Comments
Interesting points Chris.

Dan is clearly a bright individual. However, reading his comment and a recent post in defense of NCLB, it is clear that he brings a lot of behaviorism to his approach. So I find it of no surprise that he believes discussion of the teaching profession should be stripped of any value-laden terms like "calling" or "passion".

And the behaviorist approach may be great. Not for me though. I find it a mediocre way to go about education. I think it aims way too low and objectifies children. Perhaps I've been influenced too much by writers such as Alfie Kohn. Perhaps I should start reserving a corner of my whiteboard for "discipline" or use extra homework as a punishment to get students to behave how I think they should (as Dan does). However, I've spent the last several years of my teaching getting rid of such "classroom management" practices and I don't see myself ever going back.

Of course, there are plenty of teachers who feel the same but are stuck in classrooms with 30+ students in them. Fortunately for me, this is not my case. Such a situation must be rectified before we can expect teachers to drop their silly little ploys that manipulate children into behaving the way we think they should. If education is equally (or more) about self-knowledge and relationships, such practices are counterproductive.
#1 Peter Rock (Link) on 2007-02-02 00:07
I didn't say we should eliminate passion and artistry from teaching. We need passionate teachers. I'm pretty sure this job is more steady application of the scientific method -- why wasn't this effective? why did this work instead? -- than artistry, but, sure, you make a decent case for the latter.

My point is that we need to eliminate "passion" and "artistry" from the rhetoric of teaching -- particularly the rhetoric of teacher recruitment. Because, does anyone know what anyone means when any of us raises our eyebrows earnestly and says, "Man, you've gotta be passionate about this job."?

"Passion" and "calling," these words have come to mean all things to all teachers, shorthand for everything and nothing, and the easiest way to determine the legitimacy of these terms in your own practice is to imagine yourself a very well-paid teacher. Can you imagine teachers pulling down $60/hr and still trotting out lines like, "Keep the faith! Remember teaching is a noble calling!"?

It's out there as best as I can get it that how we currently frame our job description is going to send a lot of potentially great teachers packing before they've tasted the crack. The Teaching Cliche concerns me additionally because I think that if we as teachers could only reframe our job description, we'd slowly become better compensated -- both in terms of pay and respect -- neither of which would affect how well or how eagerly I do my job, just how well I could support a family (hypothetically) and how high I could hold my head among my graduating class of venture capitalists and engineers. (Please, with respect to that last bit, can we all suppress the hardline response: either get proud or get out. I can just feel that coming from *someone*. It ain't that.)

You've changed my mind somewhat, though. With the right articulation, with an appropriate word count, the right writer can reclaim some meaning for such empty words. Your post dipped anecdotal at the right times, rode inspiration to the last bus stop before Schmaltzville, and explained with appropriately grounded imagery why teaching is an art. Your post did some measure of justice to the "calling" and made realistically clear your "passion."

Perhaps some governing body can license these hackneyed terms out to teachers who demonstrate sufficient articulation. I'd recommend you and a few others. But when anybody can take a job with so much to recommend it like teaching and, with just a little laziness, make it seem so milquetoasty, then I worry. The result is a net negative for the job we both love.
#2 Dan Meyer (Link) on 2007-02-02 01:57
p.s. Martyr? No. But, I am a saint. And I take my job as saint very seriously.

http://gnuosphere.blogspot.com/2006/11/i-am-saint.html
#3 Peter Rock (Link) on 2007-02-02 04:22
Of course, you're both right to some degree, and I'm not being intentionally unhelpful here. "Passionate Professionals" might be a term you could both support, I don't know.

Riffing on Dan's position, I think a sense of "professionalism" is lacking in the world of education. It isn't enough "just" to care and have passion, or to have that "artistic" touch (which I would argue owes a debt to emotional intelligence). And the public face / rhetoric should focus on the professional side.

That's what I love about the National Writing Project and its local sites. The baseline assumption is that teachers are professionals and therefore should act like professionals: they should practice what they teach; they should stay continually informed about research related to their work; they should write and publish; they should conduct their own research and approach teaching reflectively, etc. They should not only think of themselves as professionals, but treat teaching as a profession and demand professional treatment from others. (This isn't a plug for the project, but for that philosophy/approach).

On the other hand, professionalism without passion and genuine concern is lifeless, and students will likely fail to respond. We are helping students make sense of a discipline of knowledge and imparting related skills, but we are also inspiring a desire to learn, an understanding that you learn in order to act, and for many, you can't do that without first convincing the person you're teaching that you actually care about what happens to him/her in life. That's foundational. And BS is smelly and easy to detect.

