Why Do We Do This Job? - Part 4

The stories of teachers in this series have all been of educators in the back half of their careers. Their experiences and wisdom earned along the way are generally insightful for us all. But when our school elected a 6th-year teacher as our Teacher of the Year, I felt that it was important to understand her perspective as well. The majority of Emily Lahr's teaching experience has been in a time of educational turmoil. Given her education, drive, and youth, she could have decided at any point to go and use her talents elsewhere. So I had to ask her, "Why do you do this job?"

Mrs. Lahr's mom is a middle school business teacher, and while you might think that she was just joining the family business, I think you'd be wrong on this one. Emily always thought she was a biology major as a route to medical school. But when she started helping teach lab classes, she found real fulfillment in helping turn on that lightbulb in student's brains. When it was time for graduate school, she chose education over medicine. I remember recruiting her and I convinced her to come check out our school to see if it was a good fit for her. I'm always impressed when potential hires take me up on that, because that's true initiative. She took the job and suffered the wrath of being a young teacher and coach amongst "the boys" of the athletic ranks. She gave it back to them just as quick as they dished it out. 

So when we started talking about why she chooses to be a teacher, she gushed about getting former students to a national science fair. Their research on caffinated soybean plants was enough to get the judges attention despite the handmade trifold board amongst the professionally printed posters. The same college girl that was a full-blown science geek got to bring that back through her students. And there it was; her reason why she does this job. Emily Lahr is still a student. Being a teacher allows her to learn something alongside her students every day. Some days she learns a lot about content and other days she learns a lot about people. But every day is a lab and she's still doing research. 

Her family always thought they would have a doctor in the family when Emily finished school. That may still be the case. Emily is currently working toward her PhD and her study idea is a pretty neat one, but that's probably a story for a different time. Right now, she is still a teacher and you might need to be careful, because she does this job because she's studying you. 

Note: After we talked about this, Emily and I spent some time just talking about the state of education today. We discussed hopes and fears and big take aways. She told me that the first big lesson that a teacher needs to learn is how to control the chaos in the room to make it productive chaos. I think that's a great metaphor for all education right now. We have to control the chaos and make it productive. I think we can do that.

Was I a Bad Teacher?

If you work in any type of management position long enough, you will hear about the Peter Principle. It's the idea that if you are good at your job, you will continue to be promoted until you are no longer good at your job. You rise to your level of incompetence and then stay there. Promotions are generally given to people that excel in their field and eventually, that means that you manage other people that do the job that you used to do. Unfortunately, there is no correlation between performing a job skill and leading or managing a team. In fact, the opposite is generally true instead. So in our world, if you want to advance as an educator, or you want to make more money, that generally means you leave teaching and become an administrator. But outside of helping here and there with instruction, not much of what I did as a teacher has anything to do with what I do as a principal. In fact, according to the research, chances are that if I am a good principal, there's a greater chance that I wasn't that good as a teacher. The jobs are just that different. 

But what about all of the teachers that do a great job, like what they do, but want to find ways to be paid well or promoted based on their work? Shouldn't there be something out there that keeps this expertise in teaching? A group in our state has been working on a proposal and this week, I had an opportunity to hear more about it and to talk with some legislators that are trying to make it happen. (You can read much more about it here.) It is an interesting proposition, and one that pays educators based on what they do rather than their years of service. It is also fluid from year to year, so a teacher can step back when they need to and advance when they want to. If you take a minute to read up on it, I'd love to have your feedback. It is the beginning of a conversation about how to fix the teacher pipeline and how to adequately pay teachers for their work and while we may not have all of the wrinkles ironed out yet, it's good that we are having the conversation. Especially if that conversation means that good teachers can find a way to stay in the classroom.

Now I guess I just need to come to terms with some hard truths. If I am considered a good principal, that either means I beat the odds and happen to have been a good teacher, or perhaps I wasn't that good in the first place. Or maybe I was a good teacher, and I've risen to my level of incompetence. Either way, it's a good thing I have plenty of good teachers around me to make up for it.

The Price of Gas

I'm not one to blame politicians or individuals for the current cost of gas, but when I filled up my SUV this week at just under $85, it was enough to get me thinking. Who can I blame for this problem and how do I get this fixed? As a student that still loves economics, I know that there are a lot of factors that play into our current cost at the pump. We want there to be a simple answer or some little thing that can fix it all, but that's very rarely the case. Some problems are quite complex, but there are also some problems that are more simple than we would like to make them. 

This week I asked everyone to regroup on some basic classroom management. It's the time of year when educators are tired and students get restless. That's usually a recipe for problems that might have been avoidable earlier in the year. Small fires in your classroom can turn huge if they are not managed, but how you manage them also matters. There are two ways to handle a fire: you can throw water on it and put it out or you can throw gas on it and watch it explode only to burn itself out. It's not a complicated problem, managing student issues is all in how you choose to put the fire out.

So why does student management always seem more complicated than it has to be? We focus our attention on why students don't do what they should do, or how they make bad choices or react poorly in a given situation. Our attention is on them...the fire. Unfortunately, I think fires (metaphorically) are always going to be a part of education. It's almost like asking, "Why is fire hot?" We teach young people how to govern themselves just as much as we teach curriculum. And I don't know about you, but I certainly caused a few fires myself when I was younger. It's a part of growing up that isn't avoided by most children. Luckily, I had some good people around me that knew how to throw water on my fires. They focused on how to diffuse the situation instead of focusing on why I did what I had done. They took the time to teach me instead of being frustrated by me. But what if they had thrown gas instead? The cost of escalating a bad situation with a student is high. It costs us our ability to connect with the student. It breaks trust. It hinders our ability to teach. While the behavior may 100% be the student's fault, but the price of throwing gas is too high. 

As Spring nears, outside warms up, and our patience thins, please take a second to consider how to make student management simple. Please search for ways to throw water on the small fires. Remember that we are here to teach and lead. And even when your last nerve is tested, consider that the price of gas is still probably too high to pay.