The Teacher Narrative: Prestige and Perceptions

It’s a wrap on season one! To finish out the season, Ali and JoDee sit down to talk more about the teacher narrative. They discuss what people, both teachers and non teachers, are saying along with the implications of these narratives. 

Thank you all for listening to season one! Stay tuned for more great conversations and topics in season two starting in January. 

For episode transcriptions visit: https://thegreatteacherresignation.buzzsprout.com"

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Episode Transcriptions
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Transcript

Ali  0:05  
Teachers are natural innovators, entertainers and problem solvers. They dream of growing old into the profession, teaching their kids kids. But sometimes career goals shift or change, and that makes opportunities outside of the classroom seem intangible questioning who am I, if I'm not a teacher? I'm your host, Alexandra Simon.

JoDee  0:31  
And I'm your co host, JoDee Scissors.

Ali  0:34  
This is The Great Teacher Resignation.

JoDee and I are recording together in New Orleans for our 2022 Season Finale. What an incredible ride it has been since we started the podcast in March. And we're so grateful to our listeners and guests for being a part of the podcast. We're going to take some time off over the next few weeks to plan for the next season. We already have an awesome lineup of new guests and some returning guests. So please stay tuned. Now while we're not recording the podcast, JoDee and I do spend a lot of time talking about education and teachers. And the thing that we really talked a lot about recently is the way that our society views teachers. The way that we speak about teachers. The way that we treat teachers. And the way that we define the profession. We feel like there's a lot that people just don't understand. And even though we were both teachers, JoDee and I know that we still have a lot to understand, which is why we count on the guests that we bring into the show, to count on their perspectives and their experiences. So today, we're going to talk about the teacher narrative. What people, teachers and non teachers, say about the profession, and the implications of these narratives.

JoDee  1:52  
Thanks for that fabulous intro. Well, I hear two pretty common narratives when we are considering this topic. And it's not only just from like colleagues that I worked with in the teaching profession, but just general people in society, general community members. So the first narrative I hear is teachers are saints. Wow, they can do it all. We are so thankful for their sacrifices, and we hope they keep sacrificing because they are saints. And we definitely saw that during the pandemic kind of escalate, and almost like there was a demand for them to be saints. And the other narrative I hear a lot is, I don't trust teachers. They don't know my child. They don't know what they're doing. Let me tell you have to do your job, because this is how I would do it even though I'm not a trained professional like you, I think I have a better idea. And so I think both of those narratives are dangerous. I think that as much as we love teachers, like they're not saints, they're humans. They are professionals. They are trained. They love children, but like also, they're just, they're people, too, that have feelings, and they have a right to have faults. They have a right to grow. And then the other topic, they don't trust teachers. Well, why are we degrading this profession? Why do you think you know, as a non trained professional, how to do that job? I think those two broad topics really just pigeonhole the profession in a negative light.

Ali  3:33  
Yeah, I think when you say that someone's a teacher, when you say that you're a teacher or someone you know is a teacher. One thing that really strikes me is that we automatically associate being a teacher with kind of these narratives that you were talking about JoDee, but ultimately, what we're really talking about here is occupational prestige. And I had to kind of look up this definition because I wanted to share it appropriately. So it refers to the concensual nature of rating a job based on the collective belief of its worthiness. And this narrative, that gets created about teachers, it puts teachers in like a hierarchy of professions that... it's not at the top. I'm not saying it has to be at the top, but it tends to be like in the bottom or the middle of this hierarchy or occupational prestige of job status. And what I really was thinking about this topic, it came from a post that I saw on Bored Teachers. And I shared this with JoDee right away. It really struck a chord with me. Someone shared, "When I was in college, people would say to me, you are so smart. Why do you want to be a teacher? You could be anything." But if smart people aren't teaching our kids, who is? To me that that post was basically saying, smart people shouldn't be teachers or, you know, if you're really smart, you wouldn't be a teachers. But we need all different types of people to be teachers. And we need teachers to be reflective of our society and to be diverse. And I think by, you know, kind of pigeon holing teachers or putting them in like a lower job status, it doesn't allow everyone to want to be a teacher. It also doesn't allow the profession to grow in the way that it should, to be respected in the way that it should. And so it really limits teachers.

