What Is A Teacher?

I’ve noticed an interesting trend among academics in the education sector that I have seen in the general educator community. One that I am surprised and disappointed about, because it shows a failure in their ability to step back and consider the industry and profession as a whole, in a holistic, level-headed manner. These are supposed to be we get our best practices from, after all.

Aside from the previous consistent failure to consistently define basic terminology regarding literacy instruction, apparently there is difficulty in being able to interpret teaching philosophy without taking personal offense to it and making unusual generalisations from it. Let’s take Constructivism, for example. It is defined as learners “construct their understanding through experiences and social interaction, integrating new information with their existing knowledge.” An educator accomplishes this by collaborating with learners to help guide them to an intellectual goal defined by the instructor. Unlike literacy instructional methods, this seems pretty straightforward. After all, which adult has never met another and tried to persuade or help them understand something? They start with one belief, and you guide them along to another, step by step. It might work, it might not.

Here are some conclusions that I have seen academics make about educators and schools that adopt this way of thinking into their general repertoire:

I am pretty confused by all of these reactions, to be honest. This theory is literally just a guess at how people gain, store, and recall information. That’s it. This clearly conflates a lot of other emotional issues these people have with trends in the industry at large. It’s embarrassing to read. However, each of these is worth evaluating on their own.

Teachers are now brain-dead automatons that deliver pre-packaged programs made by others

There have been some complaints from teachers that the adoption of commercial programs is taking agency away from teachers, preventing them from creating personalised, effective, and relevant lessons for their students. This complaint is absolutely valid. I have heard of some remarkably micromanaged scripts in programs that do not give the teacher the flexibility to adapt if the lesson is clearly not working. That said, these are not innately horrible methods either. Academics and educators need to admit something that we all know: there are teachers that just aren’t very good at their job. Lack of training, lack of care, insufficient support, etc. There are all sorts of reasons for this. This is nothing to be embarassed or ashamed about. It’s a natural occurrence in every profession.

Software engineers, for example, know that no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, some engineers will just perform worse than others. A healthy team will accept this and just set up infrastructure to accommodate for it. Code reviews, automated testing, mentoring, pair programming, and professional learning budgets all serve to lift up the lowest bar of quality and prevents the worst from deteriorating the overall product.

This is where a commercial education program can be useful. For low-performing teachers, they can stick to the script. For better performing teachers, they can adapt and make adjustments to improve the performance of the program. Assessment is built into the program, so you can verify whether educators that are making adjustments are making effective choices. Improvements in the program created by one educator can be reincorporated into an updated script for the school, improving things for everyone. This isn’t about being stupid or a bad teacher. This is working together to guarantee a minimum level of lesson quality. Failure and incompetence is natural, don’t get weird about it.

Students and parents are customers, and lessons are now products open to review

I can understand where this frustraton is coming from, although it’s not related to teaching philosophy, in my personal opinion. That said, at the end of the day, a teacher is a professional providing a service. A teacher at a private school is in fact serving a product that the parent and student are paying for. It’s no different than a builder, a psychologist, or a cook in that manner. That said, just like you don’t yell at a retail worker for the price of meat, you don’t yell at a teacher for the phonics program they’re using. This is supposed to be directed at the owners, not the workers. In the public sector, government workers can come under scrutiny over their job performance just like teachers. Being frustrated about potholes and littering. Being frustrated about your child’s classroom environment. I think it’s appropriate to put these in the same category. No one deserves abuse. That doesn’t mean your work is above critique or questioning, though.

Constructivism means asking questions, students answer them, and that is the end of the lesson. Student answers are not examined or corrected

Honestly, I think you just didn’t read for this one. It’s in the name: Constructivism. You need to construct understanding. Thankfully, I saw this mistake more often in classroom practice than in literature. Not sure why you’d bother even trying if you can’t be bothered to spend the time to build your own understanding of this theory.

Teachers have lost their ability to be an authoritative figure, as well as their status as the bastion of morals and ethics

I have seen a lot of back and forth on how much educators should be models and educators of morals and ethics. It’s not an easy or straightforward choice. That said, it’s not like we don’t have decades and millions of examples where this didn’t really work. Religious schools are very much still about being instructors of moral and ethics.

For an educator to take a stance on ethics, they must define acceptable and unacceptable behavior. For an educator to take a stance on morals, it will result in creating inclusion for some, and exclusion for others. A teacher’s work by definition is political. They are an agent of their government and culture. This is unavoidable. And that is why this must be done carefully and responsibly.

If a school desires to instill morals and ethics into a child, these morals and ethics cannot fundamentally change between educators. Otherwise, it just creates confusion and contradictions for learners. Therefore, before we even consider a society’s or government’s stakes in this, we have to acknowledge that from the start, moral and ethical frameworks can be defined at a level no lower than the school. So before you get emotional as a teacher for not being able to be a bastion of good, understand that this was never something you could unilaterally decide. Mind you, I am making an important distinction between being a good role model and teaching morals and ethics as part of the curriculum. These are not the same.

Just as a government must represent its people, a school should represent the diversity and cultural sensitivities of its surrounding community (including the broader cultural context that they exist in). This is where Catholic schools, for example, fail. The bare minimum of morals and ethics that a school must represent is defined by its government’s legal framework. For example, if the state has banned discrimination on the basis of gender and sexuality, then a school that discriminates on this basis places itself in opposition to its government. Schools represent but do not set the morals and ethics to be taught. To teach students it is acceptable to commit crimes that you, personally, believe are fine to commit is inappropriate and unprofessional. It is not acceptable to discriminate against queer people anymore than it is acceptable to condone theft and murder (this assumes you have laws protecting queer people, which is true where I live).

Of course, now you have the question of asking students to consider laws that some may consider unjust. Laws regarding immigration and the treatment of minority communities, for example, are rife with valid criticism. Just because a school should reflect the morals and ethics of its society doesn’t mean it should do so unquestioningly. Concepts are best understood when considered deeply, after all. In this manner, Constructivism gives us the tools to manage this. Our responsibility as educators is to ensure that learners think critically about what we as educators are asked to teach. While we do our best to guide, we cannot and should not control our learner’s conclusions.

Conclusion

I will summarise here:

As an educator, you are as critical to public infrastructure as a welder. You provide nourishment, just as a chef does. You provide an essential service, just like a grocery store worker. Public well-being depends on you, the same as doctors and nurses. You are a part of the community, just as a neighbor is. You are not special. Your profession is not superior. Everyone needs to be treated with patience, respect, and care. Not because you’re a teacher, but because you are a professional.