Nathanial I really like your post. What I see is going on right now is we are attracted to careers that pay the most whether it be football,an actor, a CEO. Its the money and the status of that career that society is saying is the way to go. Where would each and everyone of us be without teachers? Uneducated, yet the most important career is not given a valued place in society. When teachers continue to receive such low salaries, and have to pay out of pocket expenses for classroom supplies and receive little recognition do we not get it why they leave the profession? Now take an inner city poverty stricken child with parents that have addictions who but the teacher will be there for them to be a mentor, friend and inspire in them hope that with an education they can get out of that mess?  As a nurse I spent time in a inner city school. When the students came to my office for their needs I would ask them what they wanted to be. 9 out 10 said gangster. What we seein the media glorifies the young minds. When I explained to them gangters get paralzed a life in a wheelchair where their hommies don't know them or dying of a bullet is an awful painful way to go I would tell them that the next time I saw them I wanted them to give me a career that they wanted to be in and how they were going to achieve this? Needless to say I was fired because it wasn't my place to counsel these youngsters. I did this while administering first aide. Whether in teaching, or nursing what happened to caring and not the dollar? That's why we have a boken society.

Nathaniel,

Thank you for your post. I just spent the summer teaching in a church-based summer school on the west side of Chicago, and it gave me a slight glimpse of the courage, determination, and love that being a good teacher requires. I felt awful to have ever thought that someone was "just a teacher."

One teacher I met articulated exactly what I imagine many teachers felt when she told my group that teaching takes "every ounce of her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength day in and day out. It's the most challenging and rewarding job I could imagine." As I start my consulting job in one month, I look at my two teacher roommates with an immense amount of respect and admiration.

I agree that our society needs a shift in our expectations, on multiple levels. I've recently been inspired by some of Jawanza Kunjufu's writings, in which he argues that the best thing we can do for an inner-city student is have high expectations for his/her success. Sounds like this applies to both students and teachers.

Nathaniel,

Excellent post. The term one of my college professors (Leonard Krasner) used regarding this is the "self fulfilling prophesy." As someone who facilitates an advocacy group of people with developmental disabilities and also works as as a staff trainer, I have my frustrations and moments of doubt. Plus, there are the comments of people who tell me what a noble sacrifice I'm making to do this kind of work while their eyes seem to say that I won't get far regarding training people with developmental disabilities to be better at speaking up for themselves. And, in my staff trainer role, one of the places I work is with inner city young people, most in their twenties and often single mothers on public assistance who wish to escape from that system and become direct care workers, and in some cases eventually supervisors.

I cannot afford to give up on any of these people. Society cannot afford to minimize the efforts of the direct care workers, teachers, social workers, or counselors who work in the trenches with people with HIV, substance abuse problems and who have often had little hope in their lives. For only when the people in the trenches help give hope to the hopeless and help them believe in themselves can we make better communities and each do our part to create a better world.

This effort requires the work or support of all of us, whether it be supporting people with disabilities, or people who are disabled because of virtue of the social and economic conditions they come from, including prison, and by supporting the people who help these people help themselves.

Hi Nathaniel,

I appreciate your bringing attention to this teacher's article, which was thought-provoking.  I'm not sure I understand this "societal expectation" framework you've set up, though.  Sure, I think there's an expectation that educated young people will to go into professions that are empowering and well-compensated, so you might say society expects them not to go into teaching in the first place.  But Teach for America expects them to go into teaching, and Teach for America is increasingly an influential part of our modern society, so it stands to reason that many are now doing so.  As for the amount of time that teachers spend teaching, if they are burning out quickly, people will come to expect that, but I don't think there is a societal bias telling green-behind-the-ears teachers how they should feel about continuing in their jobs.  After all, they chose their jobs.  The point of expectations is clearly secondary to the fact that teaching is miserable.  If you make a habit of expecting the sun not to rise in the morning, eventually you're going to have to shift that expectation based on the evidence: teachers keep quitting, and the sun keeps rising.

Some other evidence?  Poor urban minority kids keep on failing, whether we expect it or not.  What is going to shift our expectations?  If they start succeeding.  How can we ever expect such a thing to happen?  Well, for that we need a different kind of economy.

It strikes me, as it so often does, that the voice of this teacher, the voice I am hearing is not a typical individual but coming from a more elitist position--in the first place, her friends being lawyers and such. Most teachers, their friends are not lawyers. It is because wealthier people are supposedly more interesting people, they're better copy and given greater shrift over and over. And I beleive it does credit to Mr. Hawthorne for saying, as he does a few times in this article--let's stop talking about exceptional this and that--it does this issure little service. But it even highllights who it is we are always hearing from--those with more, more family background, more education, more wealth etc. We are sort of expected to commend the well off individual for their sacrifices more than a boring average one, because they had the option to be more selfish in life, and we are to care so much about their middle (upper)class disillusionment and ennui?

As a lawyer, I have never once wondered why someone would become a teacher!  It is the most important job in the world!!  In fact, I know at least two lawyers from my graduating class who chucked the law to become teachers. My daughters both want to become teachers and I hope they do.  I do not understand Ms. Fine's attitude or experience at all. I have never heard ANYONE from any walk of life say anything negative or disparaging about the job of teaching.