Teachers R' Us

Examiner column for March 31.

    Teachers’ voices need to be heard. That’s been the subject of my last two columns, but I never explained how I know the effect those voices will have. I know because I’ve heard from you, the reader.

    No resource is more valuable than our children, so naturally anything parents can learn about the classroom—even someone else’s classroom—is welcome knowledge. That is reason enough to have at least one teacher writer in every newspaper and online journal in the country. Would that it were so!

    What I have discovered is that the voices of teachers reach more than the intended audience of parents, students, and other teachers. Before email, I never knew who read my sporadic pieces for the Fairfax Journal. Occasionally someone would bump into me and mutter, “Saw your column.”

    But for the past four years, my weekly Examiner column has received many emails--never a deluge (after all, the subject is education, not politics or celebrities!) But the ones that trickle in are from people of all walks of life.

    High school students don’t normally read print news, but at least one does: Leslie wrote, “I beg my mom to bring home” the Examiner each Monday. Yet high school students, the subjects of most of my columns, are not my main readers.

    Joan, a foreign service worker, commented on my column “The End is in Sight”: “It describes leaving post in Foreign Service to go to the next one. Your best friends pick fights because it makes it easier to say ‘farewell.’”

    Joseph, an Administrative Law Judge, wrote that he graduated from high school in 1943, but still reads “your column in The Examiner regularly…keep them coming.” Grace, who works in The Examiner building, sometimes misses a Monday paper on holidays, and “stops by the 5th floor to ask for a day-old copy.”

    Clearly all columnists have as many or more readers than I do; otherwise, they wouldn’t be writing. But teachers think no one wants to hear what they have to say, and my experience tells me that simply isn’t true.

    Teachers face daily exhaustion—mental and physical. We face the frustration of not knowing whether our work is taking effect, or falling on deaf ears. We have difficult first years, and feel nostalgia and regret as we head into the last years of our careers. We may be bullied or supported by supervisors. I’ve devoted more than one column to each of these subjects, and they reach far beyond the school classroom.

    Joyce summed it up best in a recent email. She wrote, “I am not a teacher, not a parent, nor a student in school. Yet I read your articles frequently and derive from so many of them a message that speaks to me personally.”

    I know there is a wide audience for teacher writing, but too few teachers believe it. Flaubert said of his most famous fictional character, “Emma Bovary, c’est moi [that’s me.]”    

    I have discovered that we are all teachers—of our children, of our co-workers, of our friends. As Flaubert recognized, human experience is universal. A teacher, like Emma Bovary, is all of us.

   

Comments

[Cathleen]

Dr. Jacobs, there's no need to feel frustrated -- I can assure you that your work is not falling on deaf ears. Trust me. :-)

[Dr. Jacobs]

Cathleen---I was referring to what teachers (and others) feel generally. This year, actually, I think my students are listening most of the time. You, of course, are tuned in 100%. Thanks.

[eevee]

yes Dr. J, don't worry!!! We love you and keep on writing! I will read your columns even when I'm at college!

[Dr. Jacobs]

You are a sweetie, Evelyn. I know you will do well in college, and I look forward to meeting your mom sometime. She must be a special lady.