, she simply gives the reasons for her departure, laments that education needs more than “one year wonders” and that  “Four year wonders are better than nothing, but still not enough.”  To me this is a palliative that she offers herself, a little lie, “at least I stayed longer than others” she tells us and herself.  Yes, she stayed longer and she should be commended for staying at all. Teaching is the hardest profession there is and anyone who tries, no matter how long, should be given respect for that attempt.

I have been teaching for six years now. I entered into teaching as a DC Teaching Fellow.  It is a program not dissimilar to Teach for America but aimed at a different group – people who have already established themselves in another walk of life who are looking to bring that experience into the classroom. Ostensibly, at least, that is what DCTF claims.  For myself it was partly that – a second career after having done other things – but I had always wanted to be a teacher. It was something that hovered in the back of my head all through the other career I had chosen and jobs I had worked at: that someday I would teach.  Easy enough said, I know, but doing it is another thing entirely.  With teaching the dreams and desires you may carry into the classroom are truly tested and they are tested by fire. You really get to see how strong your convictions are when placed in the context of teaching, regardless of the type of classroom you are in. However, teaching in the urban environment that DCTF places teachers is an even more exacting crucible than any other place I can think of.  You find your beliefs tested rigorously, some will stand the test and become stronger than before, some will change and grow from the experience, some you will discard and realize how weak they really were.

For me teaching is a vocation. A calling.  It requires of me the same degree of commitment that faith requires, a commitment that does not waver regardless of the number of trials that rattle the windows and shakes the foundations.  The title of this blog comes from a quote by William Stafford, a great teacher and poet, He says “I’m a priest of the imagination, and when I go to class my job is conducting the inner light of those people to wherever it’s going…” That for me is the essence of what I do daily. I am conducting the inner light, the inner intelligence, of these children. I am their guide, helping them to find their way, setting up signposts for them to be able to read and make their way, to chart their own course. Some may not realize it right away. Their appreciation for what I do may come at a much later time in their lives. For right now they will fight and curse me and consider me the bane of their existence.  In some cases that realization will never come. For some, though, I see the recognition in their eyes that they understand and even appreciate what I am doing.  The parents of these children are no different. I am grateful for those that see this and appreciate what I do and a little sad for those that do not.  But neither defines who I am or what I do.

Those that can’t do teach. That is the phrase I heard as a young boy and one that I still hear today. One of my students even said it in my room last year.  For me that has always been our society’s true attitude about teaching. It reflects in the speaker a true poverty of the imagination.  Those that cannot see the true value of a teacher, of what we bring to society on a daily, working basis, deserve not an iota of respect.  I often marvel at the number of people who seem to think that made it in the world without the help of teachers or mentors.  So many self-made men and women. We are a nation of the self-made.  And yet how highly these self-made folk value their piece of sheep’s skin conferred upon them by a place of learning.

I didn’t go into teaching for the acclaim of others.  I certainly didn’t go into for the money.  Would I like a little of both? Surely, I am human. But the lack of either does not change what I do or why I do it.  That a portion of the American public, to quote Fine, sees teaching as a second-rate profession means very little to me.  They also see Michael Jackson’s death as a tragedy for the arts instead of the squalid end to a very strange existence that had ceased, long ago, to be truly creative.  I look for deeper reasons for what I do. I look within myself for what these reasons are and I place no monetary value on these reasons.  I do what I do for the necessity within me to be a teacher. For being a teacher is the greatest gift I possess and to share that gift with my students is the best thing I can do.

Paolo Freire, as with many things, said it best. In his book Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach Freire said:

“It is impossible to teach without the courage to love, without the courage to try a thousand times before giving up. In short, it is impossible to teach without a forged, invented, and well-thought-out capacity to love… We must dare so that we can continue to teach for a ong time under conditions that we know well: low salaries, lack of respect, and the ever-present risk of becoming prey to cynicism. We must dare to learn how to dare in order to say no to the bureaucratization of the mind to which we are exposed every day. We must dare so that we can continue to do so even when it is so much more materially advantageous to stop daring.”