The Teaching Task: Secondary School

Consider the task you take on as a new teacher when you accept a secondary school teaching assignment. Here are the responsibilities of a typical newcomer:

You will teach between 120 and 150 students in five classes. Those classes will not all be the same subject: you'll have two or three different so-called subject preparations. In each of these classes you will be expected to organize the instructional program, present new content in class, develop and correct homework assignments, and evaluate your students. In doing so you will be expected, of course, to maintain acceptable discipline. You will be assigned a homeroom with another 25-30 students and a study hall to supervise with at least that many. If you are fortunate, you will teach all these classes in your homeroom, but some of you will be "roller skate" teachers, expected to teach each of your classes in a different classroom. You'll have a single period set aside for preparation. And you'll have a lunch break when you don't have a lunchroom supervision assignment.

Now think about that assignment. Who else among your fellow graduates takes on this level of responsibility? Most will head off to take jobs in which they are responsible only for themselves. New salesmen, lawyers, doctors or engineers, for example, do not supervise dozens of colleagues. A recently graduated military officer may command a platoon or division, but he or she will have experienced non-coms – army sergeants and corporals or navy petty officers – to take major responsibility for their few dozen charges.

Is the assignment even doable? Consider homework and tests. Every minute you spend correcting each of your students' papers means an hour to an hour and a half of your time. Some teachers develop plans and tests they use year after year (an approach open to criticism); as a newcomer, you won't have that short-cut. And you will have constant reasonable demands on your time by individual students. Unless you devote every minute of your waking day to your teaching program, you will end up having to cut corners.

But what corners? Do you curtail preparation time and end up "winging it" in your classes? Do you reduce homework correction to the point that students know they do not need to spend time preparing it? Or do you end up with no life of your own?

That is the job you are undertaking. Recognize that the going will be rough, especially in your first year as you are accommodating to your school and your students are accommodating to you as well. Some of you won't make it. The claim that one of five will fail is overblown but that won't matter if you are one of those in trouble.

Yes, this is a tough job and you should not be hesitant to let those who are so critical of our schools know what you face.

And if you end up a successful classroom teacher, you will have much to be proud of.