- A Reformed Ed-Reformer - May 5, 2018
- I Am Not Your Hero: Surviving the Educator’s Savior Complex - December 10, 2017
I am not Michelle Pfeiffer. I don’t wear leather jackets, and I’m not that thin. I am not Hillary Swank. I do have two jobs, but I don’t wear pearls to school. I am not Morgan Freeman. I’m not patrolling my hallways with a baseball bat and locking the doors to keep out the “bad kids.” I am not a hero. I am a teacher.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t love my kids and my school. This doesn’t mean that I don’t spend long hours and my own money and even wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats about the next day’s lesson. I do all of those things, but I am no hero.
I’ve been teaching for 11 years in urban districts across Connecticut. I don’t know when or how being a hero, a superhero none-the-less, became part of the requirements to be a teacher. I am a professional. I have two and a half degrees and a certification from the state the qualify me to do this job, but again, this does not make me a hero.
We know what great teachers can do. We know, from studies like The Long Term Impacts of Teacher: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood, written by Harvard and Columbia economics and business graduate students, that a great teacher can have a significant impact on the outcomes of their students’ lives. In adulthood, students of great teachers are more likely to go to college, make more money, wait to start families, and even live in safer neighborhoods. Teaching is an important, fulfilling job, but we are no heroes.
Connecticut has some of the highest rates of concentrated poverty and concentrated wealth in our country, and with that data comes some of the highest segregation rates too. We cannot ignore the impact that poverty has on our students. But all too often, we do ignore these facts, and instead look to the teacher to be our cure-all. There is no question that the state of urban education in Connecticut right now is unacceptable, but why has the responsibility to fix this problem fallen on the shoulders of teachers?
Teaching is an important, fulfilling job, but we are no heroes. Click To TweetMore than half of all teachers will quit within their first five years. That rate is even higher for urban educators. The pressure is too high. The resources, too low. Teachers have been given an impossible task, and in exchange, those of us that “stick it out” and “fight the good fight” have been given the label of a hero as a way to lessen the impact of the impossible undertaking that has been placed at our feet.
I don’t want to be a hero. I want more autonomy in the classroom. I want supplies that will help me do my job. I want social workers and counselors for my kids, and I want it fully recognized that poverty and trauma impacts learning.
I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to be a teacher.
I love this post! Poverty and trauma play huge roles in the lives it students and teachers in urban areas. It bothers me when people act as if that doesn’t matter. It bothers me when high need schools have iver 18 students in a class with no aid. It bothers me that we work hard and get our students to work hard, but the fruits of our labor are not always visible. Fact is, we are not superheroes. We are teachers that can and will make positive impacts in the lives of our students. We should be held accountable, but not for everything. Poverty and trauma do make a difference
Great piece. I’m citing and quoting right now in an article. You should fill in your bio and do more writing.
Excellent article. Trauma and poverty impact our students lives tremendously. This is the difference when citing what our students needs are. I work in an urban, Title I school in downtown Chattanooga. The building is beautiful and we have many resources, but need resources such as a full time counselor, paraprofessionals in our Kindergarten and First grade Classrooms, etc. Over my career I have always worked in Title 1 schools. There are differences in rural poverty and urban poverty, and they need to be addressed appropriately.