By Steve Giegerich and Joe Levine
Teaching has never been for the faint of heart, but today the job demands particular resilience, resourcefulness and commitment to young people. It also requires extensive apprenticeship in classrooms, grounded in deep theory. With the profession at a watershed moment, grappling with shortages and strikes, ¶¶Òőapp faculty, students and alumni discuss teachingâs challenges, reflect on how TC equips teachers to thrive, and offer ideas for empowering our teachers. This story appears in the spring 2019 issue of TC Today magazine.
[Read Teaching as an Ethical Calling, an essay by David Hansen, TCâs John L. & Sue Ann Weinberg Professor in Historical & Philosophical Foundations of Education.]
Part One: A Changed Landscape
Teaching today requires idealism, optimism and quality preparation â not âtrainingâ â to help teachers continue to respond to new challenges in the classroom.
Of all the students she has taught, Raven Hebert has stayed closest with a young man who once disrespected her for being black. Dave (not his real name) used to tell friends, within Hebertâs earshot, that black people lack the intelligence to teach. âI finally took him aside and asked, âDo you really believe that?ââ recounts Hebert (M.A. â06), a science teacher at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California. âHe said, âThatâs what my father says.â I said, âYouâre old enough to form your own opinions. What do you think?ââ Dave stopped making offensive comments. Eventually, he made friends with several black and Mexican students and bonded with Hebert.
QUICKENING PACE Whatâs teaching like? Imagine a party for 20 seven-year-olds. Now youâre with those kids six hours a day, and juggling extra help sessions, parentsâ emails, committee assignments, test prep. (Illustration: Gordon Studer)
If only solving racism were that easy. âHis friends liked me, so it was partly peer pressure,â Hebert says of Daveâs change of heart. Still, her experience suggests the challenges teachers face â and the impact they can have.
âTeachers are heroes,â says Jeffrey Young, Professor of Practice in TCâs Education Leadership program, and former Superintendent of Schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts. âDoctors save lives, but teachers help to create and shape them. What work could be more valuable?â
Hebert loves her job and hopes to retire as a teacher. But itâs no secret that the profession is in the midst of a crisis. As older teachers retire, younger people arenât replacing them. A by the Learning Policy Institute estimates that teacher demand (defined as annual hires needed) will top 300,000 by 2025 as supply dips under 200,000. In March, reported that in Oklahoma, 30,000 teachers have quit since 2013.
Meanwhile, during just the past two years, teachers have staged and walkouts in West Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky and California.
Reveta Bowers (Photo Credit: Andrew Zinn)
Teaching within Communities
âOther countries revere education and educators,â says Reveta Bowers, TC Trustee and former Head of School at the Center for Early Education in Los Angeles. âWe need to invest time, expertise and resources to promote the importance of this profession.â Schools should function as âcommunities that convene people to learn, celebrate and collaborate on understanding and addressing societyâs larger issues.â
âHow many years have teachers in these places worked in conditions that no other professionals would tolerate?â asks Young. âTwenty minutes for lunch, no quiet place to make a call or sit. Buying books, buying Skittles for math manipulatives. Scraping by at 2 percent pay raises, if that? Itâs like the movie Network. Theyâre mad as hell, and theyâre not gonna take it anymore.â
Certainly teaching salaries vary widely, from a mean of over $82,000 in Alaska and New York to below $43,000 in Oklahoma, Mississippi and West Virginia, where teachers often work extra jobs. But pay isnât the only issue.
Teachers and administrators say that more students are hampered by emotional and psychological problems, including those linked to poverty, violence, abuse and drugs. Yet teachers are held accountable for â and often evaluated based on â studentsâ standardized test scores.
âThe U.S. is trying to do something unprecedented in its history â maintain excellence with thoroughgoing equity,â says Michael Rebell, Professor of Practice and Executive Director of TCâs . âNew Yorkâs Regents say all children must meet challenging academic standards. Thatâs a noble aspiration, but it doesnât come cheap.â
With extra help sessions, emails from parents, committee assignments and test prep (which challenges teachersâ creativity to avoid âteaching to the testâ) added to evenings preparing lessons and grading assignments, âwork outside of class has quadrupled,â says (Ed.D. â15), who directs TCâs (CPET).
