An English teacher in a math teacher’s world…

I wandered down the crowded hall, searching for the room. Suddenly, I stopped. I saw a door covered in strange, foreboding shapes and symbols. I crossed the threshold and saw more of the same littering the walls and desks, instilling a sense of dread that had previously been foreign to me. What was this terrifying, horrible place? To where had I been sent? The answer, dear reader, was a place most sane people avoid, a place of childhood discomfort and unease, a place too terrible for the faint of heart. Steel yourselves, dear readers, for what I am about to say is not for the weak or easily intimidated. This place, this dark and nightmarish place, was…A Math Classroom…(cue gasp).

As an English-minded person, numbers and their rules have always eluded me. Many of my friends, family, and colleagues will attest to the fact that even the simplest numerical tasks leave me baffled. I can’t add, subtract, multiply, or divide; and don’t even get me started on time management. Needless to say, in a room full of numbers I was out of my element (but don’t stress, I survived my foray into that strange world relatively unscathed).

Why was the English teacher in a math classroom, you ask? Well, I was asked to sub. And as a dutiful teacher who loves and appreciates her colleagues, of course I said yes. This got me thinking about education in general, though. We spend 8 hours a day with these students – we have a chance to impact their lives in a colossal way. How are we using it?

What even is education?

So much of the focus these days seems to be on standardized testing of some kind. The courses all build up to an end-of-course exam (EOC for short), and the focus for graduating seniors is on ACT scores, PSAT and SAT scores, and a plethora of other super fun and exciting acronyms. And I’m not too old to forget how stressed I was over these same functions.

Now, there are studies that prove standardized tests are an accurate measure of what is taught. And I do believe the accountability they provide for teachers is both helpful and important. But I also feel that if we focus too heavily on testing, we lose some of the most important aspects of teaching, and we lose the interest and the hearts of so many students.

Standardized tests are not easy for everyone. One thing that has been stressed over and over again in literally every education class I’ve taken is that students are different. They have different likes, dislikes, skills, and, most importantly, different learning styles.

So why is the culminating achievement of every class a test that only appeals to visual learners and good test-takers?

And what can we do to change this?

I don’t have the answers. I’m pretty sure no one does, yet. Every class I take on the path to my Master’s convinces me of this. But every class makes me a better teacher in some way, and that is encouraging. There is a need for change in the world. There is a need for change in the education system. And there is a massive need for love and kindness in schools everywhere. High school is hard. These students I teach struggle with so many different things, and in both public and private schools, the issues are surprisingly similar. There is a call for teachers who see these students as more than a test score or a statistic. And we as teachers have a responsibility to teach every student.

So my foray into the unknown (the math classroom previously mentioned) helped me realize something that maybe got lost in the hustle and bustle of life. We teach students practical things – from math to home economics we strive to present knowledge and skills that will follow the student past the doors of the classroom and out into the world. But we have the chance, and the responsibility, to teach them so much more.

So what is education? What are you, the education major, the teacher, the mentor, the administrator, teaching your students? How are you going to change the world?