The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Classroom Instruction

I was sitting in the Houston airport waiting for my flight. CNN was blaring. As I so rarely watch television, I somehow always feel like I'm being victimized by Big Brother when I walk through a place and the same television channel is talking at me–this is no comment on CNN, it could be any channel attempting to broadcast its way into my cognitive state. But now I'm way off track from the ideas through which I wanted to meander and reflect.

CNN is apparently producing a segment on "Who's Hiring." This particular segment was speaking about public schools as a potential employment opportunity for the millions around our country who are losing their jobs in this terrible time of economic "downturn," of "recession." The reporter presented what is required in most states to earn certification for teaching. One might think, on the face of the idea, this to be a wonderful solution: millions of people need jobs. The nation is in need of millions of teachers. Match made in heaven? Not so fast!

Actually, I was rather troubled by this thought. Being a teacher requires so much more than a state teaching certificate. Teaching is so much more than a profession of economic last resort.

As a retired school principal I believe that perhaps the greatest legacy a school principal can leave in a school is the staff that s/he hires. Finding exemplary staff that are not only passionate about subject matter but also have the capacity to inspire learning within a classroom of human souls is a challenge not to be taken lightly. The teaching profession is both art and science requiring perhaps the highest attainment of creative endeavor to which anyone can aspire. The act of teaching, of truly unfolding substantive and meaningful content in a way that creates a thirst for deeper understanding and for fashioning that understanding into relevant solutions for the world's greatest challenges is, in my opinion, nothing short of heroic work. This is all but the work of gods!

Regrettably this work has rarely earned the respect from American consumption-based culture that is deserved. In the 1990's I recall a school board member going on a crusade to make public schools more like businesses–a model which was gaining national traction and one which I found rather offensive at the time. Emphasis on this model still exists today, fed by the very structures of NCLB, with for-profit industry trying to make money off of the education of our children in what I believe to be a seriously flawed ideology that the public trust is best served by a capitalist model. I could not disagree more! (I'm trying to avoid yet another opportunity to go rogue in this post!)

The teacher focuses on the empowerment of people. Business focuses on profit margins. Capitalism gone awry focuses on maximizing profit margins above all else to the complete neglect of the social contract that each of us has to our fellow humans. We have seen where unfettered desire for profit takes business: the creation of an unsustainable "it's all about me" consumption based economic model that has little regard for those upon whom it feasts.

Greed and excess can not sustain themselves. We have seen this before in our own history. Sadly, how quickly we forget.

For over a year now, I have had the great privilege of traveling and meeting teachers the world over. In every city, every country I've been, I see the same characteristic in the teachers I meet: Teachers don't work a job, as do many business people. Teachers live a calling. They thrive in their reflections in the eyes of their pupils as they join together to explore, to create, to fashion anew, to inspire, to empower, to unleash, to transcend, to care. Teaching isn't about profit margins or numbers, despite the appalling emphasis on the later by NCLB. Expertise in teaching is not earned by a degree nor by a state teaching certificate.

Teaching must always remain a calling of the heart and soul.

Photo by: amrufm at flickr.com