Pre-service teachers need to be learning about the wholeness of education. Education is more than numbers, more than test scores, more than grades. I say “is,” but maybe I ought to be saying, “should be.” Above all, teachers should be caring for their students. Period.
As a country, we need to think about what sort of people we want our schools to be producing. For me, a teacher-to-be, I believe with every bit of myself that schools should be producing thoughtful, mindful, caring, independent, and critically thinking individuals. I believe that the broad tools with which we equip students is more important than specific information. Intelligence is not the most beneficial outcome of education. In schools we must be teaching students to love one another, work with one another, and how to have respect, dignity, and humility.
These attributes are intangible, yes, but there are education philosophers who have looked very hard at this. Nel Noddings has authored more than a handful of books based on the place of care, happiness, and love in education. If you are a pre-service teacher and have not read Noddings, please do. There are some that will ask "why?". Why teach these vague, nebulous concepts? How is that going to help the United States as a whole in the fields of science, technology, and economy? What will the students benefit from education? Well, from the outside, maybe they don’t need that. From the outside, improvement on test scores means that kids are smarter, which means the education system is doing its job. Great. But what about the view from the inside? Do teachers have a duty to their students that goes beyond textbooks? Of course they do. If your answer to that question is anything other than a joy-welling-in-your-heart-slamming-on-the-keyboard-all-capitals-y-e-s, then I’m not sure if you’re doing it right. At least that is my opinion, as a young, naive, inexperienced educator. Don’t take it from me, take it from one of my heroes, Rita Pierson. (Watch a video of her here.). Ms. Pearson gives an amazing TED Talk about education and how teachers play invaluable roles in the lives of children. If teachers did nothing more than teach from cookie-cutter Common Core lesson plans, what is the point of training professional teachers? Therein lies the danger of a heavily standardized, prescribed curriculum. If it is prescribed heavily enough, why bother training professional teachers? If the government has decided what is important and what is not and they want every student learning the same thing why do we bother putting teachers through rigorous courses on education philosophy and working with families of students who may be financially disadvantaged or have a disability? Why are we teaching our teachers to be different and then forcing them to be the same?
Here’s what we need to do. Teachers—be different. Be caring. Be loving. Be understanding and funny and flexible and always be learning. The first step to teaching empathy and care is exhibiting it yourself. It makes it so much easier to care and to empathize if you imagine yourself on an educational journey alongside your students. Write beside them, as Conway, NH, teacher Penny Kittle says. You have hundreds of students to learn about, get to know, learn to love. You have a ton of things to be learning that will be difficult, so there is no excuse for not being able to learn and write beside them, you can do so in the process of truly learning about your students. Noddings writes that one of the final steps in the process of caring is the reciprocity of care. I think this piece is important in theory and incredibly difficult in practice. How can we organically get children to reciprocate the care that they are receiving? I don’t have an answer. However, there are people out there trying it. Go read about them; get invested in your profession and in your students. Just like teachers tell students that they should be proud of everything they turn in because it has their name on it, teachers should be proud of every student that walks out their door because they have been their student. It’s the same principle.
We need empathy and caring taught in our schools. At a tumultuous time in American history, we need to be producing mindful, thoughtful young people so that they may hurdle the obstacles that lie ahead for them. We cannot prepare them with factoids and dates and mathematical formulas, we must prepare them with universal tools that will propel them through adversity. SAT scores are great, but being able to love and care are better. The ability to find passion, hone it, and use it to achieve your dreams will take you much further than an A in chemistry. It is time for a paradigm shift in education.
