The myth of the super teacher

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

Are you waiting for a super teacher to magically help your child? It's no wonder. From To Sir, with Love to Dangerous Minds, we've been fed a steady diet of brilliant, miracle-working education whisperers for decades. Inexperienced yet innovative, these young idealists take on the bland land of classroom learning and turn it into Hollywood heroics. Now, with a new generation of educators seizing the lectern, we've got aspiring super teachers appearing at a struggling, turnaround, and/or charter school near you (think Teach for America).

But it wasn't until I heard teacher Roxanna Elden demystify "the myth of the super teacher," that I realized how teachers had swallowed that notion – and were trying to live up to it. The myth of the super teacher begins early, Elden told a crowd of education reporters, reformers, researchers, and union types at a conference in Philadelphia on Friday, when they play Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” at graduation to inspire the newest generation of teachers.

Confession of a fallen super teacher

Elden says she remembers clearly the pressure to outperform her first year in a classroom. “I had every intention of being a super teacher,” she recalls. She pushed her class and herself so hard that she lost perspective, adding piles of homework one day (against her training and better judgment) when her kids just would not sit still and be quiet. Later, she realized it was Halloween. “I ruined Halloween for a bunch of fourth graders,” she laments, a breaking point that ended with her sobbing in a Burger King parking lot for two hours. Her book, See me after class: Advice for teachers by teachers, compiles humor and practical tips for teachers; it’s her way of helping others avoid a similar meltdown.

Will all the good teachers please speak up

The myth of the super teacher, where only the elite, caped crusader can get through to kids, is a dangerous one. Recently, the search for great teaching has become a matter of national urgency – but the teacher’s voice is often absent from this conversation. That we’re losing teachers at a pretty fast clip – 40 to 50 percent leave the profession within five years – makes it all the more important for us to listen when a teacher reminds us it’s a profession (not an exercise in perfection) and the myths of extravagant kindness, empathy, wisdom, classroom management, and zero work-life balance, all wrapped into a Hollywood heroine, aren't really helping anyone.

Comments

[Darla Beamon on May 22, 2012 at 07:01 PM]

Even for teachers who have been teaching 20 plus years feel this pressure that Hollywood has put out to society. In addtition, administrators and district personal put pressure on teachers and often do little to support them. Causing teachers to take early retirement. My experience has taught me that I have to do what ever I can to teach, help those that are already 2 plus years behind, and the student(s) who consistantly misbehave with little or no discipline. It is no longer the profession it once was...and I do not blame teachers for students not learning...much of what we know is that it begins in the home...parents must be much more involved.

[Shane on May 28, 2012 at 05:19 AM]

And you want to blame the parents, now. It goes around and around in a circle of who to blame.

I have seen and heard it from both sides.
I have been a teacher,
I am a parent,
and what I see is this!

Our society keeps beating up our kids telling us that they are not in school long enough, that they are failing, and that they are getting more and more stupid!

Guess what, people, kids do become what you keep telling them that they are! Here is my side!

1. Tell the media to stop reporting and comparing America with other countries for several reasons! One, is that they are not America, and the things they do will not necessarily work in America! Two, information is often only said from one point, which I'd have to have you in front of me so I can diagram where they can get two stories from the same data! In other countries, the kids are not required to learn, the slow learners along side of the gifted, and this does make a big difference, but in America, it is AGAINST the law to separate learners according to ability.(tracking). Third, we are actually putting pressure on kids to learn things that we were never exposed to as kids, and if you look at what kids can do today, it is amazing, the skills that they actually do have. They are not stupid. They simply are being told to study so much and so sternly, the students don't want to study on their own.

Discipline is a big problem, and it is neither the parents' fault, who are blamed when they can't blame teachers, and the teachers who are blamed when they can blame them. What the problem is, is that kids are no longer obliged to sit still, to use polite manners, and to worry about what might happen if they don't follow the rules because to even scold a child has become a taboo. If children are not to learn at school and home, what is bad behavior, how can they possibly know when they become adults that something is wrong, or something will happen if they do bad behavior all the time?

The day of the belt at school is over, but still, kids need to know that the principal and the teacher have something they control at school, and if kids are going to cause trouble for their peers and teachers, then they should be grounded from going to school functions like dances, games, and attending classes with friends.

When kids know there are enforced rules, they do behave a little better, and teaching becomes more likely in the classroom rather than just controlling and diffusing violence in the classroom.

[Lorrie Ann Morales on May 28, 2012 at 05:51 AM]

I strongly agree with Darla. I have 16 years of experience as a teacher, beginning in elementary and actually in intermediate school, and students are not the same from the ones I started with. Parents are not the same either. I have taught in private schools since my first year, with the idea that I wasn't going to face with all the "miss-behavior" of these kids. But I have encountered with even worst behavior. Some private school parents/students understand that because they are paying for their education, this means that their grades have to be "straight A's". I even had a parent who was a lawyer, who told me I didn't know how to construct a test, because when he constructed his child's reviews and pre-tests his son always performed with a 100%, and when I evaluated his child he only got between 85% to 90%. I also had a parent who told me she wasn't paying a private school for her daughter to have a C in Science. And if I continue expressing what some parents have told me I would need to write a book about it (which is not a bad idea).
Parents have forgotten how they had to struggle in school to achieve good grades, and some even were left alone as the only responsible for their school work and still had to bring home good grades. Today, most parents get so involved with their children's school choirs; they even do their children's homework and projects and bring them to school to hand in to the teachers. Some teachers who are classified as “super teachers”, as seen by most parents, are not the ones who work long hours and have a very diverse bank of strategies to teach, but those who give students A grades so parents will applause them at graduations and who students even dedicate their graduation because their “extra consideration” with their grades.

[Teacher on May 28, 2012 at 07:53 AM]

I have seen schools that allow some of the worst behaved students on campus to regularly attend dances. When I pointed out that going to school dances was not a "right" I was simply ignored.

[Colette on July 01, 2012 at 07:33 AM]

And here's the latest in the "bad teachers, parents can do it better" genre "Won't Back Down":

http://www.fandango.com/movie-trailer/wontbackdown-trailer/147786/2237395484

I love Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and I am sure this film will be very well done and we'll see all kinds of reviews and discussions on the usual talk shows. I just get so tired of the teacher-blaming.

And folks, dumping on the educational system has become a universal sport in the developed world.
When I was France this spring, I read a long article in Paris Match about how poorly French kids perform when compared to Germans, Swedes, and Finns. Yet, German students attend school fewer hours and for a shorter school year than the French. The solution: adopt more interactive, engaging teaching methods. Example given: U.S. schools ! Haha!

[San Antonio Conference on January 29, 2013 at 06:54 AM]

I've heard a story like this before and I don't think so if there are super teachers.