Monday

What role are teachers supposed to play in students’ lives?

My tenure in the Educational Policy program has allowed me to be increasingly interested in what happens in the classroom.  In courses such as Sociology of School Organizations and Policy Analysis, I often ask the practitioners in my courses what are the outcomes of these policies that are created at levels far removed from students and teachers’ realities.  Specifically, a recurring question that I confront often is “What are teachers supposed to do?” I understand that teachers impart content knowledge that would otherwise be unknown to students, however, I find that in my own experience teachers are more than just “fillers of empty vessels.” Teachers are emotional counselors, disciplinarian officers, positive adult exemplars, and among many other things, motivational characters in their students’ lives.

Here at the Warner School, with its unique focus upon social justice, I think that students and professors have a more holistic view of their students, so the discussion we have in courses such as Adolescent Development, move beyond theory and into practice to consider  the various environments in which various students must exist. While college assists graduate students in amassing a body of knowledge and prepares students for hypothetical situations, teachers’ roles remain continually precarious. For example, if K-12 school is suppose to prepare students to get a job then in addition to ensuring students gain a base level of knowledge, schools (particularly teachers) are to prepare students for work/business environments. Likewise, if preparation for college is the primary goal of schooling in the K-12 system, then teachers, because of seemingly inevitable under-resourcing of schools, must shoulder some of the duties for which college counselors would primarily be responsible.  In addition to this, teachers have to provide many of their students with textbooks and other technical support for the college application process, as well as, for life in general.

The purpose of education in the American context is a large loaded question, but if this was widely understood by consensus, then maybe teachers’ roles could be more explicit in nature. So your turn, what is the role teachers are supposed to fill for American students? More importantly, can teachers realistically fulfill this role? Have they been doing so already?