3 things that make teaching school harder than it should be

I loved being a teacher. After a rather rough first semester of adjusting from the newsroom to the classroom at the age of 44, I had as much fun as is legally possible in the great state of North Carolina for the next 17 and a half years.

My classroom, Room 615 at Draughn High School, was a place of intense concentration, analysis, and discussion, but it was also a place of laughter, of jokes, of hijinks, and, as often as possible, of dancing — sometimes in a conga line, occasionally on desktops.

The administrators who worked with me were, with one brief and notorious exception, dedicated and caring professionals who always treated me with the utmost respect, and who always looked out for their students and for their staffs.

So … no axes to grind, no scores to settle, just a desire to share what I see as three large issues that are negatively impacting teachers and students in the public schools of our state.

Standardized testing

Gradually, then with increasing speed and power, over the last 15 years, those who implement education policies and priorities in our state have chosen to worship unabashedly at the Baal-like altar of standardized test scores.

Everything that a student has thought, written, discussed, examined, practiced for a whole semester or an entire year means absolutely nothing if he or she does not perform well choosing A, B, C or D in the course of two to three hours in front of a computer.

In the case of high school English, with which I am most familiar, these end-of-course tests consist of several lengthy reading passages — chosen to be as obscure, obtuse, and mind-numbing as possible — followed by the proverbial multiple choice questions.

A couple of years ago, the 12th-grade version of this test opened with not one but two lengthy selections written by the late Irish writer, James Joyce. A great artist he may have been, but Joyce is difficult for many graduate school students to understand, much less 17- and 18-year-olds, many of whom have no plans to go on to a four-year college or university.

Yet the state chooses to test all students not on their ability to communicate in the workplace, not on their ability to read an instructional manual, not on their ability to write a quick professional memo, but on their ability to interpret James Joyce.

Such “testing” of all students, no matter what their career goals, is a fool’s errand, and yet it begins early and continues right up through graduation day. If the scores from such testing do not then meet an arbitrary line of performance or growth, dire consequences await all.

This love affair with standardized test scores ties directly into a second area in which the dynamics of public education have gotten badly askew — student and parent accountability.

Accountability

If young Jody has just broken up with his girlfriend, or stayed up most of the night playing video games or, more sympathetically, suffered the loss of a grandparent, odds are pretty high he will neither focus nor do well on his state-mandated final exam.

Yet when the scores come back — and an unfortunate teacher can have several “Jodys” in one class, as well as others who are simply bored, unmotivated or uninterested — the teacher must take responsibility for them all.

It is not the student’s responsibility.

It is not the parents’ responsibility.

It is the teacher’s responsibility.

Education would function best as a stool strongly supported by three legs — teachers, students and parents. Instead, it far too often teeters perilously on only one leg, that of the teachers.

This lack of student/parent accountability is equally frustrating in regard to student discipline and striving to ensure that students accept responsibility for their behavior and for their actions.

Far too many parents are passive, protesting that, “We can’t do a thing with that boy. He won’t listen to us anymore.”

Others actively undermine the disciplinary process, questioning the right of teachers or administrators to impose discipline or to insist that all students be governed by the same set of rules.

This lack of acceptance by students and parents of their responsibilities, and the subsequent undermining of discipline, leads directly to the third great issue confronting public education — a generation addicted to “smart” phones and unable to focus on the tasks at hand.

“But it’s my phone …”

A dozen years ago, cellphones were at worst a minor distraction in the classroom. The advent of the “smart” phone changed all that and not in a positive way.

Yes, smartphones can be used in learning activities in class. And yes, smartphones can provide instant access to information from a myriad of sources and for a myriad of reasons.

But the truth is that the vast majority of cellphone use that goes on during the course of the school day has absolutely nothing to do with learning or with the curriculum or with anything even remotely constructive.

Many young men — often bright, capable, and intelligent — are addicted to video games which cell phones give them the opportunity to play incessantly. And no, “addicted” is not too strong a word. They are as addicted to their games as my old man was to unfiltered Camels.

Many young women — often bright, capable and intelligent — are addicted to social media, wanting to spend every moment Tweeting, Snapchatting, Instagramming and Facebooking, fearful that someone, somewhere will do something and they will miss it.

And again, “addicted” is in no way too strong a word.

Two problems arise here.

One is simply keeping students off their cellphones over the course of a 60- or 90-minute class, a task complicated by the fact that many parents see nothing wrong with texting or even calling their children during class.

The other problem runs deeper and is far more difficult to solve. How to get students who are used to a different source of distraction every few seconds to focus on reading a short story, analyzing a poem, or writing a coherent essay.

It ain’t easy. And it grows more difficult every day.

Summing Up

As noted in the beginning, I loved being a teacher. It was rewarding, satisfying, any positive words you choose to use.

I loved my students, loved the people I worked with, loved the people I worked for.

But, now that I am outside the profession, I can proclaim that changes need to be made.

Testing methods need to be developed that truly show what a student has learned and whether he or she is ready to enter college or the workforce.

Responsibility for test scores and for student success and behavior cannot rest on the overloaded backs of teachers alone. Parents, and even more importantly, students themselves, must be held accountable.

Finally, and this may be the vain wish of an old man reared in a different time, cell phone addiction needs to be broken and students need to refocus on higher skills, such as reading, writing, analysis, and creativity.

Teaching is one of the hardest jobs in the world, a lesson I learned well over the past 18 years. But it’s also one of the very best jobs in the world, and I wish a happy and successful new school year for all those who will be returning to the classroom in just a few weeks.

Gaston Gazette columnist Bill Poteat can be reached at wlpoteat@yahoo.com. This column was first printed in August 2017, Poteat's first year out of the classroom and back into the newsroom.