Any teacher with more than two decades of experience will tell you: 2023 is a whole different ball game.
It can be hard to pin down the myriad of reasons why. But recently, a letter posted by Jasone Pearce Media did a pretty good job of summing up how weāre viewed by the public.
This emailāitās unclear whether itās from a parent or a āfanāāwas sent to the softball coach at Ridge Point High School on a Sunday morning after a loss the previous night. Ridge Point, which until that loss had maintained a 20-6 win record, clearly has a very strong softball program. But not according to the writer of this email. Check it out for yourself:
I really feel for this coach. Anyone familiar with coaching will tell you that itās a job that demands a ton of time, emotional intelligence, and strategy. Combine coaching and teaching and you have two highly demanding jobs that people are slow to praise and quick to blame (remember the whiplash of 2020 when we went from being heroes to groomers?).
Hereās why this email encapsulates the teaching experience in 2023.
The people on the sidelines think theyāre the expert.
I donāt know how this happened, but we have an astounding number of adults who think that observing something endows them with the ability, permission, and expertise to critique it. Clearly, the writer of this email assumes that being a fan who has ānever missed a home gameā has bestowed upon them coach-level knowledge. You know, the same way that watching Greyās Anatomy makes you a surgeon.
It doesnāt matter how skilled you areāso many parents and community members see you as subordinate to their whims.
This coach had a 20-6 winning record prior to the previous nightās loss. Twenty winning games isnāt just a pretty good record, itās stellar. But that didnāt matter for the writer of this email. One loss put the writer in a position to coach the coach.
In the same way, even the greatest teachers are subject to ridiculous expectations, scrutiny, and hostility. I can think of dozens of teachers I knowāteachers who I would handpick to teach my childāwho are losing valuable prep time and mental bandwidth dealing with parents who will stop at nothing in getting what they want. In an open letter to parents from National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson in 2020, he reminds parents to āmodel the behavior you want your children to emulate.ā Clearly, even the best teacher in the nation isnāt a stranger to bad parent behavior.
Their perception is reality.
āI donāt think Iām being disrespectful.ā
āI just think you donāt know how to put the right people in in the right moment.ā
āI just wanted to let you know the reason why your varsity team lost. ā¦ā
Thereās no invitation for collaboration. No room for being wrong. No acknowledgment of expertise or questions about strategy. Itās āI decided why you lost, I know more than you, and Iām going to assume you want me to tell you.ā (Side note: Iām so curious what the writer envisioned when the coach opened his email. Gratitude? āOh, wow! I had no idea why we lost, but thank goodness our fan whoās never missed a home game decided to tell me!ā)
This email highlights a situation teachers find themselves in all the time: Thereās no room for dialogue when a parentās perception is their automatic reality.
It highlights how teaching has become a customer service industry.
In recent years, thereās been a big shift in the role of families in schools. What was once a place where teachers, administrators, coaches, and staff could offer their professional opinion in collaborating with families, itās now a place where parents can march in with a list of demands for their child. In many places, teaching has become an industry to serve parents rather than an educational institution to serve children. Alexandra Robbins says it this way in her book, The Teachers:
āParentsā mistreatment of teachers has accompanied an increasingly pronounced āus-versus-themā mentality. Instead of welcoming teachers with a cooperative āIt takes a villageā mentality to educate and nurture their children, many parents view teachers as obstacles or hurdles to barrel through between childhood and graduation.ā
Did the email writer see the coach as nothing more than a hurdle between Ridge Point and the playoffs? Hard to say.
Inevitably with an article like this, Iāll eventually hear the flip side of my point staged as the only alternative. āSo, what? Are you proposing that parents be silent? That no one can have an opinion apart from a coach or teacher?ā
Of course not. Parents and community members absolutely deserve a place and a voice in schools. Where weāve gone wrong is making their voice the only voice.