There is a cadre of career teachers in our local school who are on the brink of retirement. Each are nearing their 40-year anniversaries in teaching, several with careers in our local school only. Those in the lower grades are teaching the grandchildren of their first students. Experienced? Measured in decades. Talented? Unbelievable teaching skills. Dedicated? Consistently trying to be better. Passionate about teaching? They put a capital “T” in Teacher! They also are part of a dwindling breed of teachers – those who were called to be teachers not just employed as teachers.
It is a fact that schools say good-bye to veteran teachers every year. In our school we have watched this natural cycle; distinguished teachers retire, and new teachers assume their classrooms However, in past years there was still a remnant of the cadre of the passionate left to carry on. Next year that may not be true.
Differences Matter.
When interviewing candidates for employment, I often asked, “Is teaching your calling or your vocation?” Some candidates stumbled. They did not understand the question nor the concept of “calling.” Some tried for middle ground saying “both.” A few either smiled or frowned, either was an appropriate face, saying, “calling.” From an early age, they knew they wanted to be teachers. In school, they selectively considered their teachers as role models. In college, they declared their education majors early and their course work developed necessary academic background. Intuitively, they knew they were meant to be teachers; it was their calling. Not surprisingly, these few formed the cadre of dedicated, talented, veteran teachers who constantly exude their passion for teaching children. They are the backbone of their faculty.
There is no set-in-stone, boilerplate descriptor for a passionate teacher. They exist female and male, of all ethnicities and languages, and teaching all disciplines. Often labeled toward the middle and latter years of their careers as master teachers, they know pedagogy and the content and skills of their subjects. They know how to adjust their teaching to meet their students’ learning challenges. More than anything else, they know how to relate to children and cause all children to learn.
Therein lies a significant difference between those who are called and those who are just employed. The passionate do not teach for teaching’s sake; they teach for learning’s sake.
Walking into a classroom while a teacher works causes a variety of responses from both teacher and students. In some classrooms, the air takes on a new tension because someone is watching. The tension increases when that someone is a principal or superintendent. Teaching and learning become business-like. The visitor is treated as a visitor. In contrast, when entering the classroom of one of the passionate, a visitor is welcomed with a “Hey, look at what we are doing today!” The teacher smiles but does not stop or adjust teaching because someone is watching. Children do not hesitate to explain what they are learning and often ask quiz the visitor showing how smart they are.
There is a difference in classrooms that celebrate learning and those who conduct learning.
Locating a teacher in their classroom also is tell-tale difference. When welcoming and starting a class and providing and modeling initial instruction, the teacher often is front and center before students. Location changes and matters when children are engaged in dependent and independent work and individual and small group work. The passionate are kneeling beside student desks and chairs, sitting, and huddling with a child or small group to help children to clarify or correct their understanding or skills. They listen more than they talk. They suggest more than they tell. They personalize the reality that when a child learns learning a very individual development. The employed teachers retreat to their desks to watch and monitor students and do teacher things. They wait for children to come to them rather than intuitively moving among children to aid, confirm, and clarify their learning.
There is a difference in teaching a classroom of children and teaching for each child in a classroom.
Burning the midnight oil is not just a student’s plight, but also a teacher’s. It refers to doing what needs to be done in preparation for what comes next no matter of the hour. When the school day begins, all teachers are in their classrooms awaiting the first bell. For the employed, a class day begins and ends with contractual bells. For the passionate, the teaching day begins and ends with readiness for what the children need next. As a rule, the first cars in the parking lot in the morning and the last to leave after school are the passionate’s. They also are seen at school on weekends and vacation days. No one asks a teacher to be a slave to their job, but what is slavery to some is being professional to others.
The commitment to teaching is greater than the teaching contract.
When a passionate teacher retires, there is a loss of talent in the school. Their talent is the aggregate of their experience and their professional knowledge and abilities. All teachers begin based upon their baccalaureate and teaching preparation. I have known some to make a career based solely on those credentials; they do only what is necessary to sustain their contract and license. I also have celebrated the awarding of advanced degrees and training for teachers who know that teaching requires lifelong learning and continuous new training. When I clipped and shared professional articles and books with the faculty, some squandered the opportunity while the cadre were eager to talk about what they read and learned.
The cadre is not just passionate about their students’ learning but also about their own continuous development as professional teachers.
It is a new era.
Each year in Wisconsin the number of licenses for baccalaureate-prepared teachers is equal to the number of emergency licenses issued to people who are fully prepared but will achieve their license through on-the-job training. Several years ago, new teachers with emergency licenses only were rare but soon they will be the majority of new hires. Most of the emergency-licensed are second career teachers who come to teaching for a variety of reasons. Few, if any, are called. The shortage of people who want to be classroom teachers is real and many students are taught by not-yet-licensed or prepared teachers. Teaching is a job and there will be no cadre.
The profession of teaching has entered a new era. Most new teachers will be as professional as the business of teaching requires them to be. They will work their contracts. Life for them sets aside the eight hours each day and nine months needed for their teaching job so that they can live their non-job lives.
Years ago, a child seeing a teacher in the grocery store was bewildered because the child only thought of the teacher in a classroom. That was the teacher’s entity. No more. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. To repeat, no one should be a slave to their employment. On the other hand, to swipe a phrase, a presence or absence of a teacher’s “fire in the belly” is clearly discernible. “Fire in the belly” is a critical attribute for master teaching and makes me wonder if we are saying our final farewell to our local Mr./Ms. Chips.