Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a special professional development session on a snowy and icy day at PS 20 in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York. (Yes, my home neighborhood.) Even though I’ve technically been out of the classroom for three and a half years now, I still have the opportunity to visit schools on a regular basis. For this occasion, I got to see one of the best educators I’ve ever met facilitate a full room session about multilingual learners to teachers from across District 1. (Disclaimer: The facilitator also happens to be LuzMaria, my wife.)
I’ve always had the perspective that teacher professional development sessions had so much potential to not just demonstrate our capabilities, but to transform narratives about our work. Yesterday, I listened to teachers who work with different types of students all gather ideas about how best to address students’ needs. This became even more urgent after an influx of asylum seekers and other multilingual learners changed the shape of schooling for the district. The comprehensiveness and depth in their dialogue was remarkable to witness.
This all stands in far contrast to the narrative about teachers in more venomous circles.
Over the last few decades, pundits and policymakers have derided the professionalism of teachers because “accountability” or whatever. What it means to be a professional varies among different people. (While some attend to “professionalism” as comportment or dress, I’m focused on the elements that characterize the actual work.) Beyond the summers off quip, contrarians would say teachers don’t deserve to be seen as professionals, usually due to experiences they had in their childhood. They usually fail to mention that these end up being the one or two out of the 60-plus teachers they’ve had in their K-12 schooling.
Every profession has a subset of people who, for multiple reasons, don’t meet the implicit or explicit expectations of the profession. Yet, society rarely has questions about the professionalism of doctors, lawyers, police officers, or financiers.
For instance, when a doctor gets a diagnosis wrong, they get to call it “practice,” and society still allows for the medical profession to define the parameters for punishment. Meanwhile, public opinion has hit a point of disparate dissonance: a majority of the American public trusts their local school with their children. Yet, not only does the American public trust the teaching profession less, the poll shows that less than 40% of America would like their children to become teachers, a low since the poll first started. Much of that may stem from the current anti-truth movement calling anyone they disagree with “groomers” and pedophiles.
But more of that speaks to how America and it’s 13,000-plus localities constructed this profession. No matter how many degrees and certificates get, how many years of experience they accumulate, or student commendations they collect, American society looks at teachers and says “Oh, that’s nice!” but also, “How do you do it? Couldn’t be me!” “You and your union make the job easy, right?” and my personal favorite, “I couldn’t stand me when I was a child. How does that work out with 30 of them?!” In other words, even though many people thinks only a special set of people can do the job, they also think anyone can do it and artificial intelligence will replace teachers.
They don’t call it “artificial” for nothing, though.
So I’m sitting there in this professional development session, mostly women, mostly elementary school educators. Educators flow through pedagogical frameworks and theories with ease, using the language that helps them sift through rubbish and noise. They coalesce around classroom needs and approaches. Teachers collect themselves in different groups, trusting each other with their understood level of commitment to the work, facilitated by someone who brings a wealth of experience from multiple school levels and contexts in her own right. They work in small groups, large groups, and then individually, imagining how they’d do better not for sillier things like test scores, but for authentic student learning experiences.
I think back to those contrarians and say, “You couldn’t sit with us.”
Of course, largely due to the vast amount of information readily available on the Internet, a person could feasibly pick up the language, read up on the theories, and approximate what a good teacher sounds like in this setting. Not only would doing this require some time, it also requires a sense of know-how that YouTube can’t translate well. We can argue this for the “best” teachers, but we can also argue this for even the average teacher. As accountability systems pushed teachers to gain more certifications, the depth of knowledge became that much more daunting for the average person.
Do bad teachers exist? Of course. Does “bad” mean different things individually and in different collectivities? Yes. But I rebuke any idea that dilutes the work of teachers as professionals, especially as it relates to elementary school teachers and/or teachers of color. Elementary school teachers aren’t less professional for working with our youngest children. (Yes, women teachers comprise the majority of elementary school teachers.)
Black teachers aren’t less professional for attempting to speak in modes that children understand. Latinx, Asian, Native American, and other racially marginalized teachers aren’t less professional for speaking in the language their students speak or connecting to the cultures underpinning our students’ lives. White teachers aren’t less professional for working with children of color.
Oh, and leaving schools with majority Black and/or Latinx students for schools with mostly White students doesn’t make one more professional, either. Usually, it just makes the school better resourced.
As I walked out, I remarked to the facilitator about the evidence on the walls, the dedication people had to her workshop on NYC’s first snow day in almost two years, and ostensible community built within the room. She remarked how her team expected nothing less than a full room.
It’s a hallmark of the profession that, even when the whole profession seems under the weather, they still find ways to sit together this way.
The post You Couldn’t Sit With Us (An Observation about Teachers) appeared first on The Jose Vilson.
