A Delicate Balance

I have noticed a trend lately in my undergraduate teacher education classes: increasing numbers of students coming in with documented disabilities that require class accomodations. Many of these are minimal, but more and more I am seeing extensive accomodations needed. I believe I have always been supportive of students at all levels of schooling and I support a student's desire to graduate from college. I also believe, however, that the teaching profession is far more complex than rocket science. Not only does a teacher need the technical knowledge of content and the skill to make those concepts understandable and accessible to the learner, but the human side of teaching requires strong communication, interpersonal skills, and decision-making abilities.

Every child deserves an expert teacher every year of their schooling. In a twenty-year career in the elementary classroom, a teacher impacts around 500 children. When I had a principal justifying to me why they were keeping a ineffective, probationary teacher that they had worked extensively with because they were "going through personal tough times for the last few years", I always had them picture those five hundred children outside their window. I had them tell those children that they knowingly decided to give them a poor teacher. We cannot just think of the teacher--it always must be about the children.

So, back to my undergraduates. The professor side of me wants to support student success. The principal side of me knows the rigors of teaching and wants to support those hundreds of unborn little human beings. I wonder sometimes how a student would react in the moment-to-moment challenges of the classroom. Not everyone has the disposition to be the decision-making teacher in the classroom.

I realize that I usually see these undergraduates in my foundations class, the first education class many students take. They have two more years of coursework at this point. I realize I am one piece of the puzzle in which this student works with many professors, cooperating teachers and student teachers. All of us have a responsibility to support and to counsel appropriately. It is a delicate balance--the rights of the prospective teachers and the rights of their future students.