Inevitable Context

Define “teaching.” Go ahead. I dare ya.

It's amazing how broad the answers are to this question. To define teaching, I figure you could provide any of the following answers reasonably:

A terrible or well-paying job

What people do when they can't do anything else

A waste of time

One of the most important jobs in the history of civilization

A place for saints/villains

A sweet gig with holidays and summers off

A never-ending gig which includes impromptu parent conferences at grocery stores/restaurants/public streets/the bar/the beach/public bathrooms/the mall/the dentist office waiting room/a park/on a train/in a plane/on a boat/with a goat

The reason for the economic downturn

The hope for an economic recovery

Here's my answer:

Teaching is the art of making the unknown knowable, 

the confusing understandable, 

and the meaningless meaningful.

The goal of teaching?  Again, the list is hilarious:

To push kids around

To save the world

To avoid a real job

To save one kid

To share information

To manipulate information

To get paid

To serve society

Here's my answer, and I think it's one of my best and freshest ideas yet-

GREAT teaching (because who needs to read more about bad or mediocre teaching) has one goal: 

to help students find the inevitable context between learner and lesson.

Great teachers know that it's all just a question of time and context.  The kid can learn! One just needs to keep cracking and innovating.

Great teachers are impossible to replace for this reason.  Lessons and instructions can be replicated in books, content can be made into clever films, and classrooms can be made into learning theme parks.  All that stuff can be done synthetically. Robots and stuff.

But-- and this is a big but- the belief that any dummy can and will learn- and the willingness to keep at it, try new tricks, learn new methods, find new jokes, explore new stories, inspire more goosebumps- ah, only a a great teacher can do that.  It makes a great teacher invaluable.  Priceless.  Like the credit card commercial.

Inevitable context! That'll be the name of a great book.

Anyone want to help me publish it?

Scapegoats and Saviors II

About a year ago, my friend Jason amused himself by starting or ending sentences with the phrase “in THIS economy.”

He'd say things like “man, it is hot today... in THIS economy.” Or, “in THIS economy, we should go to the movies.” Or, “this burger is really good... in THIS economy.”

Jason got a kick out of the fact that everywhere in the media, seemingly, everyone was talking about the ECONOMY. And Jason was spot on: people WERE freaking out. Everything seemed to be about THIS economy. The housing bubble was bursting. The Dow was tanking; unemployment was rising. Pensions were disappearing and factories were continuing to close. Healthcare costs skyrocketing. And, as some theorize, Obama, our first black president, was elected because of the desperation of THIS economy.

Nothing could be-- or can be, because we're still there-- seen outside the lens of money. Financial security is the panacea to all that ails us.

Enter teachers: summers off, long holidays, work only until 3pm. With fat pensions and solid healthcare benefits. All a teacher has to do is get through the first couple of years and then they have guaranteed jobs forever. With constant raises. Those jerks.

People hate a lot of things about teachers. But they loathe 'tenure' in education.

Some have forgotten why tenure has always been so important. It's quite simple: tenure allows professionals the right to be unpopular. In an industry where most of the 'product' and 'returns' come years (sometimes decades) after the work is completed, tenure has protected fantastic instructors from the caprice of administrators and parents.

Teachers are like umpires or cops: an essential part of the job is telling people things they don't want to hear. Tenure has allowed transformative teachers the ability to lead the unwilling and unmotivated to consider new ideas. To break generational chains of ignorance. To encourage courage.

My friend Nancy puts it most succinctly. Tenure gives teachers permission to be honest.

But I have a brief announcement:
tenure... is... dead.

Or, at least, is on it's last legs. About to bite the bullet. Buy the farm. Check out. Croak.

And, no, not because of 'No Child Left Behind' or 'Race To The Top' or any governmental edict (although I continue to research the RTTP national standards and I'll finish the article sometime soon! I hope). Obama's initiative might expedite tenure's demise, but the government won't be brandishing the executioner's axe.

Tenure will die because, in THIS economy, people are scared. And people are mad.

Some teachers are to blame for the bad rep of tenure. Who didn't have at least one obscenely horrible teacher? I had a half dozen freak shows in front of me as a student. Drunks, molesters, abusers, dimwits, anti-intellectuals... and that's just grade school. Ok, AND high school. I wish I were joking. You've probably got horrible stories, too. And I can practically guarantee that the worst teachers any of us ever had were tenured. They were protected while they made a sham of the profession.

And we return to our jokes about teachers.
What do you call a welfare recipient with a book?
A teacher.
What do you call a welfare recipient with a ball?
Coach.
What do you call a man in a dress who feels up kids?
A drama teacher.

Our favorite worst stories about school are about bad teachers.

Our memories of our teachers, coupled with our cultural tendency to portray teachers as either criminals or saints, give anyone the right to believe that tenure is the stink at the bottom of the education barrel.

And that's why teachers are so sexy these days. Because fear and anger and stinky things get us all hot and bothered.

So what will happen to honesty in talented but vulnerable teachers? What will happen to the greatness of those teachers who inspire hope and change?

In part III, I'll talk about why we keep having the wrong conversation about tenure and what will happen when it's over.

And I won't use any more death euphemisms for tenure. Let this blog be the last breath, the final twitch, the death rattle of these morbid expressions.