(I'm wary to quote religious texts, but I'm reminded of: "the law without the spirit is dead." Both are necessary.)

You both seem to be fine examples of passionate professionals. As a student, parent, or colleague, I would care more about the "passionate." But our public face needs to better reflect the "professional."
#4 Eric Hoefler (Link) on 2007-02-02 06:19
Well said...it feels good to cut loose once in a while. :-)
#5 Jeff Utecht (Link) on 2007-02-02 06:27
We have teachers that are excellent every day. They seem to overflow with enthusiasm, they somehow manage to connect with EVERY child, and have an endless supply of great ideas. And we all wish we could be more like them. I'm a great teacher, most days. I connect with my students and they like me, and learn from me, but I have my days when I wish I could have done better. And movies like Freedom Writers can make you feel a little melancholy, because we all want to be the best for our students, but at the end of the day we are humans, not saints.

As for the pay, it is never about how much money you make, it is the feeling you get while doing the job. My husband and I share a common philosophy about work: Life is too short to do a job you don't like. You spend 1/2 your waking hours working. I'm always proud to say that I'm a teacher, and if I'm really lucky, I will have had a positive influence on the majority of my students.
#6 Crystal (Link) on 2007-02-03 18:08
" 'We need to avoid terminology like "passion" in describing the prerequisites of our job.' "

"The hell we do."
---

One of the banes of my life right now is the 70% or so of the faculty at my school that lacks the passion to even show interest in things like blogs, wikis, podcasting, and world classroom collaboration and connection.

Ask them to read a chapter or two from Richardson's or Warlick's books to learn more? Hell no. They have "lives" and don't do "homework."

From what I've been able to see, for a great many teachers, that means watching TV at night, or feeding at restaurants and pubs. And the irony is, when I join them, I'm amazed at how little passion or artistry or wonder is in their nights. I hear the lyrics to "Is That All There Is?", and wish I were home enjoying young minds making meaning and doing amazing things on blogs and wikis. Or planning or blogging about ideas for the next thing myself.

Or Skyping with team-teachers 5,000 miles away about ideas and new experiments.

So I hope to Whatever that my principal and director, currently at hiring fairs for new teachers, are placing the word "passion" near the top of their list in interview questions. And then asking for evidence of it.

Do these values of artistry, passion, and calling feel more at home among liberal arts teachers than among science and math teachers? I don't think so. I look at Darren's calculus and see artistry galore.

But passion and artistry are two different things. Maybe passion is more at home with humanities types, since these subjects are closer to religion and metaphysics.

All I know is that I haven't watched TV since August, and have watched very few DVDs. By choice. The meaning-making going on as my students make meaning on their blogs and wikis has been much more interesting to "watch"--and interact with--than any competing beer, pizza, or TV network.

It's not a "calling," but it is a "passion." If it's not, please find another job and get out of the way.
#7 Clay (Link) on 2007-02-03 22:35
Oh, man ... seriously?

See there's what my comment is about and there's what you all would like my comment to be about and it's depressing to see the difference so consistently underscored around here.

One of the two theses is a complicated stance that required an hour of drafting and proofing in between lesson planning. A fourth grader could've banged the other one out over a caffeine jag.

A frontal assault on the first thesis would've required some forethought, intellectual engagement, and verbal deftness. The other point is utterly indefensible and, written as it was by a fourth grader, has been attacked and dismantled pretty easily. Way to go, team.

This particular intellectual gambit -- forsaking the point that is there for the one that is easier and more satisfying to kick around -- has become a tiresome and seemingly inevitable feature of blogging.

So since I've got hella lessons to plan tonight and commenting on other blogs is beginning to seem like a poor use of my limited time, I'll keep this brief:

In no way was I arguing that teachers should be less passionate or less artistic or less happy or less called to teaching than they are. That should've been blatantly obvious from my first sentence up there.

As such, I find Clay's endzone dance, with his last line spiking the ball on a point I never made, rubbing my face in turf I never claimed, to be really disappointing. Aggravating. Offensive. Cheap shot, Clay.

I'd reiterate my original point but that'd make the third time, counting the first comment here and in Chris' previous post and, apparently, I have beer to swill, Buffy reruns to watch.

