Stranger in a Strange Land

My teaching career has not been an easy one.  Rather than a smooth superhighway of success and growth, mine looks more like a heavily rutted logging track.  My supervisors pick on me regularly, while at the same time parents and their children love my work. 

We cherish the individuality of our students, why can't we do the same for teachers?

My supervisors expect me to fit into a very specific mold.  I'm not suppose to require all the students to pay attention.  I'm not supposed to care when students break my rules.  (In fact it would be better if I didn't have rules at all.) I'm not supposed to give consequences when students misbehave.  I'm not supposed to require all the students to participate in class (in other words, do the work) if they don't want to.  I'm not supposed to ask for silence before giving instructions.  I'm not supposed to restrict the bathroom privileges for older (grade 3 and up) students.  I'm not supposed to give students suggests on how their work could be better.

You know what?  Doing all of these things makes me a great teacher.  I am honest with my students, and I take pride in that honesty.  If something is not right, be it academic work, or behavior, we work on making it better.  My goal is to teach students, not to entertain them.  I know why my methods of instruction work and the science they are rooted in.  The love I have for my students is demonstrated with congratulating their accomplishments and challenging them to strive for excellence.

Parents love this.  After school I tutor students privately, and each year I receive more and more requests for lessons.  In the past week alone, I have added six new students.  It has become quite the contortionist act to schedule them all.  I do no advertising, all of these after school clients come from word-of-mouth referrals.  Some of them don't need tutoring any more, but continue on anyway.  When I ask why, they say that they really enjoy how I teach and what they learn.

But because I don't look like the other classroom teachers, I am somehow deficient.  I should use the crappy materials "because the kids like it."  I should let the kids do what they please "because otherwise they will feel stressed."  Every time I try to explain what I'm doing and why, I am shouted down.  Every time I point out the disconnect between their requests and what my private clients say, I am shouted down.  Every time I show these supervisors the accomplishments of my students, they are dismissed out-of-hand and then I'm shouted down.

I'm an intellectual drowning in anti-intellectual flood.  Somehow I must keep swimming.  Sometimes I feel like Hamlet, only I'm not questioning my continued existence.  I'm questioning whether I should hold to my ideals.  I take solace in these guys.

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -- Albert Einstein.

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.