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November/December 2008
Yes, as with any sampling at a large metro public school, the quality of teachers varied. Drivers ed teacher Mr. Brock was a little too distracted, there in the passenger's seat, to be the guardrail between sophomore brain lock and fiery death. Statistics teacher/basketball coach Mr. Bradley taught three concepts: mean, median and mode. Then he handed out worksheets. The concepts most dear to him were the chest pass and bounce pass.
Happily, when it came to classroom experience, quality was mostly the rule. And unlike some who idealize their youthful influences while trashing today's, I refuse to think of my high school as that exceptional.
Listen and you'll believe that, except for the exceptions touted by the "merit pay" crowd, most teachers are just not up to the task. For each to perform up to expectations, a hammer of impending disgrace must hang over his or her head.
Evidence of the inherent deficiency, wouldn't you know, is in statistics - such as comparing our students to those in Japan or South Korea. Or we compare test scores from schools rimmed by cul de sacs of plenty against those where dead ends have no detour. In the latter, curiously, their teachers almost always come up short. Some of them may fit that generalization. But any statistics teacher worth his whistle — all right, wrong metaphor — would point out the fallacy inherent. The biggest fallacy is assigning to teachers every failing that our system might uncover about the children they teach.
I knew this, but a piece in the Portland Oregonian supplied some math that really drove it home:
"The average school year includes 180 student-contact days. Secondary-level teachers see their students for about an hour a day. Assuming no absences, no passes to the bathroom or the nurse's office, no fire or earthquake drills, no assemblies, etc., that's 180 hours a year.
"A non-leap year of 365 days is 8,760 hours long, so 2 percent of every year is dedicated to teaching a child a specific subject, such as English or math.
"By No Child Left Behind's reasoning, the teacher alone is responsible for a child's failure to learn, regardless of what persons, places, things or ideas influence said child the other 97 percent of the year."
Um, like parents, peers, television, Xbox and hormones on the march.
This bit of math makes me feel good about my teachers. For instance, in the statistically insignificant time we shared, English teacher and journalism sponsor Mrs. Stieghorst encouraged me to be a writer. Indeed, her encouragement pushes my fingers across the keyboard now.
Sure, she taught concepts. She taught technique. Mostly she motivated, inspired, and modeled the language in a becoming way.
Contrary to what the command-and-control crowd appears to think, teachers can impart only so much knowledge. The rest comes down to the "want to" factor. It's something you can't test. That's a little like trying to detect a soul with a sonogram.
Teaching isn't about facts and figures and phraseology; that's instruction — where coaching basketball and handing out statistics worksheets meet on the same court.
Honestly, how much did you learn in high school that you can recite today? Not a lot. But you can summon the feeling of "want to" that good teachers imparted to you.
Teaching is that which is shared and stretches out through generations — even when the teacher has you only 2 percent of the time, and hormones and other distractions have you the rest.
JOHN YOUNG is the opinion editor and a columnist for the Waco Tribune-Herald. He also is the author of "Ghosts of Liberals Past." He can be reached at jyoung@wacotrib.com.
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I always knew I had good teachers. But until someone did the math for me, I had no idea how good.