A conversation with a 'Bad' Teacher (Blog #22)

John Owens was a publisher for a magazine for thirty years before deciding to go back to school to become a teacher. He figured out that it was not all that it was cracked up to be when he found a "dark side" to the school administration and the American public education system. In an interview with Hana Maruyama from Education Week Teacher, he spoke about how he quit after a year of teaching and his experience teaching at South Bronx. Owens talked about how the worst thing he experienced was realizing that the school was more worried about passing students for their own good instead of the students well being. He tried his hardest to give students a passion for learning and the fact that he couldn't change a students view point in one class period classified him as a 'bad teacher' in the eyes of his peers. South Bronx was a school system where students came from awful home backgrounds. Owens would try to bring up positive programs and activities for the students but all of his ideas were turned down by the school system. After one year, Owens realized that in that school, he would never win no matter what. He also realized that even though people think that teachers have it easy, they really have one of the hardest jobs on the planet because they have other peoples lives and education in their hands.

Before reading Owens post, I already knew that there were school systems out there with the same mentality as South Bronx. It's teachers like Owens who have the guts to speak out on the subject and make others realize that there truly is a problem. But when people like Owens speak out, why is it that nothing has really been changed? Hopefully with the new Common Core Standards, it will help schools actually care a little more about the well being of their students. Yes, there are plenty of students that will be difficult and not want to learn or even refuse to learn. But does that give a teacher the right to just give  up on that student? I feel like it has been sociably acceptable to treat students like babies if they just don't want to learn. They still need to be pushed but it takes dedicated and skillful teachers to make change like that happen.