It threatens the entire education system
Guest post by Jay Schroder, author of Teach From Your Best Self
When I was a kid, my parents took us to the drive-in theater to see Mary Poppins. This was the first movie I ever saw that wasn’t on our 19-inch living room television. After Mary Poppins, completely happy, I thought we were going home. But no. This was a double feature. The back of my head blew off. I could barely comprehend the outrageous good fortune of being able to watch two movies back-to-back, and in the process, completely demolish my bedtime.
The second movie was one I’d never heard of. It was Disney’s retelling of the fable “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs,” called The Million Dollar Duck. This masterpiece of cinema was one of only three movies that film critic Gene Siskel walked out on during his professional career and Roger Ebert described it as “one of the most profoundly stupid movies I’ve ever seen.”
Well, there is no accounting for a 5-year old’s taste in movies because I absolutely loved it. What I especially loved was the relationship between the young boy in the movie, Jimmy, and the golden egg-laying duck, Charley. When faced with the avarice of the adults, Jimmy was the only one who protected Charley.
I identified with Jimmy and even as an adult, I find myself wanting to protect and support the golden egg-laying ducks and geese in the world.
In the actual fable, there is no Jimmy—just a man and his wife whose goose lays one golden egg every day. The couple becomes rich, but they want even more. Surmising that this goose must have dozens and dozens of golden eggs inside of it, they decide to slaughter the goose and cut it open and become instantly rich beyond their wildest dreams. Of course, when they cut open the goose, there are no golden eggs inside.
Who Are Education’s Golden Egg-Laying Geese?
The moral of the story, don’t kill your golden egg-laying geese, is easily grasped by first graders. However, the adults in charge of education reform seem confused. So, I will lay it out as simply as I can.
In education the goose is not the textbook, it’s not the technology, it’s not the curriculum, and it’s definitely not the standardized test. It’s not even the students.
If you put 30 students in a room by themselves and supply that room with textbooks, computers, and learning materials, it’s extremely unlikely for anything resembling constructive learning to occur. Learning only happens when you bring in a teacher.
In education, teachers are the golden egg-laying geese.
Because, for decades, education has been taking advantage of, undervaluing, and exhausting its golden egg-laying geese, the whole system is on the verge of collapse. Across the nation, teachers are quitting. Some of them are posting celebrative, or heart-breaking, videos about it on TikTok.
Every time a good teacher is driven to quit, it’s a needless tragedy.
How “A Nation at Risk” Led to Education at Risk
Education reform was supposed to make education better, however, since the report A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, education reform has been focused on standards, rigorous testing, and a succession of new initiatives to implement.
Rather than giving teachers a voice, reforms have increasingly marginalized and deprofessionalized teachers. Low test scores are blamed on teachers, so teachers are perpetually told they need to do more, apply new strategies, new techniques, new instructional methods, and new technology, all while under the gun of ever tighter micromanagement.
This myopic focus on making teachers do more and controlling what they do is based on the false notion that if teachers could just do enough, and do the right things, then test scores would increase, classes would run smoothly, and schools would finally be successful. In fact, this approach exhausts teachers and makes them want to quit.
Sacrificing Teachers to the Test Score Gods
Maybe sacrificing teachers to the test score gods could be justified if those sacrifices actually led to better test scores, but these human sacrifices aren’t working. Trends in national data show that 12th-grade math skills in 2019 were the same as in 2005 while reading skills in 2019 dropped seven points compared with 1992.
We’re killing our golden egg-laying geese, and students aren’t even benefitting.
When teachers enter the profession, they aren’t thinking about quitting. They are thinking about helping a young person grow and fulfill their potential. They are thinking about making a difference.
They know it isn’t an easy job. They expect challenges. However, most are not prepared for the onslaught of too much to do and not enough support. They aren’t prepared for the pressure that over-stressed administrators put on teachers to raise test scores in the face of a surge of mental health issues in students.
They aren’t prepared to be micromanaged, nor are they prepared for the way opportunist politicians are seizing on every excuse to interfere with, attack, and undermine the work that teachers do while beating a steady drum of disinformation that creates chaos and villainizes educators. How could they be?
Teachers are a finite resource of which, in 2021, 27% were reporting symptoms consistent with clinical depression, and 37% reported symptoms consistent with generalized anxiety.
In response to what is rapidly becoming a national teacher shortage, teachers are exhorted to take better care of themselves—eat right, exercise, get a hobby, and take a bubble bath. We are asking the abused and exploited golden egg-laying geese to do a better job taking care of themselves, so they can continue to be abused and exploited.
The Starting Place for Education Reform That Actually Works
Here is what I can be sure of, good teachers are not expendable.
Unless we begin to prioritize teacher wellbeing, and actually factor it into each new policy decision, the education system is doomed and the whole country will go down with it.
In the meantime, we teachers need to learn to teach in ways that are less expensive to our health and well-being.
I have spent my 24 years in the classroom finding ways to teach that doesn’t eat me alive.
Now I want to help you do the same. I wrote Teach from Your Best Self: A Teacher’s Guide to Thriving in the Classroom because I wanted to create a resource that gave educators a way to thrive in this messed up education system.
As more educators see the value, not only for themselves but for their students as well, of prioritizing their own well-being, we can join our voices to turn schools into communities of learning that support the best of every teacher, learner, school employee, administrator, parent, and volunteer who steps into the building.
Teaching is one of the hardest jobs in the world. To do it well, we need each other.
Jay Schroder has taught high school English and social studies for 24 years. He’s the author of Teach from Your Best Self: A Teacher’s Guide to Thriving in the Classroom and received both the OCTE, and NCTE, High School Teacher of Excellence Awards. He’s an affiliate faculty member of Southern Oregon University and a Southern Oregon Regional Educator Network Implementation Coach focused on well-being and resilience. To learn more about Jay and Teach from Your Best Self go to http://teachfromyourbestself.org/.
About Rachelle’s Blog
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