Words of Encouragement for Today's Teachers

I've always loved working with teachers. I decided very young that that's when I had my first job in higher education, that's what I wanted to do with my life. And I have to always remember that people don't go into teaching to make a lot of money or to get a lot of prestige. They go in because they think it's an important and honorable job. They want to change lives. They want to mentor. They love their students, and yet it's getting harder and harder to be a teacher.

But in spite of all that, many teachers keep going. That was one of the first books that I wrote, What Keeps Teachers Going? And I learned so much in that project. One of the things that surprised me about what kept these teachers who I studied with, who I did an inquiry group with was that anger kept them going, but anger, and I understand that perfectly, but anger shouldn't be the only thing that keeps you going. They also had hope. They also had love for their students and for the profession. They loved learning themselves. They loved their colleagues. They thought that what they were doing was important. These were all the kinds of things that kept teachers going in spite of all the obstacles in the way. But I think that we lose far too many teachers after one or two or three or five years, let's say, they leave just disenchanted and overwhelmed because of everything that they have to do.

I would encourage teachers to make sure that they have colleagues who they can count on. Teaching can be a really lonely profession. Try to find allies at work. If you can have lunch with your colleagues. Make sure you see some of them after school, do projects with them, cross-classroom projects that you can do together and get your students together. A good friend of mine was teaching in Holyoke, Massachusetts, close to where I live, where the student population has for a long time been a very high- level number of Puerto Rican students. And so he was teaching ESL, I believe, and he got together with a teacher who was a bilingual teacher who was teaching mostly Vietnamese students and he was teaching mostly Puerto Rican students. And they got together for the kids to get to know one another and dispel some of the myths and the lies that they knew about one another. That was a beautiful project.

And when you can collaborate with teachers, with your colleagues, that's a great thing to do. And I think that's certainly important and needed across programs like bilingual programs and regular classroom programs. I would encourage teachers to do that. I would encourage them to keep learning, even though it's hard to find the hours in the day and I certainly understand that, but keep learning. Try to go to conferences. And that's hard because often schools don't pay for that. So you could start with local conferences, join a professional organization, that does wonders for people. Join the NABE or the NCTE, the National Council of Teachers of English, which is a wonderful organization, or the Writing Program, which is so empowering for teachers. It's made a big difference in the lives of so many teachers. So join a professional organization; that will help you keep going.

And then I always say have a life. Have a life outside of teaching. Make sure that you nurture your own relationships and take walks, pick up knitting. That's what I do. Just go see a sunset, find beauty in the world and find joy in teaching. Even if you don't have it right now, work on getting it.