A Bad Rap
Yet perhaps most daunting for many teach.ers is the lack of public affirmation. âTeachers are not treated as knowledgeable and capable,â says Dirck Roosevelt, Associate Professor of Practice. âThey feel that disrespect deeply.â
âOther countries revere education and educators,â says Reveta Bowers, TC Trustee and former Head of School at the Center for Early Education in Los Angeles. âIn this country, education gets politicized in ways it shouldnât be. We need to invest focus, time, expertise and resources in order to promote the importance of this profession.â
ON TRACK Beyond their desire to save the world, teachers are powered by quality preparation. Grounding in theory is âwhat separates teacher preparation from teacher training,â says a TC graduate. (Illustration: Carlo Giambarresi)
(Ed.D. â02), Superintendent of Hawaiiâs public schools, believes teachers have been unfairly subjected to âa discouraging public discourse focused on their failure to solve the ills of society.â (M.A. â96), Superintendent of Schools for Camden, New Jersey, adds that while âlearning begins in the womb and at home, the weight falls on teachers to adjust for huge gaps in kidsâ early experiences.â
Yet despite these challenges, most teachers are buoyed by idealism, optimism and âa desire to save the world,â says Celia Oyler, Professor of Education â and also by quality preparation, which at ¶¶Òőapp is founded on the stances of social justice, curriculum and inquiry.
âWe affirm three core values in our teacher education programs,â says Kelly Parkes, Associate Professor in the Department of Arts & Humanities, who chairs TCâs Teacher Education Policy Committee. âA deep commitment to meeting the needs of all learners by recognizing their capacities and challenges; preparing teachers to be deliberate and reflective decision-makers; and shaping quality teaching by focusing on content and community.â
Kelly Parkes (Photo Credit: Erick Raphael)
Values to Teach By
âWe affirm three core values in our teacher education programs,â says Kelly Parkes, Associate Professor, Department of Arts & Humanities, and Teacher Education Policy Committee chair. âA deep commitment to meeting all learnersâ needs by recognizing their capacities and challenges; preparing teachers to be deliberate and reflective decision-makers; and shaping quality teaching by focusing on content and community.â (Photo: Erick Raphael)
Those principles âmap the landscape of learning for our teaching students and put experience and theory into context,â says CPETâs Lenger Kang. And in states like New York, they are reinforced by a rigorous teacher certification process. TCâs teacher education programs, for example, âinsist that our students spend hundreds of hours in the field â far more than the state requires â under the supervision of cooperating teachers,â says Aimee Katembo, Director of the Office of Teacher Education. The various TC programs currently place about 450 students each semester in the cityâs schools, while TC Zankel and Milman Fellows lend their expertise in music, science and other courses at the pre-Kâ8 in West Harlem.
Still other TC initiatives, like the Reimagining Education Institute, equip the nationâs mostly white teaching force with strategies for engaging a student population which is now majority of color. And the Collegeâs special education programs teach that âall kids can and will learn â we just have to figure out how to help them do it,â says (M.A. â03), Superintendent of Vermontâs Montpelier Roxbury public school district. âI left TC wondering if there is such a thing as a learning disability â kids just learn differently, at different paces. Iâm still driven by the belief of âwe canâ with every child.â
Ultimately, teacher preparation at TC appears to spark a particularly strong sense of commitment, particularly to urban teaching, and creates a pipeline for New York City schools.
DONâT CHALK IT UP TO âATTITUDEâ A student cusses her teacher out. Later she apologizes: Her father was shot. We need âtraining to look âbeneath the surface,ââ one educator writes. (Illustration: Jon Krause)
âGraduates from our TR@TC [Teaching Residents at ¶¶Òőapp], Peace Corps Fellows, Teacher Opportunity Corps II and Abby M. OâNeill Fellowship programs are committed to teaching in New York City public schools,â says Katembo. âAnecdotally, I can share that they remain passionate about teaching and often take on leadership positions. Peace Corps Fellow alumni have founded schools and are in city-wide leadership positions. For all programs, those who leave teaching tend to stay in education-related fields and often continue their studies.â
TC graduates who end up teaching in other states and countries also benefit from their field- work in New York City. âRegardless of where you end up teaching, our core stances become even more powerful when youâve learned them in the cityâs diverse and culturally vibrant classrooms,â Katembo says.
