The demonization of teachers

One of the most useful tools teachers have to help students is parent-teacher conferences.

In the Joplin, Missouri, School District, where I teach eighth grade communication arts (English), regularly scheduled conferences are held twice each year, once in the late fall and once in the spring.

To ensure that more parents attend, the district schedules the conferences for four hours after school on a Thursday night, and then for four hours the next morning. This offers parents with job constraints the flexibility to be able to attend either session.

We try to get parents to attend these conferences through a variety of methods, including calls sent to their homes, publicity about the sessions, and through personal contact.

In my eight years in the district, I have averaged 30 parents per conference, with most of those attending during the evening hours. That number is a sad commentary on the value our parents put in education.

I deal with 30 parents, but I have approximately 150 students.

I could understand this lack of concern if the 120 sets of parents who do not show up had children who were making straight As, or even just decent grades, but that is not the case.

The majority of those who take the time and the trouble to drive to the school and talk to me are parents of students who are excelling in my class. These are parents who want to know if there is anything they can to do to help.

These are parents whose children are generally well behaved and hard working, and it is immediately obvious that those traits come from the people who raised them. And there are many other parents whose children are doing well who do not come to these sessions.

I enjoy the conversations I have with these concerned parents, but I would gladly double the time I spend at parent-teacher conferences if the parents of the children who are struggling in my classroom would take the time to come in and talk with me.

With all of the media and political firepower that has been turned on teachers in the past few years, we have been labeled, unfairly, as the root cause of all of education’s ills.

Last week, Time Magazine followed that pattern, and Newsweek did it several months ago. NBC has just begun a weeklong teacher-bashing frenzy, disguised as a forum on education.

For Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, President Obama, and leaders of both political parties, teachers have become a convenient whipping boy, not only for problems in schools, but also for problems throughout our society.

What teachers realize is that successful education requires not only good teachers, but parents who take an active interest in their children’s education…and children who care enough to try.

What I do not hear in this so-called national conversation on education is any mention of the incredible number of children who have received a good education, despite a lack of support from home. No one ever talks about the teachers who spend the extra time and effort to successfully work with children who not only have no books at home, but who are living in conditions of poverty, physical, mental, and sexual abuse that most people cannot even begin to fathom.

We have to deal with children whose families are breaking up, whose parents may be in prison, children who may spend their days shifting from one foster family to another and who may have their own problems with the law, often because of that home environment.

And we also have to deal with children who have wonderful, concerned parents, but who simply do not care about school.

Any real national education reform plan would deal with all three areas- teachers, parents, and students.

That will never happen as long as it is more politically expedient to demonize teacher unions. No one ever succeeded politically by calling out parents and children and asking them to live up to their responsibility to themselves, to their communities, and to their nation.

Count me among those who do not want bad teachers in the classroom, but any politician who thinks the solution to our nation’s education problems can be found by perpetuating the lie that teachers are standing in the way of reform is performing a disservice to this country.