The Middle Class

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When teachers and the middle class are squeezed dry, systems become unhealthy.

I don't know how many times I have talked to teachers about how squeezed they can feel between management and students.  Squeezes like being required to use a grade-recording computer system that does not work consistently. Or trying to hold a student accountable only to be overridden by the principal. Or draining themselves dry with care for their students without any effective mentoring for themselves. At these times the image that comes to mind for me is that of the middle class, the meat between the bread slices that gives the sandwich its flavor, the layer of working people that enriches the upper layer through its labor and supports the lower layer through taxes.

I am no economist, so the metaphor pretty much ends there. What I am is an educator and a psychotherapist who is deeply concerned about the toll that teaching can take on teachers. From my perspective, it is a teacher's job to be available to students for the students' use as they develop and grow and struggle and resist. This is the job of the developmental partner, the person who holds students through risk, who offers corrective action without retaliating, who reflects back to students accurately, who is present and optimistic, empathic and wise, even when a student cannot be.

It is no coincidence that this is the role most commonly held by women, mothers, nannies, and other feminized professionals like teachers.

Because this job of being a developmental partner is so hard AND SO CRUCIAL, I firmly believe that teachers need support and care as they work through their students' wily -- and totally normal -- attempts to avoid the risks of growing and learning. Or to seek the healthy attachment they need to actually achieve growth and learning. Developmental partners need care and support so they can continue to do their absolutely crucial jobs and avoid burnout. The problem is that this work tends to be utterly invisible, not just to students (who really do not need to know how hard their teachers work) but to management, who generally know how hard their teachers work but who do not necessarily provide structures that ameliorate teachers' suffering.

And teachers suffer. Not all the time, of course, but often. They doubt themselves; they feel frustrated and powerless; they live in the gap between all the goodness they see for their students and the students' own lack of confidence and even self-destructiveness. They respond to mandates from way above even when those mandates make no sense in the actual classroom. They strive for approval and feel disappointed and exploited. They hurl themselves into their work with relentless energy and blame themselves when they crash.

Living like this is untenable. It is unsustainable. It leads to burnout, of course. And it is avoidable. At least, I believe it is. The simple solution is to care for teachers. The complex version of this simple solution is to create an environment that expects teachers to develop, grow, and learn in the company of developmental partners of their own. That is, teachers need developmental partners, too: people who hold teachers through risk, who offer corrective action without retaliating, who reflect back to teachers accurately, who are present and optimistic, empathic and wise, even when a teacher cannot be.

As I understand it -- and, again, I'm no economist -- the middle class symbolizes a healthy economy. When the middle class is squeezed dry, things get unhealthy. Why wouldn't we care with the utmost attention for the people upon whom our children's health and well-being depend?