There is no child psychologist who will tell you that children thrive amid chaos and uncertainty. Children need stability, regularity, continuity. And yet every year, we shake up their lives at will. We fire the newest teachers, increase class sizes and play musical chairs with teachers all over the district. Schools struggle to plan, to build, and each school’s knowledge base is thrown to the wind.
Bita Nazarian, principal at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, remembers what happened last year. In the middle of the year, she felt she had a crack team of educators, both veteran and rookie, at her school. James Lick was humming with possibility and esprit de corps. But then the March 15 pink slips came around. Fourteen of her best young teachers were given notice, and morale went through the floor. For the rest of the school year and through the summer, these teachers had to keep one eye on the classroom and one eye on job possibilities elsewhere. The entire school, especially students, felt this acute instability until August, when most were hired back. But by then the damage was done….
How can we hope to attract and keep talent in this profession when, at every step, we make it so difficult, so insecure, so unvalued?
Yes, the school community becomes like a family for the students, even more so these days with all of the dysfunction in their family lives. I taught at-risk kids in an impoverished area on the Border and it amazed me how affected even my 18-year-olds were about politics and change. The older students always seem to find out what’s going on and they worry.
The first few months of my first year there, they tested me every which way, lol. I figured it was to be expected but I soon realized what was really going on. They had so many teachers come and go that they were leery about bonding with a new teacher. When another new teacher left before December, they asked me what was wrong with them, and why no one stuck around. So sad. And so cynical — one of the girls told me they’d place monetary bets at the beginning of the year on how long the new teachers would last. (lol, she wouldn’t tell me what the odds were on me so they were probably high and I made someone some money! I was the only white teacher who lasted.)
Teachers aren’t robots who can be interchanged without effect. The powers-that-be don’t seem to understand that. Yes, they come with a skills set in their subject matter but each teacher brings a philosophy, personality, and individual experiences that direct teaching methods and interaction with students. The kids come to know what to expect.
Which one of us would like to have a new boss every year — or several new bosses directing and overseeing our work? It’s disruptive for adults but disastrous for kids. They need continuity.
If I had a particularly difficult/academically deficient group of kids in a particular year, I would trace back their English-Language Arts instruction history to elementary school to see if I could find out what went wrong. It just about always revealed teacher upheaval in middle school, the critical years that focus on grammar and writing skills.
A lack of continuity in teacher expectations and methods during those years had an extremely negative impact on the rest of their secondary education. There were times when I had to get out the middle school grammar texts/workbooks and teach sentence structure and paragraph construction to Seniors before I could expect them to master multi-paragraph essays, let alone short stories. SO sad.
It’s easy to say that teacher continuity shouldn’t be a big factor in student success and that older students should be able to self-actualize. That’s true, and the bright, self-motivated students who come from a stable environment will succeed no matter how often the teaching staff changes. Sadly, though, there are fewer of those students and many more for whom school provides their stability and a consistent staff who knows them provide the extra help, encouragement, and mentoring that they need to have a chance of success.
The Greatest Generation for whom no problem was too tough to tackle is going, going, gone. We’re left with mediocre and it shows in what are our priorities. Maybe we should outsource education and stop pretending we really care.
California has overspent its bank account year after year. Now, Cal. is complaining that there is a shortage of money? Larry