Beginning Teacher's Support and Assessment: Wanting

Teachers flee the profession in droves.

The average teacher in New York quits after four years. For teachers in California, two years is the average staying power. Most teachers do not want to stick around, even if they are guaranteed job protection.

In its finite wisdom, the state of California instituted a guidance program, in which teachers, after earning their preliminary credentials, would then process through two more years of training with a mentor teacher.

Beginning Teacher's Support and Assessment (BTSA): another fine example of "this should work", which never does.

As a first year teacher, I hated having to fill out another set of paperwork, responding to inane assessments and slumbering through teacher-convocations. True, the program was free; and I got a lot of free food, but I also had to slog through the most insipid of seminars.

In one session, an elderly woman talked about the different codes used among minority children. I had to suffer through a five minute dissertation on the meaning of "kitchen" among impoverished young black girls. When I was ever going to use this nonsense, I could not tell then, and I can confirm now -- I never did.

Education was supposed to be about getting people to rise above their own prejudices and self-limiting beliefs. Sadly, grievance industries galore profit from diversity training and the multiculturalism fetish that passes for open-mindedness today.

As anyone can see, all these meetings with support staff, filling out empty surveys, replanning lessons, interviewing administrative staff, all eats away at the precious little time that most teachers have. First year teachers, usually fresh out of the grueling obstacle course called "student teaching", have experience serving three sections of a subject. Full time teachers are expected to cover five, and when the principal offers the neophyte educator a job, he throws him the keys, shows him the classroom, then leaves the teacher to sink or swim.

Most teachers sink, especially in the inner cities, where there is little parental support, or the grievance industry is in full-swing, intimidating administrators to go easy on students, letting them get away with disrespectful infractions that would have merited a rap in the mouth thirty years ago.

Teachers need support, not more paperwork. Perhaps hiring full-time teachers to cover four sections at a full-time salary, for example, would allow new teachers to segue into the pressure of preparing for a diverse body of students year after year. Perhaps creating more employee safeguards for new teachers, instead of permitting administrators to fire a teacher arbitrarily before tenure is initiated, would make a difference.

Most teachers struggling with the growing political problems of teaching. Angry parents more resolute about being heard. Administrators burdened with increasing school site test scores, which they directly have little control over; and the students themselves, who have become more savvy about manipulating and deceiving uninformed parents and turning them against teachers doing the best that they can.
If not for the sheer amount of paperwork, most teachers flee the field because of the lawsuits, the ensuing grudge matches with parents, and the condescension of administrators who are looking out for their unprotected posts.

To top it off, many teachers clear their credential, yet fail to navigate the labyrinthine machinations of school personnel and lacking infrastructure. Most teachers, idealistic and optimistic, become jaded very quickly, struggling with increasing number of students who are not prepared for their enrolled grade level, accompanies by regulations which tie up their creativity and their control over their classrooms. And the unions, who siphon off a portion of a teacher's salary per month by force, do very little to improve the quality of a teacher's workplace.