It's been a long time since I have posted here. Almost a year, to be honest. But now I do so again to share some observations that I have made over five years of teaching in Virginia.
Everywhere we look these days, we see articles about how busy today's students are and how busy today's teachers are. We read about and hear about how destructive it is to students and to teachers. Yeah, yeah, I know. You've heard it before.
But I want to take this apart a bit and look at this from the point of view of a "non-core" teacher. I am a Latin teacher. Not only is this a somewhat overlooked program because it isn't "core," but it is also overlooked because there are many who still believe that Latin is irrelevant. But I am not here to talk about that.
What if I told you that today's students are too busy to learn? And not just that, but also that they are too busy to care about learning, or anything, honestly? "But," you say, "my students are getting great grades! They are totally learning and they care about it because look at how much they study for those grades!" Here is my response to that:
Every day, I watch my Latin Classes. They diligently take notes and do work in class, but every day, I watch them dash through assignments so that they might have a prayer or studying for their test next period for math, or so that they can start their English homework, because they won't get home from sports until 9 PM and they have 5 hours of homework for other classes. Recently, one of my classes begged me not to have to do anything for Latin that day because they had SO MUCH WORK for other classes. At first, I didn't believe them. But then they showed me. I decided to try something. "Alright," I told them. "We won't do anything today. You can use this time to work on work for other classes." I watched them. I really thought they were playing me. Walking around the room, all I saw was work. Every single student was actually diligently working on something that they needed to do for another class. I didn't see a phone the whole class--they were so focused on getting their work done.
Here's something else I hear a lot: "Well, it's not good at all, but if I pass, it's fine." I once asked a student who said something like this why she had not done her best. "Well," she told me, "I don't have time to do my best. I have at least 7 hours of homework per night and I have music and sports after school. There simply aren't enough hours in the day for me to care enough to do my best."
At this point, students don't even have time to do things they WANT to be doing. I have a student who is a Section Leader in Orchestra, a Consul in Latin Club, and in NHS. They give up their lunches to do do Section Leader Stuff, get to school early to help with NHS stuff, give up their time during the day to tutor for NHS, run around and get dates for fundraisers and information for Latin Club business. They have no time to just drop into my classroom to say hi anymore, or even just to relax. Sure, I would do the Latin Club stuff for them, but with all the duties assigned to teachers and lack of sufficient planning time in which to do them, I can't really do that either. So, I have to use my officers to do that...and I feel horrible doing so.
Recently, I was at a conference and was talking with a few other Latin teachers over breakfast. One of them said the following, "I just keep thinking about how inhumanely we treat students. In Elementary school, the need for one to rest, to socialize is at least remotely valued. As they go up to Middle and High school, it is no longer even allowed." This stuck with me. It's true. Students have no time in or out of school to rest, relax, or recharge. One cannot learn like that--it goes against Maslow's basic hierarchy of needs. We as a society have created a bitter, competitive culture where the only reinforcement students get is to compare themselves to others. This is not healthy nor is it worthwhile. Students are robotic--they do what they have to do to get through the day and get good grades and do every single possible thing that they are told to do so that they get into a good college. In this process, they lose themselves.
Students are trained, conditioned to give signals that they are "fine." But get past that and listen to how they actually talk. Fatalism pervades their speech, and anxiety creeps into much of what they say. Here are five links about that, but there are several more!
I write a lot about teachers and how we are over-scheduled and treated unfairly, but we need to think about the students too. The Education System in this country is doing no favors for anyone.