JoDee  5:24  
I have to say, I've always worked with smart teachers. That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard, like everybody I worked with, was smart. And a lot of those teachers helped me grow so much, not only in my profession, but just my perspective on a lot of things. And smart people were always a part of my life. So just that whole narrative there is absurd to me because everybody is impacted by education. Every single person is impacted by a teacher.

Ali  6:02  
I mean, I think one of the problems that we face in education is that, it's not a problem, but we're a female dominated profession. And I think that attributes to kind of the lack of respect, the way that teachers are treated. Because we see other fields like even nursing, that is also female dominated, that doesn't get the same level of respect as other positions in health care.

JoDee  6:26  
There is definitely something there when it comes to this as a female dominant profession. There are definitely biases formed just because of the dominance of gender.

Ali  6:38  
So I'm wondering, one of the things that has come up with conversations with teachers who are leaving, and I want to know if this impacted you was, when you were transitioning, did you experience any type of like stereotyping for only going after education roles?

JoDee  6:53  
I experienced it from people, but I also did it to myself. I was just like having an identity crisis. And so for me as a person, I was applying for jobs that I was way overqualified for. And I didn't realize what I was doing until I showed my husband like a list of jobs that I was interested in, or I talked about, and he literally looked at me and was like, "You are overqualified for this. You have too many degrees. You have too many skills. You're not even looking at jobs that are a match for you. Why are you lowering your standards?" That's what I was doing. I was lowering my standards for the fear that no one would even consider me. I'm applying as an educator. I'm not applying as, like... at the time, I think my husband's job, he had some sort of title like, associate director before his title. And we started our careers at the same time. I wasn't an associate director teacher. Like all these other careers have a status that puts you within like, whatever wherever you are in the bureaucracy of a, an organization. And I didn't have that. And so I was applying for jobs that I was overqualified for. And when it came to other people giving me advice, they were suggesting jobs that I still was overqualified for. Like, Oh, why don't you go be a tutor? But I was like, did no one just hear me? I don't want to be a teacher anymore. 

Yeah, they just kind of assume that if you're leaving teaching, like full time teaching, that you should just do something else in education. You could be a tutor. You could work in a youth programming or something like that. It's like, I think that there's this expectation that you're going to stay within that field. You're not able to go into something else. Or if you are like, what you encountered was you were probably looking more like entry level jobs in other fields where you were more, you were overqualified. And I was guilty of that too. It was really challenging for me, because I was looking for part time work. And so that's, that's so hard to find, like part time work at a higher level. So I did have to start actually at a more entry level role. And I was okay with that because it gave me the flexibility that I needed. But I knew for my next role after that, I was ready. I was coming with a resume that was no longer a total teacher resume. And that I think could help set me apart because if I just had, like you describe, teacher for so many years. I didn't show career mobility. I wasn't climbing a ladder of some kind. I didn't have Associate Director next to my name, even though I took on more responsibilities at work, and I did other things.

See, I think the one thing that I learned from looking at how I examined my own status, was thinking about how did I grow? Like when I was a teacher, I was growing and mobilizing in ways. You know, I was able to get professional developments to educators. I was able to mentor teachers. And you don't get those responsibilities unless people trust that you can deliver. And so when I was initially doing my resume, I wasn't thinking about how I mobilized from that perspective. And so now that we support other teachers and helping revise their resumes. You need to list like professional development leader. Uou need to list mentor or writer or fund raiser.

