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Mending the Broken Promise

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By Heather Wolpert-Gawron on May 28, 2009

Editor’s note: This week, we’re running a series of guest blogs in which accomplished teachers offer ideas for how to spend stimulus funds. Today, California teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron offers her contribution. The opinions she expresses are of course her own and do not necessarily represent those of LFA or its member organizations.

A knock at my door signals its arrival. “Sign here,” mumbles the delivery guy. At last. My stimulus package has arrived, and I know just how to spend it. My mythical program will solve everything, increasing both morale and teaching quality, and in so doing, increase student achievement. What is this magic bullet of which I boast? The Tapping Teachers Interests Program.

MY PROPOSED STIMULUS INVESTMENT: TTIP (tee-tip) is a teacher-driven elective program that provides funding for each teacher to have one period a day to teach the subject of his or her choice. There is a tangible difference between teachers who teach just because they are credentialed to do so, and those who truly love what they teach. A classroom that is staffed by a teacher who loves his or her subject is filled with a contagious light of learning. The students who are audience for this enthusiasm want to feel that same level of excitement for each subject.

Happiness, after all, is addictive. And happiness in a classroom is trickle-down: it must first come from the teacher and is inherited by the students. I always tell new teachers that, at some point in their career, they must create an elective course and communicate the content they find fascinating. If a teacher is eager to learn and share, the students will be too. And eager enthusiasm is a quick jump to achievement.

My mythical program funds the equipment and the extra period necessary to work the classes into the master calendar. Regardless of class size, whether it’s for an audience of 6 or 36 students, our TTIP teacher is financially permitted to teach a subject that they love, letting academic passion ripple out to energize even those subjects that we find most droll.

Dance. Robotics. Photography. These classes are academically rigorous and should have a place in our schools with a teacher who can’t wait to teach them. A PE teacher can teach about The History of Baseball. A science teacher can teach a class on Green Living. An English teacher can take off the grammar-Nazi mask and discuss Shakespeare or Harry Potter. A Math teacher can wax poetic about his passion for architecture. A History teacher may share her love for archaeology, her minor from collegiate days gone by. Any subject, when taught by someone who is an expert in communication, as teachers are, can be rigorous, engaging, and yes, standards-based.

Many students dream of being teachers, of generating discourse about favorite books or authors. They imagine taking questions from the crowd, their students’ hands raised in thoughtful inquiry. They dream of inspiring kids to talk about the topics of the day, of yesteryear, or of the great questions of our time.

But no child dreams of what goes along with the reality of teaching today: detentions, piles of grading, unpaid hours entering and disseminating data, tracking down parents, SSTs, IEPs, and crossing their fingers that their efforts will see them into the safer harbor of tenure. As would-be teachers, we dreamed of the joy of communicating the content, not of the sadness of seeing some kids slip through our fingers. Our eventual loss of enthusiasm not only contributes to the immense turnover in our profession, it also chips away at the quality of our work, corroding student achievement.

I believe that once a teacher gets reborn in their enthusiasm to teach through the TIPP program, that reminder of learning excitement will transfer over into the other classes they have been assigned. Perhaps they will ask themselves: if I have this experience one period a day, how can I replicate this feeling and my students’ successes in my other periods? And soon you have a teacher driven to improve their craft, their content knowledge, and their ability to communicate.

I also believe the Tapping Teacher Interests Program would draw a greater number of qualified people into teaching in a way that performance pay and other typical incentives cannot. It is the temptation of sharing knowledge that will draw them, that will excite them, that will birth teachers who want to become better at educating.

We cannot take away some of the challenges in education. But we can mend the broken promise that teaching has become for so many who once believed it would be the ideal career for lovers of learning.

Heather Wolpert-Gawron is a 7th and 8th grade language arts teacher and speech and debate/podcasting coach in California’s San Gabriel Unified School District. A 10-year veteran and a former California regional Teacher of the Year, she blogs at TweenTeacher and Edutopia’s Spiral Notebook. She is also a member of the Teacher Leaders Network.

Link to this story: http://www.learningfirst.org/mending-broken-promise

8 Comments Digg this article Del.icio.us

This is an interesting

Submitted by Ariel Sacks. on Thu, 05/28/2009 - 20:36

This is an interesting proposal! I like the way you've reminded us all what is so enticing about teaching--I remember fantasizing in elementary school about being that awesome teacher (I actually aspired to be the best substitute teacher ever, ha, ha! Maybe because substitutes were free of the "boring" curriculum?)--and then you juxtapose that with the things in the actual profession that drag on that intrinsic motivation, which affects student motivation. I actually wish we could turn our core courses into TTIP's--make sure they align with standards, but redesign curricula and methods to be more in line with the intrinsic motivation we all have to learn.

