In Part 1, we talked about the three ways teaching is viewed culturally — as profession, job, or calling — and we looked in depth at arguments for considering teaching a profession. In Part 2, we’re going to examine teaching as a calling.
In every interview I ever had for a teaching position, I was asked the following question: Why do you want to be a teacher? People give a variety of responses to this question, which seems fairly open-ended and appears to invite a host of interpretations but in fact does have some wrong answers. One of those wrong answers is, “because I love children.” The reason ‘love of children’ is a wrong answer is because a classroom of 30 9-year-olds with ants in their pants can quickly extinguish warm and fuzzy feelings. “Love” in the warm and fuzzy feelings sense is not enough to carry a prospective teacher through the trenches of the school year. But “I feel called to be a teacher” is an answer that implies that the teacher feels a part of something big and consequential, a higher purpose if you will. That belief may be enough to keep a novice teacher going when things get rough.
Let’s look at teaching as a calling. Many, many people go into teaching and stay in teaching because they feel “called” to do so. Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania notes that teachers generally score high on measures of empathy and concern for others and social progress. Teaching is then a vehicle to express and enact that care, and potentially right social wrongs. Viewing teaching as a sort of mission field can make the hardships seem worthwhile because they are serving those higher goals. Certainly many people find teaching a good fit for their world view and their abilities and derive a profound sense of satisfaction from helping others. But a calling may also promote a romanticized view in which the teacher swoops in to set things right and everyone lauds their work. Because of this tendency, I think the question here is should teaching be regarded as a calling?
image via The Learning Station
We have to acknowledge that the idea of a calling brings some baggage with it. Because it embodies an almost religious fervor and purpose, it can carry profound spiritual guilt if one “fails” to fulfill one’s calling by leaving the classroom when the romanticized ideal turns out to be a lot of hard work with minimal recognition or appreciation. The idea of teaching as a calling can permeate the culture of a school and visit relentless peer pressure on those teachers who are more service provider than counselor.
The whole idea of a calling is often conflated with love — or at least inextricably tangled up with the expectation that teachers will love their students. But every teacher who has taught for any length of time will tell you that there are always students who resist “love” per se. And getting sucked into loving only the loveable is a reprehensible practice. Some of the best elementary teachers I’ve seen are those who love not in an abstract, warm and fuzzy way but in an “I see you” way and in an “I will help you get there” way. Their “love” is pragmatic, more along the lines of doing what helps the child achieve success even if it makes the child dislike them in the short term. Whether or not the child likes them is immaterial. Jherine Wilkerson put it this way: “I am a good teacher. I have a knack for helping students learn to express themselves succinctly through writing. I am not, however, any student’s favorite teacher. No letters will be written to me in years expressing how much my winning personality changed them. But I didn’t become a teacher to be anything other than a teacher. I became a teacher because I saw a need, not because I had a latent desire to nurture.” A teacher with no compassion is obviously a liability for kids, but too much compassion can also be a liability. Years ago, I had a colleague (and keep in mind that I taught high school) who would never tell kids their answers were wrong because it might hurt their feelings.* That it also hurt them when they bombed the test (or worse, failed the semester) didn’t appear to register with her. This idea that she needed to nurture them more than steward their learning was actively harmful. Certainly there is a strong social-emotional element in teaching, (one that exceeds even medicine because no doctor sees a patient for 9 straight months, day-in and day-out) and that can’t be ignored, but neither can the ultimate purpose of teaching: equipping kids with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful long after they’ve left the K-12 sphere.
Teaching as a calling really falls flat in two areas. First, viewing teaching as a calling undermines the importance of training and education and professional practice. A calling implies that teaching is somehow innate and can’t be taught — some are “called” and some are not. That’s a great way to undermine and even eliminate teachers who haven’t fully developed their abilities yet. It’s no coincidence that a substantial percentage of new teachers quit after the first year — the first year is BRUTAL. Not only do you have to deliver content, but you have to manage a slew of personalities and behaviors, plan like your life depends on it, evaluate everything the kids do, contend with building culture, and interact with parents and colleagues. Most of that isn’t taught in your program, you learn it by doing it. The first year should really be considered an internship in the same way novice doctors serve as interns. In smart districts it is. For those that stick it out, the second year is exponentially easier because they have developed additional skills. I have seen “natural” teachers, but many of them were raised by teachers so some of what looked like innate ability was almost certainly learned behavior.** If we are going to subscribe to a growth mindset for students, we must also subscribe to a growth mindset for novice teachers.
Second, people who are operating out of a sense of calling or are expected to operate out of a sense of calling are ripe for abuse. The idea of the “calling” encourages — almost requires — a kind of altruism on the part of the teacher. They are expected to sacrifice untold hours of time beyond their contracted hours in the name of helping a child, they will tolerate a lack of resources, vague or non-existent curriculum, lousy pay and little or no support because it’s all part of the “calling” to teach. They’re doing it for the kids. And after all, don’t they love the kids? Would they fail to sacrifice for those they love? Again, it’s not a coincidence that the second largest exodus (30-45% of new teachers) from teaching is within the first 5 years and two of the most cited reasons are challenging work conditions and lack of support (and let’s not forget: salary is also a form of support).***
Can a person be “called” to teach? I think they can, in the sense that they may find the fullest and most satisfying expression of their abilities in teaching. But I also think that a calling doesn’t release a district or school from the responsibility of paying their staff fairly, providing them with adequate resources in the classroom, offering mentoring and support, helping them grow as educators, and recognizing that they have lives outside of their classrooms. After all, a person can feel called to be a doctor, but that doesn’t abrogate all the requirements for becoming a doctor or all the support and oversight involved in the process that is designed to insure they develop all the skills necessary to do their jobs. It also doesn’t absolve the hospital from providing all the tools and resources necessary for doctors to do what they do. Calling or no, we would never tell a doctor they had to provide their own scrubs, wash them after surgery, purchase and maintain all their own surgical tools, administer anesthesia on their own, etc. because they love their patients. That would be ridiculous.
Next time: Is teaching just a job?
*Is there an inappropriate way to tell kids they are wrong? Of course. But you can tell kids they’re missing the mark without mocking or demeaning them. And we have to tell them when they are off base; to do otherwise does them a disservice that can negatively impact their later studies. I am not offering carte blanche to crush kids’ spirits.
**Interestingly, there is a correlation between people who become teachers and whether there are teachers in their family of origin. It’s tough to say whether it’s nature or nurture, but data shows that teachers do tend to run in families. You can read about that tendency here and also here. One acceptable answer to the interview question “Why do you want to be a teacher?” used to be, “My parents are teachers.”
***Numbers here are fuzzy because although attrition numbers are almost always presented as hard data, most states don’t keep statistics on how many teachers quit. If they do track attrition, they tend to track rates for the educational sector as a whole, which includes a lot of positions other than teaching, including administrators, paraprofessionals, janitors, and cafeteria staff. Most attrition percentages are drawn from teacher surveys, which makes at least some of their reliability suspect. I think it’s fair to say the reasons given for quitting are probably accurate but the percentages of those who actually quit may not be.