Finally: damn, Eric. Thanks a mil (here and in hindsight of our last conversation) for doing right even by points you find intellectually disagreeable. That skill is in far rarer supply than I ever would've guessed when we first traded posts. Your example's giving me a little hope, keeping me in this blogging game for another day, and if we ever meet on the outside, first round's on me.
#7.1 Dan Meyer (Link) on 2007-02-05 22:28
I tend to think that Eric's phrase -- "the passionate professional" may be the hybrid phrase we all are looking for. Makes sense to me. :-)
#7.1.1 Chris Lehmann (Link) on 2007-02-05 22:33
Real quick, Dan--

1. The subject--object--of my rant was not you. Read. It's the uninspired, un-passionate "70%" who hold schools and classrooms back by being unwilling to even consider changing and the bit of extra effort that occasionally takes. It's the batch of applicants my school administrators are probably interviewing for next year as I type this. Re-read and I hope you agree this is not about you. It's about a mindset and attitude many teachers have--the "working retired"--that I expect we're all too familiar with.

2. But I'm sorry my writing wasn't clear enough to you to make you see that.

3. So no "rubbing [your] face in the turf" intended. It's not about you. It's about "passion." And wanting to work somewhere where that's the norm.

4. Final comment: To get analytical for a second, I think this whole can of worms comes from an unfortunate false disjunction in your writing choice to posit an opposition between "inspiration and uplift," on the one hand, and "realism" on the other. You repeat this "category error" later by opposing "saints" and "hard workers."

Clearly (to me at least), the two are not mutually exclusive. All too often they are not combined in one teacher, granted; but they are in some teachers. And those teachers with both are, to me, the "ideal"--which is also, to avoid false oppositions, occasionaly the "real" as well.

Again: I replied to this post more interested in the topic of passionate teaching, Dan. The controversy was a side-note. Read my comment again, and see if this explication doesn't change your reading. I wasn't attacking you. I was decrying a personality type.

Peace? Hope so. I'm bowing out of this one. But it's been interesting.
#7.1.2 Clay Burell (Link) on 2007-02-06 01:42
I am enjoying this conversation. For me the issue is less whether we use words like "passion" or "art," but rather it's the question of sustainability. Can I do what I do -- which I love -- for the long haul? Only if I can find a way to make it not completely exhausting and overwhelming on a daily basis. (For the record, I am a technology coordinator in a Brooklyn public preK to 12 school full of 1100 very heterogenous kids.)

In the recent article in the New York Times magazine about what it takes to education urban kids, the author wrote admiringly about the KIPP schools, mentioning as an aside that KIPP teachers work 15-16 hours per day. That's not sustainable. That is part of what irritates me about Teach for American; it's one thing to throw yourself into being a savior to poor children for two years. It's another thing entirely to bring your skills and talents and EXPERIENCE to the task year after year, getting better at it as you go. If I am in this for the long haul, I can't work 16 hour days. After 20 years of teaching, I have a job with a lot of responsibility and a couple of kids and a marriage I want to sustain (and I'd like to sustain my sanity and health as well), so there's no way that I can live a sane life if I believe that teaching urban adolescents requires me to work 16 hour days. My students really don't need stressed out martyrs; they need teachers who know what they're doing and enjoy it.
#8 Vicki on 2007-02-05 10:25
When I read these articles and comments I am amazed at the depth an insight that is contained in them. One of my goals as a blogger is to improve my writing skills. If I keep reading these types of blogs and commenting, my writing should go nowhere but up ( I am crossing my fingers right now).

For some teaching is a passion, an art, and a calling. For others it is just a way to pay the bills.

As an administrator it is my job to make sure that "what's best for kids" is what is happening in that classroom. We all know who has it, the ones who as Dan says "work hard to make it look easy" , the ones who's classes are always full at lunch, who rarely have classroom management problems and whose students are learning at an amazing clip. We also know the teachers who are burnt out, overworked, send every student to the office and need to be somewhere else. These are teachers that need a change; sometimes that change is pressure from other teachers who are trying out new and exciting ventures, like WEB 2.0, sometimes it is from administration and sometimes from parents. One thing we all know is that the people teaching our children need to have passion and they need to have it the majority of the time.

Teaching was a calling for me. I knew in high school (SLV High, same as Dan :-)) that I wanted to be a PE teacher and when I got there I loved it. No greater job in the world. However after a while I wanted to impact more students and I moved into administration. I love that job as well. Digging deep to move students into a higher learning level. Great stuff.

Teaching is all of the things mentioned in Chris' post. Passion, art, a calling these are noble things for a teacher to proclaim.
For those who have lost these things I hope that you find them soon.
#9 Brian (Link) on 2007-02-05 22:28
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