Confessions of a "Bad" Teacher

I used to be an awful teacher. After 15 years as an educator, I can finally admit this.

They say there are four kinds of teachers very generally speaking: high skill/high will, high will/low skill,  low skill/low will, and high skill/low will. Not only was I a bad teacher, but I was the worst kind of bad: high skill and low will. What this means is that I was more than capable of being effective. I had that natural charisma and command--or "with-it-ness"--that is sometimes hard to learn. I simply chose not to harness that skill in favor of just merely getting by.

You see, my whole life I'd been told that I was talented and special. I was a "talented and gifted" student in school; I was captain of the soccer team and president of my sorority in college; I was "student teacher of the year" before I was hired as a brand new fifth grade teacher; and I was ready to save the world my first year in education. But the truth is my first few years teaching I was the textbook Harry Wong teacher. I was in survival mode. And I was barely surviving.

I remember my first week in my very own classroom. I didn't even know where to start I was so overwhelmed, so like many teachers without clear direction or a sense of urgency and purpose, I spent my time making my classroom look pretty. As I was outlining construction paper stars with gold glitter I tried to ignore the nagging voice that kept creeping into my mind telling me that I had absolutely no clue exactly what it was that these 10-year-olds were supposed to come away with as a result of spending a year in my care.

The one "curriculum map" I'd seen had the months listed across the top and the subjects listed down the side, which was a nice start except that between the months and subjects there were only arrows going across the page like so: Math ------------------>, Reading----------------------> ...  So what this map told me was that from September to June I was to teach math, reading, writing, etc. No kidding. Because I didn't have time or know-how to pull out the standards newspaper (yes they were on newspaper at that time) and cross reference the standards with the table of contents in my ten-year-old textbooks (that were on a cart because I had to share them with two other teachers), I decided I could probably just figure out what I was teaching as I went.  I was talented. I could wing it. BIG MISTAKE.

I wasn't prepared for just how hard teaching was. As I mentioned earlier, I had natural ability. I was good with kids. The students loved me. I just didn't teach anything worth learning. What's worse is that I didn't have the desire to. Don't get me wrong; I cared a lot about the students. I just didn't quite care about much about the standards or initiatives. I was used to things coming easily to me in life, and frankly that had made me a little lazy and impatient. Teaching, as all educators know, is not something that one ever really perfects, and because I cared more about my own ego than my students' futures (apparently), I was more willing to buck the system than I was to try and fail.

Moreover, no one ever came into my room or gave me any feedback whatsoever as to how well I was doing or whether I was even doing what I was supposed to. Actually, if someone had even just told me what I was supposed to do at any point, it might have made somewhat of a difference. They didn't though, and I interpreted that absence of supervision as implied consent to do whatever I wanted...and that really, in the long run, it must not matter that much what I did since no one else seemed to care. Incompetence slowly brewed until it eventually became resignation and humiliation disguised as apathy.

My third year teaching, a new principal was transferred to our building. Instead of seeing me as a bad teacher to whom she either needed to turn a blind eye or rid the school of, she made me a teacher leader ... not just an adequate teacher, but a teacher leader.  You see, she must have known just how inadequate I was feeling. Had her goal simply been to make me less bad at what I did, I probably would have remained humiliated and continued to feel worthless, and that emotional state would have surely impacted my instruction and my students. However, instead of writing me off or discounting me, she worked hard to instill in me a sense of purpose, so that I knew exactly why my role as an intermediate teacher was crucial to my students' development and  to our staff's success, and then she had me reflect on how I could best improve my practice to realize that purpose. I piloted things for her in my classroom. I presented at staff meetings. Passion began to brew. Confidence began to take hold.

Essentially, she helped me to see that I mattered. I wish I could say that without her leadership I was selfless enough to put my own emotional needs aside and just be the kind of teacher those first few years that my students needed me to be. But, I was a kid too. I was an overwhelmed 21-year-old, and I needed to know that my work, my ideas, and my presence was important--just as our student do. Once I had a sense of purpose and knew that I had a significant role to play when it came to my students' and our school's success, I became the kind of teacher I always imagined myself to be and the kind of teacher my students needed me to be: high skill/high will.

Since then, I've taken that sense of purpose that that leader instilled in me and ran with it. I've spent the last four years as an instructional coach working to help elementary and middle school teachers realize exactly how much they, too, matter.  I've worked with all four kinds of teachers over the past handful of years. It's always the "low will" teachers that break my heart the most and move me to work the hardest in order to do right by them and their students.

It's easy to feel angry at them. What right do they have to slack on the job when our students' lives are at stake? But then I always pause for a moment and think back to my own shortcomings my first few years as a teacher, and I remember that the key to reaching students is in reaching their teachers. And, their teachers are people too, with needs and emotions and shortcomings ... and amazing potential waiting to be harnessed.

In this era of education where teachers are made to be the scapegoats of society's problems and often feel as though they are tasked with seemingly insurmountable responsibilities, we cannot let them forget just how much they matter and just how significant their work really is. Now, more than ever, school leaders must not only delegate and supervise, but we must empower and inspire. We cannot only address teachers' skill-sets. We must address their mindsets, as well. Most importantly, we must lead with a strong sense of purpose so that low will is not an option. We do not settle for the label "bad student," so let's not settle for "bad teacher" either. It's time to be the kind of leaders to our teachers that we expect our teachers to be for our students.