Status Quo Teaching

As I look over last week, there seems to have been a bit of a theme among my classes. The idea was that if I plan to be an exceptional teacher, I should also plan for a lot of opposition. Whether it is because I will have a heart for my students or because I’m creative in covering the content, it may be the parents or even my administration that will reprimand me.  We talked about The Dead Poets’ Society. The inspirational teacher in that movie was fired. In Freedom Writers, the teacher has to fight with administration and the board every step of the way. And I am sure the list could go on. Why does everyone around us want us to settle for the status quo?

I have a friend who had just finished his first year of university in his pursuit to become a doctor when I met him. We were working at camp together and for one of our activities, we planned to take our kids rafting down the river. It came up that we needed someone with First Aide to go with us. Considering my friend’s future plans, I assumed that he would have it. My view is that if he genuinely wanted to help people the way a doctor does, he would do everything he could to start helping people immediately and not wait for some letters behind his name. WRONG. He did not have his First Aide because he wanted to be a DOCTOR not some first aide person. Later that summer, we planned a farewell party for the campers and we took them off camp property to his aunt and uncle’s home. It was a mansion in every respect. I soon learned that the uncle was a doctor and the head of some health region. I could be very wrong, but combining the fact that my friend had no interest in helping people with the little things like first aide with the lifestyle that his doctor uncle lived, I came to the conclusion that never would I want to go to him after he became a doctor. His heart was not with his patients.

I do not want to be a teacher like that!! I don’t want to be blinded by politics, numbers and statistics and lose focus of the students that come into my room every day. I don’t want parents hoping their child won’t end up in my classroom. But the only way to do that is to kick status quo out of my classroom in regards to both my teaching and my expectation of my students.