Why I Can't Teach

By all accounts, I should be a teacher. I was the kid who forced all the other kids on the cul-de-sac to spend scorching summer afternoons sitting in a row of mismatched chairs and doing the assignments I dreamed up. Circulating the room, I mimicked the remarks I had heard my teachers make – gentle criticism, quiet praise, and calm reprimands. I was also the student continually praised for leaning over to help other students, whether they asked for it or not. I could be counted on to wrangle a quality project out of even the most motley group. Besides, it's supposed to be in my blood. I come from a family of teachers, five of them to be exact. I watched my mother go though the credentialing program and lug crates of books into her first classroom.


The year I graduated from college, I tallied up all these qualifications (including the fact that I absolutely adore school) and enrolled in a teaching program. The application was easy. Since I had spent numerous summers wiping noses, tying shoes, consoling criers, talking to parents about sticky issues, and managing the mayhem that is summer day camp, I had a plethora of crisis control scenarios to draw on. I was in and prepared to be transformed into the most inspiring, creative educator since Ms. Frizzle.


I still remember the thrill of the first day of student teaching. Walking down the elementary school hall, I delighted in the scent (something akin to play dough), the neat rows of books, and the sweetly clumsy student art stapled to bulletin boards. I knew that group of fourth and fifth graders were partially mine to influence, guide, and teach. The sense of responsibility and purpose was nearly overwhelming. I couldn't wait to open the door and find them sitting there, my first class.


What awaited me was a worksheet sweatshop. Thirty eight to ten year olds bent low over their desks, their pencils working furiously. They glanced up only to check the list on the chalkboard of the six practice book pages they were supposed to complete before lunch. Occasionally, a student stood up to walk to the trays at the back of the room and deposit a finished worksheet. Interruptions were quickly stifled by the teacher, who sat at the front of the room wielding a stamp and a stapler like a judge wields a gavel. I swear she had talons instead of fingers curled around that teddy bear stamp. The finished worksheets were redistributed throughout the room with red pen marks, a red stamp, and, for the lucky ones, tickets. A's were rewarded with three tickets, B's with two, and C's with one. Everyone else went without. I would soon discover that my chief job as student teacher would be grade book keeper, second official grader with stamp and red pen privileges, and grand high ticket distributor.


I sat in the back of the class, dressed in fresh-pressed slacks and a blazer, wanting to cry or puke or both. School had never been this much of a nightmare for me. Yet, even during the dark days in that modern classroom driven by test scores and ruled by massed produced curriculum, I made connections with my fellow refugees. There was the boy who always got F's on every worksheet but had a wicked sense of humor and an unbreakable heart. He always knew when another classmate was upset. He knew when to make them laugh with his vaudevillian antics and when to console them with words beyond his years. There was the girl who stubbornly struggled with every concept, pouting at her worksheets as if the hid their secrets from her on purpose. She had a fabulous sense of style and decked herself out in glitter, cowgirl boats, faux fur coats, dangling star earrings, jaunty caps, and once a pink feather boa. As I walked around the classroom pretending to help with their worksheets (some so poorly constructed that it took me a few minutes of rifling through the teacher's edition before I could puzzle out what they were asking the student to do), I slowly discovered the traits and histories that made each student unique.


Then, I made a big mistake. I feel in love with each and everyone of them. Even the trouble maker, whose roguish grin and one cocked eye brow could have rivaled those of James Dean. Even the girl who could barely read and came to school with uncombed hair and an empty stomach because she had to get breakfast for her younger siblings. It was no longer about me and my life-path. It was about them. They were getting lost under the blanket of standards, Scantron sheets, and skill drills.

