A Teaching Life

I describe this scenario to set the stage for exploring the relationship of administrators with teachers. Given that principals are instrumental in hiring teachers, they often make the final decision. The relationship between them puts the principal in the driver’s seat from the beginning.

This relationship is built upon the traditional hierarchical structure of public education from the early 20^th century. Authorities from federal and state boards, local school boards, superintendents, principals, and in some cases, parents––all of them “above” teachers––have most teachers “understanding” that they are, indeed, at the bottom of a totem pole. They are inclined to believe that they are expected to “carry out” what comes from above.

I was fortunate in my first year to learn from my co-teaching experience, that a teacher is not only responsible for what happens in his classroom, but he is the one that makes it happen. Whatever edicts come from above, he is in charge how they manifest in his classroom.

I believe, and always have, that a teacher’s classroom is his domain. To “teach” he must be himself, not a transmitter of another’s edicts. Some administrators including department heads believe that lessons in all classrooms are to follow a scheduled number of pages of a common textbook for each week. Not only is the administrator in charge, so is the textbook! And in classes in which students need more time to process, they get left behind!

An anecdote: I worked with a school head in an Oxfordshire primary school in the early 70s. What was remarkable was his hiring of this junior-high social studies teacher from America to be responsible for thirty seven-to-ten-year-olds in his new open-plan primary school.

One of my responsibilities was to teach Laban movement, the school’s PE, once a week with no training or experience. I had only seen the head teach movement once with his children in his village school the spring before and had done some reading about the Laban system.

In one of our conversations, he would offer observations of my movement sessions (I did not see him observe). But he never “took over” the class to guide me. He believed that it would interfere with my relationship with my children. His complete trust (based on little evidence beyond his wanting me to be on his staff) opened doors for me to become the best possible primary teacher that was within me. I made mistakes but was never judged. He would, however, make comments in our weekly diary exchange to help me see better what I was doing and where I was going with my children.

In this Substack and all the others, I invite teachers to be themselves in their classrooms, with their students, with their ideas and materials, with their hopes and dreams (and for other readers to support them). Encouraging them not to succumb to other’s demands as much as possible (I can imagine teachers paying lip service to them, then moving on to their own expectations).

As a teacher, you commit to teach, not to deliver, not to pass on, not to regurgitate others’ directives. You are to teach, which means to form relationships with your students, to become their mentor and support. You teach. You do not act as a conduit.

Given that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard), I write this Substack to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20^th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century.