Education Does Not Induce Rest

"There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." (Isaiah 57: 21)

Teachers are not wicked, are they? At least I did not think of myself as "wicked", yet being a teacher is one of the most restless and impeaceable professions, especially now as more is expected from teachers while providing them less.

Cal State Long Beach -- the classes that were supposed to help me become a great teacher did not do very much for, I must admit.

The credential advisor, Dr. L, was more interested in research and publishing than in preparing young teachers for the world. The State of California was already struggling with budget issues at the time, with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger riding the populist discontent into office. The next year, he would push a number of reforms, great in theory, poor in presentation, which would have protected unioned employeess paychecks while requiring teachers to put in five years before receiving tenure.

These issues, of course, belong to another blogpost.

As for Ms. L, the credential advisor who was supposed to shepherd from sheep to instructor, she was a restless type, herself. Demanding with no flexibility whatsoever, she would give students a failing grade if they turned in final projects one minute late.

She was also one of the biggest micromanagers I have ever met. She even admitted to me to my face that she styled herself like a hurried mother-hen, a woman who had to control the discussions and investigations of  her students. Group was something that she did not approve of in her seminars, as she had to be queen of the hill.

"I was covering for another colleague of mine," she told me during a required session that I had to have with her. "This instructor wanted the students to get together into groups, to go over the seminar question for the day. I was so frustrated with these students, they were going off into their little corners to review their ideas and their work, and all I could do was stand and watch the whole thing. I am like a mother hen, I want to cluck over everything that my little chicks are doing. I had to storm off into the hallway and cool off."

The need to "cool off" is something that every teacher needs, yet rarely gets. Trying to tie together thirty-six plus students into one lesson plan over thirty minutes can be a real challenge, even when they are willing to cooperate.

Since a cooperative, well-behaved class is no longer the norm, most teachers are stressed out, and out and out stressed!

One lady running a charter school in New York told her teachers: "The secret to success: you never sit down!" A teacher is expected to be on, and all time time. There is not down-time for a teacher, according to that teacher.

I lived in this unrest for a long time. I was convinced that it was normal, that the working experience was all about being worked up and turned about issues that are sometimes in your control, and sometimes they are out of control.

Education does not induce rest, and education can become a fools' errand when trying to draw out life and creativity from young people who are tempest-tossed with emotional, legal, and moral problems beyond a teacher's reckoning or calculation.

For the little over one year that I lasted at South Gate, I was a tired shell at the end of the day. I either accomplished very little, or  the little more that got done, I had to pour everything I had to get done what needed to get done. The students, many of whom were reading well below grade level, did not do their work, so grading papers was not as time-consuming as writing referrals or conferencing with parents, which I did many times in order to make some headway with students.

Going home was not a relaxing time for me, unless I had put out of my mind any knowledge or thought of what had happened at school that day, if I made the conscious decision not to care what would happen the next day. Of course, this routine wears on a man who really does not want to work at the school in the first place.

As a teacher, I have to rush students through the curriculum as quickly as I can without leaving anyone behind, but at South Gate, using the 4 x 4 block schedule, the students and I had no time whatsoever to review any concepts or lessons which they did not understand.

How can anyone learn if they are hustling from one issue to another, with no time to take in or review what they are learning? The pace of education, the demands due to the outrageous standards without support of flexibility, are driving teachers nuts and out of the profession altogether, while a growing number of students are just dropping out, since they have been passed on so much without any follow-through or expectation of mastery from the previous years in school.

"Not sitting down" cannot make up for the lack of standing up and stepping which previous years and teachers and students have failed to do over the years. Even if a teacher were to put in 36 hours a day to make the most of the students' diminished capacities (because of poor parenting and previous schooling), all the effort of one teacher's unending stress cannot undo the years of neglect and error.

All of the stress and upset in a classroom disturbs a teacher, yet leaves very little else for the student. Education must proceed from peace and a certainty of success, even if someone fails.