Uh, gosh, commenter 1 — it spoke to me, as I finish up my master’s and prepare to student teach in the fall. I realize that I’m going into a slogan and feel-good heavy profession (especially at the K-6 level). But, I’m so not that person, not personally and certainly not in a classroom. So, it spoke to me.

Also, I think it points the way to what needs to change about the image of teaching. Less chicken soup, more substance. Less pride, more to be proud of.

Any profession has its Escalantes and Letourneaus. However, using these outliers should not be basis for determining professional standards. Angels and demons aside, teaching as a profession has suffered because tension between unions and administration; both sides create a race to the bottom in terms of professional standards and compensation. These bureaucratic systems lack the ability to assess teacher performance in a meaningful way. Teachers need to demand more from the representatives and administrators or risk becoming the product of a system that unwittingly seeks to infantilize them.

SIDE BAR: please see this site for a refreshing view of teaching. http://www.virginiaeducators.org/newlabor.html

In their own words,

“…Change may only come when enough of America’s teachers wake up to the fact that being inextricably linked to labor unions will never allow them to receive the respect and rewards they seek. A report by Carl Van Horn of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University underscores this point. He says, “Teachers are not the sympathetic group they were 20 years ago. They used to be perceived as a profession and now they are perceived as just a union.” Here’s the bottom line-teachers will never get the pay they deserve if they continue to be linked with organized labor!”

(Or he would have been, were Google Reader cooperating.)

Nail on head!

I’m somewhere along the lines of Q’s thinking. I see where you’re coming from, as you have been for the last year, to try and push the agenda to more professionalism, but every job is different, and every job is marketed differently. For instance, the Armed Forces are asked to “defend our country” even when they’re going into countries that may be allies of the United States. Nonetheless, they’re considered heroes, and are expected to conduct themselves with a sense of professionalism. That’s still there, no matter how many songs we write about them or times we salute the flag in their honor, they’re still expected to do the best job they can, right?

Nonetheless, because for many teachers, they can lose that morale when they’re in jobs like these, poetry and the arts can be used (maybe vaingloriously) to boost their morale, and in many cases, to continue to pursue that professionalism. Most of the veteran teachers I know (and I’m talking about a lot of them since most of the teachers in my school have a good 10+ years in the system) demand professionalism from their administrators and thus conduct themselves professionally.

Maybe this is just true in my school, or in my city for that matter, but we do see ourselves as professional educators, but we also need the humanities because it’s a job where many of us actually give a lot of ourselves. Not saying that you don’t, but you’re making an argument for separating the personal from the professional, which I respect. Yet, the way teaching has been marketed for us over decades now is that it’s not just about a salary and benefits but the chance to change someone’s life. The signs are all there. We can’t ignore the fact that it’s this human pull that makes so many people gravitate towards the job to begin with.

I think we need to find a medium, which is odd coming from me, I know. I’m all for professionalism, and I’m constantly trying to improve my craft, (another reason why I have you and others in my Google Reader). But I also knew coming in that this wasn’t a “professional” job. Maybe we need to redefine the teacher label and help develop professional standards.

I left teaching a year ago and took a corporate job. The people with whom I work are talented, smart, and exceedingly professional (and still manage to be fun, interesting people in the process). The job serves the Children’s Bureau’s efforts to review and continually improve the Child Welfare Program … a noble goal.

None of my co-workers write poems about the nobility of their calling.

I’m not saying you’re a bad teacher if you write poems, but my personal experience tells me that the best teachers are far less concerned with the noble calling than with getting the job done, and done well.

As for Q’s question about the intended audience here, I fear the worst: those who have ears to hear, let them hear. (Yep, a bit defeatist and unhelpful, I know.)

Q: I consider you to be a member of the the proverbial choir in this case, and thus not someone who benefits from hearing these words. Something that’s just a different brand of ra-ra fluff is as problematic as that which it decries.

Wow, I’m in a proverbial choir? It’s the first choir that’ll have me, that’s for sure.

Which words are the ones I can’t benefit from? The ra-ra ones or Dan’s? You’ll have to keep me updated on what I should and shouldn’t read.

If an allergy to ra-ra fluff is iin fact a form of ra-ra fluff, well, I guess I’m guilty as charged. But what exactly is *your* point here? Is it that teaching is a noble profession or that slogans about its nobility are sacrosanct?

