10 Things That Prevent Teachers from Doing Their Jobs

By Fred FletchercloseAuthor: Fred Fletcher Name: Fred Fletcher
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About: In addition to law enforcement and education, Fred has dabbled in technical and creative writing; he has been published under a number of different pseudonyms. He holds a Master of Science in Public Health, collects old typewriters, invents board games, and lives on a 160-acre old farm where he spends his time writing, helping out charities, and plotting out his future adventures.See Authors Posts (2)
 

Almost everyone in this country seems to have an opinion about what is wrong with our educational system and what should be done to fix it. The problem is that many if not most of these analyses are way off  the mark, in terms of what is most at fault with the system and what solutions are most urgently needed.

For example, people keep talking about coming up with better ways to test teachers (to see how knowledgeable they are), to assess student performance (relative to the quality of teaching they are getting), to evaluate schools (to see if they are doing their job), and to see if tax payers’ money is being used in the best possible ways relative to our educational system’s overall performance. All these things sound wonderful but they are meaningless if order and control in the classroom are not being maintained, if students are basically not being held accountable for their behavior, and if teachers are being put in classrooms with, basically, their hands tied behind their back.

One cannot talk about teacher performance (which must come before student and school performance) if teachers are being told to do a job that they cannot realistically do under present classroom conditions.  This will remain the case until and unless we can either remove or somehow control the following 10 obstructions presently standing in the way of teachers:

1.  Spineless school administrators.  When a student deliberately
misbehaves in a classroom, there is only so much that teachers can do
these days.  Unfortunately, students manipulate this realization in
ways that favour them but not schools, fellow students, or teachers.
There comes a point when writing up students, keeping them after
school (which is often not feasible), or sending them to “detention”
just fail to have the desired effects.  Teachers must then depend on
principals, vice-principals and counselors to back them up and, if
possible, expel students that continue to disrupt classrooms,
disrespect teachers, and even pose a physical threat to other people.
What often happens, though, is that administrators, who don’t want to
offend parents and like to play the “popularity game” with students
(i.e., siding with students gets them more popularity than siding with
teachers), fail to do their jobs.

Yet another reason for their not doing their jobs has to do with
unhelpful expectations by counties and school boards, those that give
negative points to schools with excessive disciplinary disruptions.
Sending students back to class, instead of expelling them, is more
politically correct and helps avoid the school being labeled as
a “problem” school (which might keep it from getting state and federal
funds).  Whatever the reason, administrators are not backing teachers
up and this, in turn, keeps teachers from being able to manage their
classrooms effectively and safely.

2.  Uninvolved and uncooperative parents.  Many parents don’t bother to get involved in their children’s “education” until they find out that Junior misbehaved at school—actually, he may have been misbehaving for an extended period of time, but maybe the latest infraction became more difficult to just sweep under the carpet (what many schools do on a regular basis, to the detriment of behavioral accountability for all students).  Parents, instead of siding with the teachers, who are being unfairly made to provide “structure” that is not being provided at home, more often than not side with their misbehaving “brat”; in general, they just cannot believe that their progeny can be so underhanded, manipulative and, for lack of a better word, “evil.”  What teachers face, more often than not, for disciplining students is a tongue-lashing from these out-of-line parents and written warnings from spineless administrators asserting that maybe the teacher is “ineffective” (for not being able to control these perhaps drug-using or potentially psychotic criminal wannabes)— and people wonder why students think that they can get away with anything these days?