Greg Fairbanks is a senior staff at UNITE (Urban Needs in Teacher Education) and I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with him and the rest of the UNITE staff this past year. UNITE's mission "focuses on enhancing the preparation of future teachers with knowledge, skills, and experiences to promote success upon immediate arrival in a K-12 classroom throughout our nation’s most underprivileged and underrepresented schools in effort to strive towards lowering the national attrition rate." Greg's Ted Talk really puts things in perspective about the reality of teacher dropouts. I've already had three teachers leave my school this past year. I'm also sure that there are still a few more that are just sticking it out until the end of the year and will not be seen again next year. It's cold, but it's the truth. Teachers become teachers for a reason and that's to teach. Like Greg said, I have family and friends ask me what my plans for later are or am I planning on moving up the ladder to administration. I usually always nod and say yeah thinking about it, but honestly no I'm not. And just like Greg said this is it. It ends right here for me. This is my career. I'm not saying people don't respect what I do, but it's sad when they don't see teaching as a life long career. Apparently it's not "good enough" to be a just a teacher? Going off this Ted Talk teacher dropout rate also affects the students. Starting fresh is hard. Trust me I have seen my students experience it at least two times this past year. It's difficult. The teacher is usually the only consistency that most of these kids have in their lives and when that starts changing, well they began to lose faith. The last thing we need is for our students to lose faith. I mean 50% of teachers dropout of the profession meaning they no longer want to be teachers. 50. -Ms. P
I'll be honest. My kids don't know when to stop. When to stop yelling. When to stop being disrespectful. When to stop arguing. When to stop fighting. They just don't know how. But what I do know that if you truly show them that you care for them, that you respect them, that you will be there for them until the end of time, they will stop. They will stop for you. They will blindly follow you and do what you ask them to do. It has taken a lot of time, energy, and full on student vs teacher matches for me to get to where I am right now with my students. I have them. They know me. They respect me. Most importantly we're finally able to pick up a book and learn something without having to worry about certain students causing commotions in classroom. I'll be honest there are still a few stragglers but it's gotten a lot better. I'm not saying my classroom is now rainbows and butterflies. We still have some days where my voice level reaches far above the normal level of a teacher. But we now have more days were we actually get things done. I have learned that in order to make this happen you have to put yourself in their shoes. Most of these kids barely get three meals a day. They carry weapons in their backpacks to stay safe during their walks home after school. They have issues at home that we can barely fathom. They are the parents to their younger brothers and sisters because no one else at home cares for them. These kids demand to be treated like adults because to be honest they ARE adults. The fighting, the yelling, and the arguing all comes out due to the fact that these kids, these babies have had to grow up so fast because there was no other choice. Would you care about studying for a test on an empty stomach? Would you care about staying up in class when you spent all night taking care of a sick sibling? I'm not saying all my students go through these obstacles. But many do and those that do are the ones that are falling into the cracks. I try. I try to save them. But trying only gets you so far. And that's where I'm struggling. I'm struggling to keep them afloat. The most frustrating part about it is that no one fully understands your students than you. Authority in the school walks all over the kids. Yelling, arguing, disrespecting them as if they weren't human. My kids relapse. They take their anger out on me and we start all over again. But as their only hope to survival you try and you keep trying. You smile, you let them yell, you let them argue, and you keep hoping that one day it will all be worth it. Like I said it's not perfect. But that doesn't mean we can't stop trying. Unfortunately rainbows and butterflies will never exist in education unless we stop running schools as businesses were profits matter more than teaching students what they really need to learn. -Ms. P
