Is Giving Teachers a "Satisfactory” the Best There Is?

"Well, to my knowledge, the unfortunate answer is “yes”. In all of the schools where I taught, the final summary of a teacher’s worth by the administration is one of three choices: 1) Unsatisfactory, 2) Needs Improvement and 3) Satisfactory. Imagine for a moment that you had put in a dozen hours a day commuting an hour to school from who-knows-where before starting to prepare for classes, designing quizzes/tests, writing notes to parents of slower students, teaching for 5 or 6 hours, squeezing in a lunch whenever and then starting the marathon of correcting the homework/quizzes and tests. And, after all of your diligent effort and commitment to helping, you find yourself with the administration’s thank-you-so-very-much grade of “satisfactory”.

How about “great” or “outstanding” or “we can’t believe you’ve done so much with so little!” The correcting went on into the evening, like a political election, and started all over again the very next day. And the next day and the next. The expectations were high and the rewards low. But this is what I chose, and this is what was expected. After all, I started teaching months after the astronauts first landed on the moon in 1969. The pay was a whopping $6800 per year, and I would get 1/9th of this every month and, if I wanted summer pay, I had to work summer school. Oh yeah, I had to wear a suit and tie daily of which I had two. Prada, you ask. No, Poopa.

Teachers had to be paragons of virtue and pillars of morality and probably had to know which fork or spoon to use at a banquet where 5 spoons (of various sizes) were laid out on one side of the plate and 6 forks (of different shapes) on the other side. Teaching was not for the faint of heart. Don’t even ask about the placement for knives or glasses!

No money, no slick company car, no clothing allowance, no assistants, no materials to decorate the walls for parents’ Back to School Night, and for the love of God, not a word of praise. Even a dog gets praise once in a while. I didn’t work my butt off to scratch and claw my way to the middle. Is mediocrity the goal of teaching when students live in the age of everyone is a winner? And why is America’s 2nd largest industry the only one absent rewards and competition?

Teacher ratings are missing the most important goal of “teaching excellence”. The ability to take a competent student possessing proficiency in prerequisite classes and dynamically inspiring them to grow by that objective you are tasked to teach. Some instructors do this with such ease and finesse that it becomes a mystery why any student cannot pass. If a deficiency occurs, you would think that all other helping aspects of the school or district would hop into action and become involved in the process of learning. But don’t expect that either. The trouble is teachers didn't design the rules -- administrators did.

The inner-city teachers have way more to deal with than just subject matter. After 45 years in the biz mostly there, I know about that. There is the child abuse, sexual abuse, neighborhood shootings, and stabbings, family members, at age 12, killed for just riding their bikes wearing the wrong color shirt or just going to the park and winding up dead by an errant bullet fired from a drive-by meant for someone else but missed. Sorry. The list is literally infinite and sad beyond words. If one in my position ever lacks empathy, it’s a giveaway to find another job. It strains every part of your being. You think there must be a rating higher than “satisfactory”.

I created EXCL in Education (www.excl.com) to be the ultimate reward for the best teachers as a distance learning supplement. Students choose the one who inspires them to learn. It is in the student’s best interest to pick the teacher who makes difficult concepts easy for them because the student can qualify to earn prizes of value, while the teachers can win royalties dependent on the quality of their instruction. For me, and I would guess others, “teaching excellence” is being rewarded by capital. Plus, it doesn’t encroach on public school teaching, except to help facilitate learning.