âMy professors at TC grounded me in theory, and thatâs sustained me,â says Billy Fong (M.A. â11), a fourth-grade special education teacher at New York Cityâs Central Park East II School and a TC clinical faculty member. âItâs what separates teacher preparation from teacher training. Training programs develop skills. TC prepared me to understand the theories behind those skills so that I can keep responding to new challenges in the classroom.â
Part Two: Those Who Can
In stories of eight TC alumni who teach, we learn that teachers are problem-solvers who model the curiosity, perseverance and resourcefulness we hope for in young students.
Part Three: Time for an Upgrade
From promoting self-care to rethinking standardized testing, thoughts from a group of TC-affiliated education leaders on helping teachers survive and thrive
In the United States, where public school funding stems from local property taxes, poorer districts have lower teacher salaries and fewer resources.
Witness Camden, New Jersey, with its century-old school buildings. To ensure basic services like air conditioning, Superintendent Katrina McCombs increasingly taps her academic budgets.
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KNOWLEDGE IS DIVERSE, TOO Asked to recall a birthday party or amusement park, a Mexican boy writes nothing. His teacher switches gears: Describe the farm animals where you grew up. (Illustration: Maria Nguyen)
FADING PRESENCE Students of color fare better when they work with teachers of color â but black public school teachers are under-represented and their numbers have declined in many cities. (Illustration: Michael Byers)
UNDER THE MICROSCOPE Test-based accountability has become âthe sole indicatorâ of childrenâs progress, one superintendent says. âWe tell teachers, âIf we teach what we think is right, students will do fine.ââ (Illustration: James Steinberg)
Equal funding may never happen in the worldâs largest capitalist economy, but Michael Rebell has led a national movement to level the playing field based on state constitutions that guarantee young people an education that will equip them for work and citizenship. In 2006, with Rebell as lead attorney, plaintiffs won New York City billions of dollars in additional school funding from the state. Before the 2008 financial crisis halted payments, much of it went to higher salaries for teachers. âThe court said quality teachers are schoolsâ most important resource,â Rebell says.
Teachers stage strikes largely in states where school finance suits were defeated or never filed, Rebell notes. âThe crowding in high-needs schools, the lack of mental health professionals â it takes its toll. Teachers love kids and want to help them. An environment to do that helps attract and retain higher-quality people.â
But creating such an environment requires addressing issues such as:
Workload and Self-Care
Teaching demands a unique level of emotional presence.
âI used to tell parents, âThink about how draining it is to run a two-hour birthday party with 20 seven-year-olds,ââ says former Cambridge, Massachusetts Superintendent Jeffrey Young. ââNow think of those same kids in one room, six hours a day â and youâre teaching them to read.ââ
Think about how draining it is to run a two-hour birthday party with 20 seven-year-olds.
Technology has added to teachersâ workload. In many schools, teachers must answer parentsâ emails and texts within 24 hours â and often âitâs from someone struggling with parenting,â says TC doctoral student and teacher Lisa McDonald.
TC Trustee Reveta Bowers, also a board member of Common Sense Media, calls digital media âa wonderful tool to expand teaching and learning,â but argues that schools must âeducate stakeholders about giving teachers time to respondâ to email.
. . . evenings and weekends, we donât email them.
