Is the Great American Teacher Dead

A Response to the article Is The Great American Teacher Dead?

I recently read the article, Is the Great American Teacher Dead? I found this article to be fascinating, as I work with many Elementary school teachers. I also am currently attending college, and I watch my children as they navigate their years in school. I could easily see and agree with many of the points the author John Ivers stated. I will focus on the lack of deep intellectuals, the lack of luster in teaching, and culture in the classroom.

John Ivers mentions that Anthropologists from other parts of the world came to America and focused their time on reviewing our colleges. Their finding was that colleges in the United States of America are not producing critical thinkers and that the learning process is boring. I had to chuckle a little because I could have told them that. The only time I feel I have had a real deep thinking experience was when studying certain religious topics, or discussing critical moments in history. The rest of what I learned was just facts without the topics reaching further than the surface of the brain to recall those facts. I feel that online learning sadly perpetuates this lack of in-depth conversation even more than in-person learning. Good articles are being read, but the lack of real discussion on them is saddening. In our culture, there is also the fact that stating differing views is considered biased, homophobic, or some other slanderous term, so many people just choose not to share their thoughts.

As far as college possibly being boring, I couldn't agree more. I only had one exceptionally engaging class and that is because the professor was so engrossed in her topic that she would read the stories with the voice of someone who cares deeply about the material. She jumped onto the desk to drive home the importance of the words she was reciting. Unlike my Anthropology class where I literally head bobbed every day for an hour straight with boredom, I was awake and excited to learn more from my energetic history professor. As a Paraprofessional, I can go into many Elementary classrooms and see teachers in action. I have to say, I have seen a variety of styles, half of which I would say are lacking luster and enthusiasm and the other half are fully engrossed in the subjects being taught. I think some of the reason for this, is teachers are tired. They used to love the topics they presented to these young minds and wanted to explore all the many thoughts behind them. However, they ran into all the struggles associated with teaching and it slashed the desire to become emotionally connected to what they are teaching. Thank goodness there are still many teachers who have a passion and pass that on through their teaching.

The last main point to discuss is that of culture in the classroom. Just 5 years ago this topic would have looked a lot different than it does now. A quote I enjoyed was "Could it be that questioning the cultural self-evidence of things might facilitate students being able to better withstand the constant bombardment of culturally created false needs, irrationally based embarrassment, and socially induced

insecurities." In this regard bringing different cultural information into the classroom would be fantastic. Helping kids and young adults overcome perceived issues from their own race, gender, and social-economic status by seeing others overcome hardships in even more challenging circumstances than what most Americans would face these days. Unfortunately involving culture has taken on a different form than this. In recent years, adding culture to schools has taken on a different approach. Instead of bringing culture in to help children overcome hardships, it is being brought in to validate hatred and oppression. Thank goodness I work in a school where the information being brought in is meant to help overcome hardship, but I have still seen the opposite effect occur. 

Last week I was helping a 2nd-grade student with her reading assignment. We were reading a short story about Gandhi and how he was treated in India for being dark-skinned. We read account after account of how badly he was treated and then did a worksheet on it. After doing the worksheet, I had my student work on building her reading fluency by having her read a list of words. One of the words was "white" she started to punch the paper on the word and I asked her what was wrong. She said that white people were bad. I realized that this was stemming from the story we had just read, so I was able to let her know that it wasn't all the white people who were bad. This example showed me how careful we need to be when it comes to introducing culture to young minds. They need to be exposed to a large variety and there needs to be a clear understanding taught on the matter. This is now a political battle and must be treated carefully and parents need to be informed on what is being discussed so they can also address this in their homes.

As you can see, no answer is as easy as making people talk more to encourage a deeper thought process. Nor is it simply make school more enjoyable and get the teachers to care about what they are teaching. It is also not simply adding culture to our schools. The great American teacher is alive but should be added to the endangered species list because the great teachers are harder and harder to find.