Teaching Against the Grain

Hi, My name is LaTasha Kelly and I am a junior at East Carolina University majoring in Elementary Education. I am one of Dr. Gabbard's students who are currently taking Introduction to American Education. For this class, we had to read many chapters from a book titled Out of Our Minds. This book has raised many questions and concerns in my mind about the roles of teachers and the direction of education in today's society. I am going to focus on one of the many points in this book that disturbed me, and actually caused me to question education. For those of you that have not read this book, I really suggest that you do. It is about Anti-Intellectualism and Talent Development in American Schooling. In this book, not only are the educators in today's society being questioned, but the goal and purpose for education in general is as well.

The book states that teaching has become a “deskilled” job and talented teachers either leave teaching or learn how to treat it mechanistically. More and more teachers today are following the curriculum that the state/district requires and mimicking many techniques. I do not know about you, but as an inspiring teacher, I do not want to go into a classroom and teach from a book. I want to walk into a classroom and inspire my students through many different techniques and activities and allow my students to understand that there is no limit when it comes to learning. Research shows that many “schools suppress teachers’ intellectual curiosity and inventiveness characteristics that disrupt the orderly routine”. This is where I really began to get disturbed. But, the most disturbing statement by far in this book was “School boards are reluctant to hire teachers, especially those are intelligent, outspoken, and inventive-whom they believe will be hard to control”. WOW!

Please help me understand this, if the school boards and the people in higher places do not want teachers teaching new innovative ideas to the children of our society, what exactly is our purpose? If we as future teachers, are not encouraged by people besides our professors, to go into a classroom, and create new ideas and inspire children that there are no limits in education and everything is important, where is our support? If our children are not encouraged to expand their knowledge in absolutely every topic, content area, objective, etc., are we also teaching them to limit themselves? I personally want to be a teacher to do exactly the opposite. If all of the talented teachers, who want to teach for passion and not for the standardized tests, are leaving, who do we have left? A teacher, who is afraid to teach against the grain, is a teacher who limits themselves and their ideas and intellect. Is that a role model? Is that who we want our children to look up to? Also, many schools do not have high test scores, and a lot of students are not passing the standardized tests, because the school boards are weaning out the talented teachers. Maybe it is because, all of the passionate teachers out here are losing faith and hope for the education that they love. Although this information is very disturbing to me, and has allowed me to realize that the challenge of being a teacher goes way beyond what I expected, I am ready to make a change.

My question to you is where do we begin? If teachers are not inspired to teach anymore because of the drastic change in the purpose of education and the direction that it is going in, how on earth do we expect students to be inspired to learn? If school boards are not hiring for qualities that will redirect this negative direction education has entered, how are we supposed to make a difference? School boards are no longer hiring the most qualified; they are hiring the most trainable. Where on earth do we begin to make a difference? How are we supposed to teach to our full capability, if we are always worried about teaching against the grain? We do not want to lose our jobs, but we also do not want to go into teaching, knowing that we can not be the creative, innovative, new teachers that we want to be.

Please comment on any and everything that was said. Future teachers, are you as concerned about this as I am? New teachers, do you agree or disagree? Are you feeling some of these pressures, and hindrances as we speak? Experienced teachers, what do you suggest? Have you had any particular experiences or obstacles that you had to go through that relates to this issue?

LaTasha Kelly