In Vermontâs Montpelier Roxbury district, Superintendent Elizabeth Bonesteel is doing just that: âYou canât be present for your students if youâre working 20 hours a day. So evenings and weekends, we donât email them.â
Testing and Assessment
The 2002 federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) launched a new era of test-based accountability in education. Its backers sought better outcomes for children from poor and minority backgrounds, but instead, âtesting has become the sole indicator of a childâs progress,â says (Ed.D. â92), Superintendent of Schools in Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District on Long Island, and President of the New York State Council of Superintendents. âAnd the tests are flawed â they reflect what a student does on just one or two days.â Also, in failing to account for studentsâ backgrounds and circumstances, tests measure performance, not ability. âAnd basing the evaluations of teachers on unreliable assessments makes the profession a tough sell.â
The 2015 (ESSA), which replaced NCLB, seemed to signal a change. ESSA requires states to use some non-academic indicators â student engagement, school climate â in assessing schoolsâ yearly progress. However, in a report published by the National Education Policy Center, TC measurement evaluation expert Madhabi Chatterji warns that statesâ interpretations of ESSA may perpetuate inappropriate high-stakes testing. She urges states to avoid exceeding a testâs intended use or reported evidence and to apply expert technical review before using tests for accountability.
ASSIGNMENT: SELF-CARE Burnout afflicts a profession of idealists who want to help children and their families. A superintendent tells her teachers: âTurn school off and recharge with family and friends.â (Illustration: Ellen Weinstein)
Meanwhile, Lewis tries to âbe as creative as we can be in responding to state requirements for assessments.â Sheâs opened a Discovery Lab for all her elementary school students. âEvery child gets to do real exploration with real equipment. Itâs not a state requirement, but children go home talking about science. We tell teachers, âIf we teach what we think is right, students will do fine.ââ
Reveta Bowers, too, urges schools to explore alternative test prep: âWalk the neighborhood, show kids how buildings were built during World War II. Give them a city budget and ask what our taxes really mean. Focus on practical application of test-taking skills and use community partners who want to help.â
Michael Rebell (Photo Credit: John Emerson)
Putting Money Behind People
âIn the past, schools set tough standards and said, âIf you donât make it, so it goes,ââ says Michael Rebell, Executive Director of TCâs Center for Educational Equity. âNow we want to provide meaningful opportunities for all, but it doesnât come cheap.â For example, âteachers love kids and want to help them. An environment to do that helps attract and retain higher-quality people.â (Photo: John Emerson)
Working with Traumatized Young People
How can kids learn when they are struggling just to survive?
Camden, New Jersey, is among the nationâs poorest and most violent cities. Katrina McCombs, who has spent her career there as a teacher and an administrator, says her teachers âdeal constant.ly with childrenâs emotional and psychological burdens from violence, drugs, ill health, parentsâ incarceration. Our teachers say, âHow do I focus on instruction when kids are grappling with this?ââ
As a kindergarten teacher, McCombs felt so overwhelmed by kidsâ social and emotional issues that she enrolled at ¶¶Òőapp â in psychological counseling. She worked on developmental psychologist Jeanne Brooks-Gunnâs study of daughters whose fathers were absent. âI learned so much about how outside factors affect kidsâ ability to learn. I almost became a guidance counselor.â
Even in her relatively affluent Vermont district, Elizabeth Bonesteel reports that her students, too, increasingly struggle with severe mental health issues. Yet perhaps urban school systems can lead in creating solutions. Camden now trains its personnel in trauma-informed care such as restorative circles, in which children voice their fears and concerns. Teachers and staff also learn to understand when kidsâ behavior reflects problems at home.
We donât want our people to burn out.
âIt gets heavy, dealing with these issues while youâre trying to push kids to achieve,â McCombs says. âWe donât want our people to burn out.â
Building Community and Promoting Civic Engagement
Schools are theaters for societal issues â poverty, health disparities, cultural divides. But they should also be âcommunities that educate children, teachers, staff, parents and grandparents,â Reveta Bowers says. âThey should convene people to learn, celebrate and collaborate on addressing societyâs larger issues.â
Bowers believes that transformation starts with âdeveloping mission and value statementsâ and modeling âhabits of heart and mind.â
In Hawaii, Superintendent Christina Kishimoto is leading just such an effort. This fall, Hawaii will unveil a draft 10-year strategic action plan created with input from parents, students, teachers, staff and local business and industry. The effort includes (HA), a framework to promote values such as âAlohaâ (making others feel welcome; sharing the responsibility for collective work) and âHawaiâiâ (understanding and using Hawaiian words; learning the names, stories, and importance of places in Hawaii; learning to apply Hawaiian traditional worldviews and knowledge in contemporary settings). H. also emphasizes łŸŽÇâo±ô±đ±ôŽÇ (storytelling) and łŸŽÇâo°ìłÜâałÜłóČčłÜ (genealogy) as instructional practices.