I thought about them as I sat in the teachers' meeting, while the fourth grade team spent hours puzzling over the graphs and charts spit out by the test database. “What does this mean? What is this number here?” The teachers cried in frazzled voices. “What can I do?” I thought beginning to plan my four measly lessons to punctuate their year of worksheets. I decided to focus most of my energy on a writing lesson; a lesson without fill-in-the-blanks or right answers or any mention of obscure grammar rules. I created a writing assignment that asked them to explore their deepest wish. At first, they looked at me like I was crazy. I played on my craziness, a lá Frizzle, using it to make them laugh as I sent them back to their seats to write more, to go deeper. They had little concept of quality. They only knew of finished and unfinished, right and wrong. So, we toiled over their writing and we talked about how hard it is to write something meaningful that comes alive for the reader. It was frustrating, but electrically so.

In the end, I learned that Jesse, a little pixie of a girl with a perpetual juice mustache, wished other people could understand her diabetes and that she wouldn't have to miss so much school when she had low blood sugar. Children do want to learn. I learned that Jake, a nonchalant boy who seemed too cool to care in his trendy skater clothes, wished his awesome, guitar playing older brother didn't have to go to college because he didn't know how to tell him how much he would miss him. Children do care and have complex feelings. They taught me that even young kids struggle with big issues like economic hardship and cultural barriers. They want to stay home to help mom with the babies and they wish their parents knew enough to help with their homework. One little girl, who hardly spoke because of her accent, wished her classmates knew that she did want to be their friend.

Tears welling up, I showed the essays to my cooperating teacher. We had decorated them with gift wrap and ribbon. I presented them to her like Christmas gifts, a piece of each of her students in their own words. Smiling, she warned me that I should enjoy doing fun projects now before I had to do real lessons all the time. She acted as if the students had been cutting out snowflakes or gluing glittered macaroni to paper plates rather than learning to translate emotions and experiences into writing. I didn't share my work or teaching philosophy with her again. I just ran the photocopy machine and read from the textbooks like she asked. Real lessons.

Yet, I connected with the kids whenever I could. We discussed readings in relation to their lives. I learned that one student's neighbor regularly called him a “beaner.” We wrote stories and did illustrations. They had wild imaginations that just need some dusting and coaxing after years of TV and bubbling. In the end, I had to leave them and return to my college classroom, where fellow student teachers shared similar tails from the trenches.

My second student teaching assignment was worlds better. The zany, former art teacher allowed me to teach the students about social action during a self-designed unit on Clara Barton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and other historical figures. The second-third grade class held more than its share of broken families and troubled students but, again, I fell for all of them. Here, school was a string of experiments, play, and imaginative projects. The students regularly moved around the class and voiced their ideas.

Yet, there was an air of fear and unease throughout the campus. We acted like vigilantes hiding our ideals and opinions, acting on them only when the doors of the classroom closed. Teachers were suspicious of other teachers. A young fifth grade teacher who had designed inner city social programs was fired. I watched her clear out her classroom, saw her stacks of abandoned books in the hallway, heard her whisper through tears that maybe it was better this way. She was tired of fighting the system for what she knew was right.

Waves of pink slips washed through the district. Schools were closed. Afraid for their livelihoods, teachers who had come to the school to practice experience-based constructivism dug textbooks out of their cupboards and redistributed them to the students. Men and women with five years or more of higher education, closed their mouths and did what they were told and only really taught in secret.

I emerged from the credentialing program with glowing recommendations and nagging doubts. For the second year in a row, the wave of pink slips and budget cuts have flooded education leaving the job database washed clean. Only a few odd jobs with strange qualifications linger like roof tops or cars lodged in trees. Without a class, I can't teach. Yet, I am left wondering if I could teach even with one.

“Wait five years,” my education professors say. “Pray Obama sorts education out, repeals NCLB,” people promise better times. I know I will make it. I'll find other things to do. After all, I am a bossy, smart girl. But what about Jake and Jesse and all the kids I came to love? Where will they be in five years? Can their imaginations, emotions, and individuality survive years of education sucked lifeless by meticulous standards and score-driven labeling? I may not be able to teach, but I pray to God that they will still find ways to learn.