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I have twice had the

Submitted by Ken Bernstein on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 05:35

I have twice had the opportunity of teaching an elective I love - Comparative religion. It was a transforming experience, and was exciting for the students as well. I wish I could again next year. But our system, even with the stimulus money, is losing teachers. Our class sizes are increasing. To add electives would mean possibly increasing the size of classes in required courses both for myself and for other teachers. Currently I am projected to have 35+ in each of my 3 sections of AP Us Government and Politics - I cannot go to a 4th section because that would have the same impact as doing a section of Comp. Religion, and I am unwilling to turn away any student willing to take on the challenge of college level government at 10th grade - they may struggle, but they will learn. So in theory I agree with your proposal, but in practice I have to consider the impact it would have. Right now I would prefer to see maintaining the number of teaching slots we have had so that our class sizes do not increase. Ken Bernstein (who somehow does not seem to be able to sign on this morning, hence this is posted as if by Anonymous)

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Thanks for your comment,

Submitted by vonzastrowc on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 07:32

Thanks for your comment, Ken--and apologies for the enforced anonymity.  We're having some technical difficulties with our comments function--we hope to resolve them soon.  In the meantime, people leaving comments should simply sign their names at the bottom of the comments, and we'll sign in for them.

Apologies for the problems!

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Heather W-G: "I believe that

Submitted by Nancy Flanagan on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 08:35

Heather W-G: "I believe that once a teacher gets reborn in their enthusiasm to teach through the TIPP program, that reminder of learning excitement will transfer over into the other classes they have been assigned." Excellent piece, Heather-- and a reminder that what goes around comes around. Like Ken, I've had the opportunity to do something like TTIP, back in the 1970s. On Fridays, my middle school shortened all class hours to give the entire afternoon over to teacher-created classes (in 2-hour blocks). I taught "History of Rock and Roll" which was very popular. Other classes that I remember: knitting, candy-making, photography, reading/discussing mysteries, and building a nature trail (which still exists). The most popular class, by far, was "Free Shoot"-- essentially, an open gym (and lots of boys who may have wished to try photography or making candy were socially ostracized if they didn't go to Free Shoot). Another feature of the Friday program was that anyone who had not completed their homework that week had to go to "homework hall," where teachers who hated the idea of fun classes were standing by to "help" them complete their homework. Help them severely. A punishment/reward aspect, which you find in a lot of elective programs... We ran this about two years, and then it was shut down in a financial downturn, mostly by parents who thought it was a huge waste of time. There were also a significant number of teachers who hated the extra prep, frankly. When the district was laying teachers off, it was hard to lobby for enrichment in the back-to-the-basics 70s. Which leads to my question for you, similar to Ariel's: What is it that drags down enthusiasm and passion in teaching? How do we inject that motivation into assigned classes?

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You hit it on the (creative)

Submitted by Cindi Rigsbee on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 11:00

You hit it on the (creative) head, Heather! As a remedial reading teacher, I work hard to fight the sadness that comes from working with struggling readers all day. Although I love the work, and find it meaningful, I miss the studies of literature that were the reason I majored in English in the first place. Luckily my school has a Grizzly Acceleration Period (GAP) class every day for thirty minutes. Students rotate from class to class, every three weeks, and my class is Creative Writing. We've studied Shakespeare and Chaucer in my sixth grade classes, an enjoyable break from the basic texts that I work with the rest of the day. I've also taught drama during this time, and during our "Clusters" (once a month club meetings), I've been able to teach dance. One of our teachers actually takes kids out to a nearby pond to fish during Clusters. Who, besides professional fisherman and dancers, get to do this kind of thing on the job? Keeps us rejevenated and young! And we get to work with different students from around the school who may not be in our classes! Turns our school into a real community. Cindi Rigsbee Orange County Schools, NC

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This is a great tale of

Submitted by Heather Wolpert-Gawron on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 15:25

This is a great tale of teaching the whole student. So many of the advanced students seem to be so because of the additional experiences they've had beyond the academics of school. These students come back from a weekend with stories of fishing and skiing, of learning about art history and cooking their own pies. Things we don't even think about as education, yet clearly there is a correlation between these experiences and deeper thought and academic ability. But so many families are not giving their children these additional educational experiences, perhaps it falls to the schools to provide. We must step up beyond what was once considered education. With teachers and schools diagnosing, babysitting, disciplining, policing,and performing so many jobs beyond the traditional role of schools, it takes a vill...well, you know the rest. Thanks for the comments and for checking in on PSI. -Heather Wolpert-Gawron

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Heather- One of my great

Submitted by Susan Parks on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 01:37

Heather- One of my great fantasy's when I was an elem. principal was to take all of my Title I money and put kids on buses once a month or week (whatever the $$ provided)and travel locally--museums, hiking trails, the mountains, deserts, oceans, forest, snow, whatever to fill in the gaps and then pre-read, write and do the math and extend learning and read and write some more. When I started teaching I was shocked at the number of students in my classes who had never heard the crash of a wave or the lapping of a gentle tide; or heard breezes through pine trees or had seen an owl or felt snow on their faces. Any of it. I understand missing some of it but living 20 minutes from an ocean and have missed the experience completely for 10 years? How can you read literature and make sense of images, references to cultural icons, and so on? Of course now, those trips COULD be done differently, vicariously, trhough techonlogy, which is likely better than missing the experience altogether, other than the snow on our face... Back to your thought---if kids don't get it on their own (think families) we are do need to help put those pieces in place.

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Wow - ideas like that could

Submitted by Anne on Sun, 05/31/2009 - 18:04

Wow - ideas like that could send a creative spark through a whole school, Heather! Fortunately, I've always been able to teach my passion - science. However, I've known so many teachers who were teaching in their "second" area of certification. What a difference it would make if they could teach a class in their real passion area. I actually never thought of that idea before.

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