Ali  10:31  
Or maybe  , you know, budget management. Like, you know, we've talked, we had a whole episode where we talked about a former teacher who managed a really large budget for her school yearbook. That's a big deal. Those are skills that are transferable into a lot of other fields. So, you know, I think that we have to be careful. We have a responsibility to debunk the misconceptions and false narratives. And that's the teacher brain that we talk about. But getting others to understand the type of skill and its worth, it's going to take a lot of educating on our part. We really feel strongly that teachers have so much to offer. Their teacher brain can translate into so many different fields. And they're more than just, you know, one word on a resume.

JoDee  11:15  
It's a lot of curation. Like if you can debunk the narrative within yourself, think about how you can educate others in that way. When I started to see my own worth, and the skills that I could bring to the table, and realize who I was. Now, I feel so great about empowering other educators to see how they have grown or what skills they have to translate to other industries. Like maybe it just starts with us. Like, what are we saying about teachers? What are we saying about ourselves? And how can we spread the love? Spread the word? How can we elevate others?

Ali  11:52  
So I want to know, do you think that these societal views impact a teacher's decision to leave?

JoDee  11:59  
Definitely. I mean, we see it in all of our analytics. We see it and the DMs that we get. The emails that people send us. Teachers feel lost a lot of times because they are struggling. And when you're struggling, when you're trying to transition, you, you have a lot of feelings. You feel grief. You feel sadness. You feel identity crisis. And when you match those with what society thinks about you, it feels like the world is against you. Like it's not only like what you're feeling, but what everyone else thinks of your profession. And so whether you are leaving or not just take a moment to think about like, what is my worth? Who am I? What are the core things that I can offer others? And let me talk to my core circle and get their opinions and let's talk it out. Because you have to be able to stand up for yourself, you know?

Ali  12:59  
Yeah, I mean, part of the problem, I think, is that you really don't understand what it's like to enter the teaching profession to be a teacher, to grow in that profession, to help students to be a vital part of society unless you've been there, unless you know, a teacher. Like the people that I know, who I've had great conversations with, that really respect teachers, like, their mom was a teacher, or their aunt was a teacher, or their wife is a teacher like Eric Garcia, like his wife is a teacher. Yeah, he gets it. You know, but yeah, because you know how hard they work behind the scenes. Yeah, they're not just there from, you know, seven to three with summers off. Oh, my goodness, most teachers work every summer, whether they're getting paid to work, or whether they're just planning for next year. Yeah. So I think that's part of the problem. And that's really how education has gotten kind of like, I don't want to get undermined, but, you know, we're seeing the teacher shortage that's happening right now. And there's some states that are lowering standards. They're not making bachelor's degree a requirement, in some cases, to become a teacher. And I think it's the devaluing of the

JoDee  14:10  
profession. Yeah, it's like I always tell people, English is my first language. I don't know how to go into a high school and teach English and literature. I don't know how to teach that. I was not trained. I was trained to be a primary educator, an immersion educator, and Esau educator. Those... that that's my training, yes. Could I learn to be an English and literature teacher? I could. But for me to just say, oh, yeah, I speak English. I got this. No, there are trained skills and things that you need to know in order to teach. So I don't know I just don't like that we're considering putting anybody into the profession. It's literally bumping down the status of teachers and what they're capable of. 

Ali  14:10  
Even more than it already is. Like just taking it down a notch. And I think what to me is most frustrating about these different laws that are being made in various states about who can easily get qualified to be a teacher, or they can offer a credential to, is that there are great pathways to becoming an educator that are out there and they're available. There's alternative certification, which you can do you have a bachelor's degree in any field, you can do an alternative certification. You can go the traditional pathway be a college of Ed graduate. And the new thing that's blowing up that I work on is apprenticeship, teacher apprenticeship. And so I think that we need to put more resources into building more stable pipelines and more varied pipelines. Because not everybody knows they want to be a teacher right away, either. 