@Dan: You have no failings as a blogger. Period. I am not being nice. This is true.

@ Jen: I apologize. I seem to have been unclear, which probably was not helped by my semi-hostile tone. What I was saying is that I see Dan as an agent of change (in a good way), but when he makes a point in such a way that the only people who will listen to it are already in full agreement, an opportunity has been lost. And yes, that expectation is absolutely unfair to Dan, who by the way was without exaggeration a primary influence on my own decision to become an educator (I’m just another 20-something neophyte here). My aim was to keep the dialog productive because I think unquestioned professionalism is absolutely an important goal.

So when I said you were a member of the choir, I merely meant that you were someone on the level with Dan’s point of view before you even read this post. You seem to think I was implying that you were a koolaid-drinking sheep, which I assure you was not my intent.

Frankly, I tend to cringe at any “noble calling, bla bla bla” rhetoric. But, I don’t consider it to be especially dangerous by itself. To pull a fully personal and anecdotal piece of evidence out of the air, my dad has been a classroom teacher (repeatedly turning down administrative positions) for over 30 years. He still works 50+ hour weeks, he’s always looking to better himself in the classroom, and he considers teaching to be his (noble) calling. I highly doubt he’d ever write a cheesy poem about it, but for me, he proves that we are not facing a dichotomous situation here. He might, however, take offense at anyone who considers his motivations to be suspect. That may be a vain reaction on his part, but I would team up with a faculty member like him any day of the week before I feuded with him, when his motivations really don’t affect my endgame.

Actually, I wrote a poem once. Well really, it was a rap about the multiplicative inverse. Figured it was the only way my kids would be able to recall that many syllables.

Not very noble, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I’ve been teaching/working for, hmmmm, 30 years. And the entire time I’ve advocated for year-round teaching (not necessarily with students) and higher pay/benefits. Professionalism comes with time to “be professional.” I love my summers off as much as the next person, but I would prefer time (without students) to work on innovative ideas, discussions with colleagues, and yes, even new forms of technology for the classroom. This is not a popular concept.

A couple of things running through my mind after reading (and re-reading) this post and all the comments:

1. If you want to feel good about yourself as a teacher, then do a good job. Engage, challenge and respect your students. While it is nice to hear from others that you are doing a good job, a true professional will do his/her job regardless. I don’t want to hear from other teachers how great I am; I want to see proof of my professionalism in the acievements of my students.

2. The concept of tenure, to a large extent, teachers to become complacent, resistant of change, resistant of progress. Remove tenure, remove the restrictive nature of steps-and-columns, and allow teachers to negotiate aspects of their remuneration. Then let’s see how long laggards (with respect to technology, constructivism, connectivism, and most other -isms associated with good teaching) stay around. I’m liberal most ways but a competitive market is good in this case.

3. I left my job teaching in SoCal in August 2000, partly because I needed a change and partly because I didn’t feel that I could side with my co-workers (who were threatening to strike) or with my district (by crossing the impending picket line). In the end, it didn’t matter since the grievance was settled with a minor (like, $500/year minor) increase in pay. I’m glad I left and I’ll never go back.

@ Eric: A good distinction, and one that I agree with. I was referring to (quite poorly, now that I read it again) the “poems and platitudes”. It is imperative that teachers are evaluated by other teachers or administrators who are themselves professional in their expectations and critiques, and that those teachers receive praise and criticism with similar reactions: this is an opportunity for me to improve.

Can you imagine the teacher’s-lounge banter that would ensue if a neutral third party came in and gave honest, constructive criticism to some of your most-tenured teachers?

It is so interesting to read teachers’ perspectives on this issue of professionalism. There is a parallel in the world of School Psychology in public education. There are some SPs who should have been fired many many years ago and everyone is just waiting for them to retire. Yet with the Union contract, they stay, and drag our profession’s name through the mud. I understand there is a shortage of SPs and teachers, but keeping ones who are clearly ineffective and unprofessional seems ethically wrong.

In a slightly different twist than normal, I had a senior who’s no longer in my class come by my room this week. I asked what she’s thinking about doing next. “A cop. And I”ll get to work summers, unlike you. Ain’t it true that you don’t work during summer?”

It was my first time hearing the suggestion that teachers don’t work during the summer and would be jealous of those who do. I think she was indicating money instead of professionalism, but it’s intrigued me.