President's Perspective
More than teaching
Nov 12, 2009 3:50 PM
Last month I went to the funeral of an 11-year-old girl. She’d been killed in a drunk-driving accident. Just a few days later, I visited a school where a 17-year-old had been shot and killed at dismissal time, to the horror of students and staff members.
Talking with the people at these two schools brought to mind my own personal experiences as a teacher. I had several students pass away under tragic circumstances, and in my discussions with these teachers, I recognized in them my own frustration and feelings of helplessness as I tried to explain the unexplainable to my students and help them make sense out of a world that clearly made none.
When something like this happens, the entire school community is affected, even those who do not have a direct relationship with the students who are lost. Teachers, by nature, are caretakers, with the same feelings of responsibility and guilt that accompany that role. They worry about how kids are taking the news and they struggle to help them cope and to get help for those who need professional counseling. Few of us are trained for such occasions, yet no teacher shirks it when the need arises.
These events hammer home what we all know to be true: teaching is so much more than test results. Sadly, there are those who think that teaching is only about tests and just don’t understand the nature of the job. Sure, we impart knowledge and work hard to prepare kids for college and the work force. But that’s just the most visible part of our complicated roles. The teachers and staffs who have to face these horrible tragedies inherently know that their first priority is to help their students heal.
Of course, we shouldn’t need tragedies to remind us that teachers are more than instructors. Day in and day out, we are mentors, confidantes, advisers, physicians, listeners. Many children walk through our doors with stories, some of which are difficult or heart-breaking. They need so much more than a pat on the back for doing well on a test.
Teachers go the extra mile for their students all the time, calling their homes to get them to come to school or running out during lunch to buy a warm jacket for a child who doesn’t have one, or just staying late to listen and comfort an anxious youngster. This is part of our work and will always be a part of our work, whether or not it can be measured.
Let me be absolutely clear. The challenges our students face are not an excuse for failure or the failure of their schools. Nor do they mean that teachers can shirk accountability for their students’ academic performance. On the other hand, we also can’t ignore the reality of such obstacles. Those who insist that our schools’ success is only as good or bad as the latest test scores are simply avoiding their responsibility to address all the conditions that affect children’s learning.
Ignoring our students’ social, medical, financial and personal situations will only prolong their academic problems, no matter how much we drill them on test-taking tactics. Regardless of the critics’ demands, we can’t teach, and children can’t learn, when they are feeling sick or hungry or worried about adult-size problems. Closing our eyes to this reality — in other words, continuing to worry only about the test scores and nothing else — only invites disaster. And waiting for that crisis to happen before providing help is not only penny-wise and pound-foolish, it is doing our kids and our educators a grave injustice.
Wouldn’t it be better to provide the ongoing support that our students, their families and their communities need before disaster strikes? That’s a big reason why I’m such an ardent advocate of community schools. Community schools are part of an integrated, comprehensive service delivery system for children and families. When a teacher senses that problems beyond the classroom are impeding a child’s progress, having an appropriate service for them or their family can mean the difference between a drop-out and a college applicant. Schools like these help teachers do what they struggle to do every minute of every day: meet their students’ needs, whatever they are.
If every community had a real community school, if every needy child and family had a community school to turn to, if we could take care of our children the way we would all hope them to be cared for, then the critics won’t have to worry; the tests will take care of themselves.