JoDee  15:48  
Yeah, that's true. Oftentimes, we select careers based on the careers around us, the people closest to us have. But I do want to say that my biggest concern about just putting anybody into the teaching profession is not even content. It's not even academics. It's safety. When you have an adult in a classroom with young people, those people need to feel safe. They need to be protected in many ways. Just the way that you speak to them, the way that you treat them, like safety first. And when we're just selecting people who do not know how to work with young people, or even just have appropriate conversations, that is a huge red flag. My daughter loves going to school because she feels safe. It's not because of what she's going to be learning that day. She loves being in an environment where she feels loved and safe. And her friends and our teachers care about her. 

Ali  16:53  
Well, because her teachers are qualified to be in the classroom.  I know, you live in DC. So the qualifications, like what you need to be a teacher in the Northeast tends to be a lot more rigorous than what it is in the south. I can say that having lived in various states and various places. And that's important. I mean, the safety of young people, their well being, their social emotional learning, like that is, that is key. And I think that we really just need to, as a society, have more respect for educators, and to make sure that we're providing the right pathways to get quality people into the classroom. And that we're not dumbing down the requirements or or you know, taking away really important basic skills that you need. 

JoDee  17:41  
Why do they make it seem so easy? It's a tough job, just from all the the pedagogy, you have to learn the content that you have to learn, the fidelity for assessments, like all of that. There's a lot that goes into there. But when we just make it seem like it's for everyone. It's not. It's not for everyone, even people that think it's for them. Sometimes they get in there. And they're like, this isn't the right fit. And that's okay. It's okay to have that feeling. Other people do that and other careers as well.

Ali  18:12  
Yeah. And I think the other thing, you know, to kind of wrap us up for our teacher narrative today, is that there's been a lot of news and attention to this teacher shortage. And so districts are really trying to figure out a way to get people into the classroom. And another thing I've seen happen that is concerning is that they're upping the starting salary for new teachers in certain districts. And some states are proud to say like, we've increased our starting salary by this much. What about the veteran teachers who've been teaching in that district for 13 years or 15 years that are not getting a pay increase? What does that say to them? That I'm not valued. That the time that I've dedicated to my district is not important, because now someone who's never taught before is making almost equivalent maybe $500 off a year than what I am. So I think what JoDee and I have talked about, you know, off mic, is that the narrative of educators. That is such a problem, like the job status, the occupational prestige. It doesn't put educators in a position where society as a whole, people who are making these financial decisions for states, for districts, they don't understand the value and they don't understand the worth. And really, it hurts us. It hurts educators, and it hurts society as a whole. 

JoDee  19:33  
And I appreciate so much the non educators that reached out to us because if we want to shift the narrative... it's not only with us as educators the way that we talked about teachers. It's non teachers and what they're saying about teachers. And so we have so many topics that we're going to cover in 2023. So I don't know if you want to tell them some of the things things that we're going to discuss in the new season. Season two will be premiering in January.

Ali  20:06  
Yeah, really excited about season two. And again, so thankful for our listeners. Appreciate your support. So we have a lot of topics we want to cover next season, including, but not limited to, if you have some great ideas, career depression and anxiety, non educators supporting teachers, like JoDee just highlighted, strategies for teacher retention, leaders hiring teachers, and elevating careers in a school district. And then we also want tips from current teachers on career health and mental health. So if you're in education, and you've been able to have a strong work life balance, what are some tips that you would like to share with our listeners that have helped your career health and your your mental health well being things of that nature.

JoDee  20:52  
Maybe sometimes you're not trying to leave, you're trying to improve your situation.

Ali  20:56  
Absolutely. And I mean, our goal on this podcast is never to encourage anybody to leave who doesn't want to leave. We want you to stay in the classroom if that's your passion, but we also understand that it was a challenge for us when we both had to decided to exit the classroom. And we want to be here to support you too. So if you're interested in being a guest on the show, please send us a DM and we'd love to hear from you.

If you liked The Great Teacher Resignation, give us a five star rating and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and Audible. Today's episode was written and recorded by me Alexandra Simon, and my co host JoDee Scissors. Executive produced by Teacher Brain. Produced and edited by Emily Porter. Original Music: Emoji by Tubebackr. Special thanks to our sponsor, Paper Planes Ed.