Thoughts on Teaching & Education
by
Rae Ellen Mckee
1991 National Teacher of the Year
On her approach and style of teaching:
I teach little children to read. I hold the values of our culture and the history of our world before them like a sweet confection. I make them reach out and grab their education from me. I possess the power to lace their intake with arsenic or sweet nectar, creating their self-esteem or destroying it. I shudder under the burden of such a responsibility.
Few people in our society hold as much power in their hands each day as do teachers. We are mentors and molders of human beings, which is not a mechanical process, but the impact of mind upon mind and heart upon heart. Each child comes to a teacher with the equality of opportunity to enable him to make the most of the powers that are within him. We are guardians of that right.
On her philosophy of teaching:
I believe that the future of our nation depends upon our citizens' ability to think, rather than repeat learned information. Thus, education must motivate students to love the learning process. My classroom is a place where the learning process is practiced. Students learn to monitor their own style and pace, experiment with their own problem solving, and apply different strategies to better help them manipulate new information. Such an environment spurs creativity and generates excitement. I believe that each child is special, a product of an often disadvantaged environment, whose needs are not determined by a state-adopted curriculum. His or her need on a given day may be that of an empathetic ear to the feelings he or she is experiencing or a pat on the back for a difficult task accomplished. My realm of support is not limited to intellectual development; I take time to educate the whole child and recognize the unique talents of each. My students leave my classroom feeling good about themselves.
I believe that a school's curriculum must be linked to the child's experiential background and tie that student to a future that he or she envisions for herself or himself. A child fascinated by snakes doesn't see the need for reading about rice farming in China. Yet, my lessons strive to intertwine the familiar with the new, to weave interest and intrigue into practice and problem solving. A simple, colorful book on snakes leads the same child into a study of environmental dependence, and he finds that snakes are a natural pest control in the rice paddies of China! My students see a relevance to their learning.
On educational issues, trends, and priorities:
Education doesn't catch anyone's eye. It isn't a sensationalized issue. The lack of media attention to the status of teachers in West Virginia, or any other state, is a reflection of our population's increasing apathy toward the role of education in our society; this is the major issue facing our profession today.
This apathy has not developed overnight. It has been a gradual seduction into oblivion by the very forces that have changed our society over the last half century. Schools at one time lured students with that which was new and interesting: books with colored photographs, audio-visual gadgets, and well-read teachers. However, the ready accessibility of all forms of media communique, a materialistically minded economy and a mechanized society leave our schools with little ammunition for competition. When students who have grown up with satellites, computers, air conditioning and heart transplants turn into the voting populace, it is little wonder that it takes bigger and more fascinating issues than faculty renovation or "paper and pencil" money to gain their tax dollars.
If we as America's educators are loud enough with our outcry, the media will come to realize that the fight for democracy in Eastern Europe, the destruction of rain forests in South America, the political and economic struggles in the Middle East, the growth of Japan's economic superiority, and the drug-related violence of our own urban areas are the issues of education in America. Their cameras will be in our classrooms, but perhaps it will be too late.
Teaching is a nice profession. It makes one feel good to be nice to children. The time off in the summer is nice. It's nice to get twenty-six valentines every February. However, education needs to be a priority in the eyes of our nation's leaders, not because it's the nice thing to do but because it is mandatory for the survival of our culture.
On the perception of teaching as a profession:
The "right stuff" is the urge in an individual to fulfill the paradox of the desire to give of yourself unselfishly in the selfish knowledge that you are doing something noteworthy. Teachers without this desire find the classroom boring, their students and the system failing.
In today's changing society, being a teacher with the "right stuff" is more important than ever. Society needs education's product, well-honed minds, but it does little to encourage our system of production. Instead of encouraging the value of literacy, individualism, and integrity it propagates materialism, selfishness, and mechanization. Therefore, when students come to the workplace desiring benefits without possessing the needed skills, teachers get the blame. Part of having the "right stuff" is having the willingness to stand up for the education profession in the face of apathy and criticism.
However, where it is always appropriate to hold teachers accountable for doing their job, which is teaching, it is not always possible to hold them responsible for doing the student's job, which is learning. A student's ability to learn is influenced by too many factors outside the teacher's realm: his innate ability, his environment, his family's support, his peer involvement, and his reactions to the messages of society.
When I walk into my school building each fall and smell the freshness and sense the newness, I remember why I teach. It renews my spirit and gives purpose to my being. What other profession offers one the satisfaction of knowing you have lit a spark in the mind of the next generation and nurtured a fire that will burn long after you've gone? The power and warmth of that fire is its own reward; the power enables me to say to a little child, "Yes, I can teach you to read," and the warmth formulates her response, "I love you, Mrs. 'Kee."
