A New Book Captures The Reality Of Teacher Work
Over at Forbes.com, I am making another pitch for the new Alexandra Robbins book, The Teachers.
Alexandra Robbins’s new book The Teachers is a must read for all non-teachers who want to better understand the profession and for all teachers who want to feel seen. It’s an extraordinary work that combines broad scope, tight focus, telling details, and the voices of dozens and dozens of actual teachers.
In her introduction, Robbins cites the oft-repeated quote that “Those who can’t, teach.” Her reply sums up the goal of the book:
After the teachers in this book escort you through their year-in-the-life stories, our hope is that you will never tolerate that message, or anything like it, again.
I got to talk to Robbins, and ask her a few follow up questions to the book.
I asked her what she thinks the public does not understand about teaching. “They don’t understand,” she said, “that the job a teacher is given is not a job that can be completed in the given hours. It’s impossible to do all the things you must do.”
Rather than suggesting that teachers as having the worst burnout rate, being uniquely unable to meet the demands of “shifting and expanding expectations” laid on them by “districts that don’t give them the tools necessary,” why not instead say that “school systems are the employers worst at providing necessary supports and resources for employees.”
What are three concrete steps that school districts could take to fight burnout, I asked. She gave three good answers:
1) Invest in personnel rather than new programs. Adding teachers and support staff (paras, aides, counselors, and a nurse in every school) while paring down newfangled curriculum initiatives and other programs would at least be a first step to better keep a teacher's job within the paid contracted hours.
2) Increase teachers' pay. No teacher should have to work a second job just to be able to afford to keep teaching.
3) Increase teachers' decision-making power and autonomy. Every committee that determines school operations should be led by a teacher; teachers know best what will work in today's classrooms.
In forty-some years, I have not read a better book about the reality of teaching. This book is a must read for everyone interested in the profession so central to our society, yet so often maligned and misunderstood.