Teaching Without Tools

I know a wonderful young woman who is excited and enthusiastic about entering college and pursuing the field of child development. What she doesn't know yet is that at least 70% of pre-school teachers “burn-out” in five years or less. Why? What makes people so excited and enthusiastic, and then so exhausted that they move on to other jobs or simply give up and become “burnt-out” teachers. We've all had burnt-out teachers who didn't care about us, didn't care about education, and just showed up for the paycheck. Those teachers can often be impatient, inattentive, unemotional and depressed. So, what happens between the fire of college and the five year burn-out?

If we start at the root, it would lie in, of course, education. I've been through the educational system and studied the field of education. We learned about teaching styles and methods, curriculum creation, learning styles, and other important, but not effective, information. The information is important because it helps us to understand where the educational system has failed and what needs improvement. The information is not effective because it's missing one critical, and very difficult, element – positive guidance and discipline. Knowing how to use a certain curriculum will do very little to help a child learn who comes to school hungry, has been abused the night before, or can't sit still because he's never been taught to control himself. New teachers often walk into classrooms with books in their heads, but no tools to work with children. So, what causes burn-out is trying to use a book as a wrench. Teachers have their books, but the children need somebody to help fine tune their mental carburetors and keep all of their systems running strong. Teachers aren't given the tools to work with children. It's like trying to be an automotive mechanic using manuals that diagram the engine in extreme detail and a tool box full of ideas. Ideas don't tighten loose nuts or replace malfunctioning parts. Ideas can't help teachers to help children. They need the tools.

In my particular case, I had to develop most of the tools that I use to help children to use their own tools. It took my years to develop a tool box full of effective tools and techniques. I should have been given the tools as part of my $100,000.00 education; all teachers should acquire these tools through the educational system that teaches education. Somehow, the professors have missed the fact that guidance and discipline are the frame of teaching, and curriculum is just the seat that we sit in as we drive down life's road, discuss issues and learn from one another. Without a solid frame, the vehicle of education can't go anywhere, so teachers and students end up sitting in a vehicle that won't move and discussing the numbers on the speedometer, how fast they'd get somewhere at so many miles per hour, if they could move, or how to read the words on the dashboard and in the owner's manual. It's not a matter of if the car breaks down, it's a matter of how to fix a car that's already stranded on the roadside, with a book, but little or no tools.

If a teacher, or parent, is effective, then the child will be able to fix socio-emotional problems without too much adult interaction by the teenage years. It's like having a kid that can fix her own car at sixteen because she's been shown how, experienced working on cars as a child, and has been given her own set of tools. Teachers need to have the tools to work with children and those tools would help the children to work on themselves. The question is, why isn't this problem, which I see as a cultural and societal crisis, as important to the mainstream media as, say Brangelina or Oprah's latest diet secrets?