February 2004 Table of Contents In this Issue Cover Story Features Getting Organized NEAFT Retirement People Last Bell ESP Health & Fitness Spotlight Departments Editor's Note President's Viewpoint Up Front Rights Watch State Report Leading the Way Debate Dilemma Resources Books by NEA Members Online Change Your Address/ Write a Letter Past Issues

Advertise in NEA Today!

For the Love of Kids

by Arnold Gundersen

Eight years of teaching have taught me that teachers face significantly more challenges, play many more roles, and are paid considerably less than their corporate counterparts. Were you brainwashed into believing teaching salaries are lower because corporate employees have more demanding jobs? Don't believe it! I have never worked harder in my life. People think that when the kids leave school, we kick back and unwind. Only our families see us grading papers on Sunday, planning lessons at 10 p.m., setting up labs at 7 a.m., or using our weekends and "long" summers to take recertification courses or pursue advanced degrees. Studies prove teachers work a minimum of 50-hours each week. As teachers, we face not just long hours but also incomparable responsibility. Why is teaching so difficult? The velocity of our decision making is one reason. Teachers must make a critical decision every 20 seconds. What direction to take a lesson when the kids don't get it? How to discipline the student in the third row without disrupting the whole class? How to recover momentum after a public address announcement? Rarely is anyone in business under that type of minute-by-minute pressure. Corporate employees have time to mull things over, to reconvene a meeting in an attempt once again to reach a resolution, or even to sleep on an idea and finalize it the next day. Educators make more decisions in one class block than most business employees do in an entire day!

And they just keep coming. In business, if I had just dealt with a customer's issue, I could break for coffee or talk to a co-worker to clear my brain. In teaching, after I deal with a challenging student, I look up and see 23 other faces requiring my immediate attention. Business results are tangible. Did the division or the product make money or lose money? It is usually easy to see a cause and effect relation to one's performance. Contrast that with the intangible results of teaching. We often leave school wondering if we made any headway that day and questioning if a different approach might have made the message clearer. If we had "Eureka!" moments in every class, we might achieve the same instant gratification that much of the private sector has. But, we don't. Maybe several years, or even a decade later a student contacts us to say that we made a difference. Teaching is like planting an apple orchard; you must wait 25 years for the trees to finally mature and bear fruit. Psychologists claim that the longer the delay between action and results, the more challenging the task. By this standard, teaching certainly is the most demanding of jobs.

Additionally, each teacher must perform many different roles each day. In the corporate world, my role was clearly defined for me. The organization chart had a box with my name on it. I had a company car, a private parking space, and a paneled office to let other employees know their place in relation to mine. There is no organization chart to describe a classroom. Sometimes we are authority figures, but at other times we must take on the role of nurse, coach, custodian, lunchroom monitor, or mentor. We often must perform dissimilar roles to different students at the same time. Each role is critical, for it may be the one key that enables a student to achieve academic success or social integration.

Clearly in our profession, what we say and do makes an incredible impact on a young person's self image. In business, one may fire an employee who isn't performing, but we cannot fire a student who is not working or is not motivated to succeed. If we are at our best, we may be able to encourage, inspire, and lead. So, all of us must be at our very best every minute of each long and challenging day. But those intangible rewards outweigh the hassles. I am proud to be a teacher. And, about that career as a senior VP, I look back and marvel at how easy it was.

Arnold Gundersen teaches mathematics at Burlington High School, Burlington, Vermont.