This fall, Hawaii will unveil a draft 10-year strategic action plan created with input from parents...
Of course, modeling values means discussing them, and many schools and districts now tell teachers to avoid potentially controversial subjects. Thatâs unfortunate, says Michael Rebell, because âwhen teachers talk candidly about important issues, students develop a substantive interest in political and historical issues.â
In fall 2018, Rebell, the author of (University of Chicago Press), filed a lawsuit on behalf of Rhode Island students charging that diminished access to civic education poses a threat to the Founding Fathersâ democratic ideals. The suit reiterates that only 23 percent of American students achieved a âproficiencyâ level on the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress civics test.
Yet, Bowers says, âthe tragic shootings in schools are showing people how important schools are. And a new generation is realizing they have rights, too.â
Solving the Teacher Shortage
Among the many reasons why young people arenât becoming teachers is the sticker price of getting there. In 2016, the for college graduates who borrowed was $37,172. In a , student loan debt for people who earned a masterâs in education averaged $50,879.
Lorna Lewis, the Plainview-Old Bethpage superintendent, calls for creation of a funded Kâ12 teaching pipeline: âYoung people graduate with all this debt. We should pay for college tuition and forgive loan debt in return for teaching service in difficult-to-staff schools.â
Reveta Bowers suggests also approaching the teacher shortage from the other end of the pipeline. Thirty-five years ago, at The Center for Early Education, she convened a small group of studentsâ grandparents to help with school programming. Today, Grandparents Day there draws more than 650 attendees.
âI hope older people come to teaching as a second career, or as early retirees,â Bowers says. âThey have so much to teach about different cultures and lived history.â
But perhaps most concerning, Lewis says, is the shortage of teachers of color. Research shows better outcomes for students of color who work with teachers of color â but a by The Education Trust found that while Latinx and black students make up 43 percent of New York Stateâs public school enrollment, only 16 percent of their teachers are Latinx or black. In 2015, the reported a decrease in black public school teachers in nine cities â including the three largest U.S. school districts â between 2002 and 2012.
Children of color need to see teachers who look like them
âChildren of color need to see teachers who look like them,â says Lewis, who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica and majored in physics. She adds that, as a black woman, âIâm unique in my district â I have no colleagues of color.â
Lewis devotes time and resources to recruiting people of color, and she salutes efforts like TCâs Teacher Opportunity Corps II (TOC II), which supports aspiring teachers of color as they navigate the TC experience, internships in New York City schools and job searches.
Katrina McCombs (Photo Courtesy of Katrina McCombs)
Teachers as Caregivers
As a kindergarten teacher, Camden, New Jersey Superintendent McCombs felt so overwhelmed by childrenâs social and emotional issues that she enrolled at TC â in psychological counseling. She worked on developmental psychologist Jeanne Brooks-Gunnâs study of daughters whose fathers were absent. âI learned so much about how outside factors affect kidsâ ability to learn. I almost became a guidance counselor.â
Bringing Back the Joy
Ultimately, saving teaching may entail rethinking educationâs purpose.
âI went into teaching because I wanted someone to pay me to talk about literature, but I realized almost immediately itâs about lighting intellectual, social and emotional fires in young people,â says Jeffrey Young. âThe sense youâve made a difference in someoneâs life is profound.â
âWe need to bring back music and the applied arts â to teach crafts, industries and skills that benefit all people, and create reasons to be in school for kids who find reasons not to be,â Reveta Bowers says.
âWe have to make teaching and learning happier and more joyful,â says Lorna Lewis. To get there, Young says, national education leaders must use â to borrow some teacher terminology â their outside voices.
âWe need to speak up about the critical importance of teachers to quality of life, development and growth in our country and world,â he says. âThe most important interactions in a school district arenât in the superintendentâs office or the school board room â theyâre between teachers and kids in classrooms, hallways, playing fields, performance spaces. Nothing matters more than the relationships built between students and their teachers.â