Those quick, yet "I can't believe they said that" converstations with parents usually drift away after a few days after sharing with colleagues, but some have stuck for years. After discussing progress reports at parent teacher conferences my first year of teaching, a mother said to me, "You don't know. You don't have kids."
I was taken aback. Was she saying I could not understand my students because I didn't have a child of my own? She was the first, but not the last parent to say that to me.
Can you be a good teacher if you are not a parent?
Back then, I thought they were crazy. Yes, they the parents. I was dedicated, hard working, and I knew their kids. I walked through those school doors two hours before the start of the day and stayed until the custodians kicked me out. I ensured them I was qualified. I earned my Masters and then achieved National Board Certification. Clearly, these parents had it wrong. I was a darn good teacher without being like them.
I went nine years of teaching with this mindset, and then I welcomed a baby into my life.
All I can say is it IS different now. Two changes stick out most. First, I definitely do not put in the hours I once did, but I have become better at time management. I take school home instead of making school my home. But to me, the second and most fascinating change is I see students and their parents differently. Sure, you could say in a different light, but it is more than that. I understand more of what their lives are like outside of school. I look at every parent and relate to more of their experiences than when I was not called Mama. I understand why at conferences they may come in with demanding force, and hope they leave now with less worry and more belief in the job I do. Does this make me a better teacher than my childless colleagues? I don't think so, but I am a better teacher than I was before.
But, as I leave work a minute or so after my contract hours, I wonder if some might conclude the opposite: You're a parent? You can't be a good teacher.
What do you think?
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Molly-
You bring up a great point.
I am a teacher. I am not a parent.
I wonder if that connection can come from experience and years in education reflecting on your practice and looking at the whole child, the whole family. Approaching school as the hub of the community.
Does being a parent make your energies in the classroom more concentrated, more potent?
Jen, I like the way you phrased it as my "energies...are more concentrated..." I've been very hard on myself not being the way I used to be meaning time spent at school, but if I take it as more potent as you said I feel that is true. Thanks for helping me take a positive perspective on it. I agree can good teaching comes from years of experience.
I do have to say that becoming a parent changed the way I looked at the relationship between my students and their parents. I finally understood--at a deep level--why parents, in the face of irrefutable evidence of serious misbehavior, defend their children.
I don't believe parents make better teachers--but I do believe that teachers who think they know more about a child than the parents do are usually wrong.
I think being a teacher has made me a better parent (than I would have been, not than others). Likewise, being a parent has made me a more empathetic teacher (than I would have been) because I imagine treating my students how I would want my own children to be treated by their teachers. Simply: I snap and yell less, I calmly reason more...I am more patient, and more in tune with what "child development" actually means and don't look at those 14-year olds as smaller versions of full-grown adults any more... I recognize that developmentally, they are different and my charge is to find the right way to help coax them forward, not demand they act like adults and punish them when they do not. Am I better than non-parent teachers? Nothing is so clear cut.
And one more thing: being a parent makes me realize that parents simultaneously have tremendous influence AS WELL AS zero influence over their child's behavior. A parent can do all the right things and their child can be a holy terror--and a parent can be lazy and disengaged and have a child who makes me as teacher well with pride. A childless colleague of mine once voiced his greatest fear about becoming a parent: you can do everything perfectly and they are still little individuals who can decide to say f-you and walk away...then what does everyone think of you as a parent? Used to be I'd judge the parent differently than I would now.
Nancy, I often hear teachers say they know the student better than the parents, and I get a little miffed. While we do see a certain perspective at school, we do not see it all. I also notice the defense by parents and understand, too.
Mark, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I definitely imagine how I want my child to be treated by a teacher as well. Being a parent changes perspectives.
Nancy, I agree with you about the pitfall of believing we know the student better than the parent. There is just no way. But we do see them in a different context.
It used to make me so angry when parents would ask in the middle of a heated conference, "Do you have children?" (the implication being that I had just said/done something that indicated my lack of experience in this area). I still think it is one of the most insensitive questions a parent can ask a teacher. How much more offensive can it be than to imply that who I am, right here, right now, is simply, by nature, inadequate? As teachers, as people, we cannot help where we are in life's interwoven continuums. We are who we are and we are _all_ developing, not just the students. This should be recognized and respected, for students, for parents and even for teachers.
That being said, being a parent has shifted my priorities. I wouldn't say that my teaching presence is more concentrated or energetic. Nope. I have less time to innovate, research, create... I'm a slow thinker when it comes to synthesis and planning, and I long for those uninterrupted times to do these things, and to write. However, I have become more compassionate, less judgmental, and especially more flexible, more responsive to my needs and the needs of my students, more aware of the distractions of home life. It has definitely changed me. But many people already have some of the emotional intelligences that parenthood developed in me. And at any rate, it's simply unfair to expect people to be elsewhere than they are in life.