Last week I was part of a panel of teachers and professors who spoke to 75 George Mason University students interested in the teaching profession.
Other panel members’ tasks seemed easy compared to mine.
One explained licensure requirements, another explained the masters program in creative writing, and another gave students the discouraging statistics on a Ph.D.’s prospects for a tenure-track job.
I was the only speaker not associated with a degree-granting program: a specimen of a real, live high school teacher.
In that role, what should I tell them?
If you have followed my column, you know that teaching is a profession fraught with contradictions. It is the most rewarding, thankless job in the world. It is exhausting, yet energizing. How to explain that to someone who has never taught?
Eliot Waxman, my Senior Seminar co-teacher, tells students that in politics, “it depends.” Stereotypes about politicians, parties and the legislature only hold true some of the time. It depends on who, what, where and when.
Teaching is another area where it depends. I spoke to the prospective teachers about the differences between the three schools where I have taught. Even within schools, successive administrations can make your life glorious or miserable.
Classes change, too. With each new group of seniors, I marvel at their ability to be different from every other senior class I’ve taught. Senior Seminar on odd days is different from the same course on even days. With the advent of block periods (hence the odd and even schedules), classes that meet every other day are different from those that meet every day.
The dark days of winter make students and teachers different than they are in the fall and spring. And no one who hasn’t taught or parented students at the end of their last year of high school can imagine the challenges of coping with students who really don’t want to be there. Yet they graduate and are grateful.
When I spoke before the GMU audience, it was at the end of a rough day that began at 5 a.m. and was about to continue, after the panel, at 10 p.m. with the GMU composition class I teach.
The room was hot. I know all that factored into my presentation. In air conditioning on a day with less teaching, I might have been half full instead of half empty in my approach.
But it’s important for those heading into the teaching profession to know that it will often seem like a half-empty life. Sometimes it will take the words of a returning student, who only later recognized the value of your course, to make you feel valued. Teachers would be poor indeed if they relied on student appreciation to compensate for their comparatively low salaries.
Instead, most of us rely on the support of one another, and the hints students (often unwittingly) drop to bolster our often flagging energy levels and degree of optimism. We are often told to do more with less (dare I mention NCLB here?), but on some days we feel invincible, like we can conquer all obstacles. It just depends.
Erica Jacobs teaches at Oakton High School and George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
