Opting Out of Teaching

In January 2011, the Academy hosted an event on The Future of Science Education in New York with leading New York education policy makers. Members of the audience – mostly teachers, teacher educators, and scientists – felt that the strategies put forward by the panel didn’t jibe with the realty of teaching in the classroom. Specifically, there is a tension between efforts to recruit top math and science talent into teaching with an education system often designed to be “teacher proof”.

Very soon after, the Academy hosted an event aimed at a different audience – the over 8,000 graduate student members of the Academy – called Thinking about Teaching: Myths and Realities about Becoming an Educator . Over 200 young scientists showed up to hear more about becoming a public school teacher. The passion and enthusiasm for teaching from the young scientists was palpable but I had to balance their energy with what I had just heard a few weeks prior from current teachers. And in many ways, my own history with teaching mirrored this tension – a deep love, passion and talent for teaching existing in a system that was not designed to value anything other than a widget- like teacher.

In our recently released report Support, Collaborate, and Retain: Strategies for Improving the STEM Teaching Crisis , co authored with the amazing Julia Rankin and Jennifer Wheary, I wrote about some of my own experiences as a researcher in New York City schools and one trend that has come to symbolize much of what is rotten about the way we treat teachers. In most of the public schools I worked in there was no toilet paper in the teachers’ bathroom – the school didn’t supply it so teachers kept their own rolls in their desks or purses – rarely offering it to a colleague as they didn’t want it to get stolen. I can’t imagine any other profession – where you require that people have a Masters degree, entrust them with the social and intellectual well being of children, and in some cases force them to walk to through a metal detector on their way to work- where you don’t provide for their basic biological needs.

I write this now from the comfort of a modern office building with a fancy coffee machine, a comfortable chair and all the paper products I could possibly need. I opted out of teaching not because I didn’t like the job, I left because I couldn’t stand the chaos when I opened my classroom door. As we say in the report, until we fix the school culture issues and treat teachers like the public intellectuals they are, the education system is going to continue to act as a sieve with no ability to retain talented teachers, thereby systematically underserving kids who most need a great STEM education.