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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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The teaching community (as an institution)has some pretty specific thoughts on how to maintain the parent/student relationship and it involves maintaining some kind of curated image to their students.
One time, when I was maybe 25, I saw a gaggle of good looking women at a pub about the same age as me, and then they came over and asked how I had liked the conference. "conference?"
There had been a teacher conference and a large group went for drinks later and assumed I was also a teacher. I lied and joined the group.
We ended up going to a nightclub later, and one teacher saw that a few of their students had managed to get into the club, and they LOST IT. Not upset at the kids, but they were captured by abstract horror at the thought of their student seeing THEM at the club.
I pushed on it a little bit, like "shouldn't they be the ones worried about seeing you?"
And like, the whole group thought I had lost my mind. If COURSE the students couldn't see us there, how would they ever respect us if they understood us as humans with our own lives? The teacher/student relationship would evaporate. Anarchy. The response to my question was immediate and unanimous.
So... I gotta say... I don't really get it... But there is a culture and mindset within the teaching community that is extremely foreign to me. And, based on my personal experience, I suspect that suspending OF teachers is probably the popular response within the greater teaching community as a whole. I'd be REALLY curious if there is any data that disproves my hypothesis.
I think the idea is that a lot of teachers feel they cannot maintain a proper teacher-student relationship unless the student see them as some sort of ultimate authority on something, and seeing them as humans might put cracks in that. I don't agree with them since most of the teachers I loved the most in school were the ones I could empathize with, but it was certainly the way a lot of my teachers seemed to believe when I was in school.
I agree. I got the impression it was something they all were taught while getting their education degrees. It reeks of policy developed on ancient and flawed pseudo-psychology
That being said, I know dealing with kids is hard. I can well remember how I thought every parent was stupid and that parenting was easy before I had kids.
I can't say I have a better way, just that I'm suspicious ofthe current mentality.
The mindset gets embedded into teachers pretty early in their careers. I met my partner in college and was with her while she was a middle school teacher for years so I got the to see this develop in realtime. Education students need to have absolutely flawless records in order to even be eligible for hire. If they have so much as a drunk and disorderly charge on their record then they are essentially barred from teaching because the background checks are so stringent.
It largely depends on the age of students that's in question, but you also have to remember that teachers are always at the mercy of the parents. They need to deal with a diverse range of religious, political, and educational backgrounds and try to maintain neutrality. Administration will almost always bend to a parent complaint - it's largely just the way our education system is structured in the US.
So my wife teaches at a college / trade school, and has worked there for about 5 years. Previously she was a field engineer with a lot of experience working with the trades. She prefers to be "one of the boys" but can also play the professional role.
So at first she figured "well we are all adults here" and treated everyone as peers who were there to learn. It didn't take long for her to be frustrated and burned out. She told me it's too hard emotionally to think of the students as people, much like how livestock cannot be pets (we have a farm, lol).
There's an endless stream of them and some are good, some are bad, some don't try and some give it their best but don't have what it takes. Some ask her if she's on Tinder or have an Onlyfans... Ick. You can't get them all through the course and you can't develop relationships with them or their stress and emotions will rub off on you.
So she started putting up this firm barrier where she is the teacher and they are the students. Changed her style of dress from business casual to "unapproachable career woman", puts on that teacher attitude, and is enjoying her life a lot more.
However it results in that odd behaviour mentioned above. If we go out to a casual pub to eat pub food and drink beer, when one of her students walks in the door she's practically hiding under the table. "They can't see me like this! I don't have my makeup on, I'm wearing jeans, I'm drinking beer from a can! They have to think of me as a teacher, not an ordinary person!"
I had a science teacher in highschool that I happened to bump into at a Magadog show. Turns out he was friends with the band. I smoked a joint with him that night and nothing was different on Monday morning.
In highschool, I worked at Sam’s Club as a cashier (one of those bulk-sales places with memberships, like Costco.)
Just before school started, I had teachers come through stocking up on candy. 2-3 of them. They started acting squarely because how dare teachers shop for school supplies.
It was pretty funny, though. They had a giant flatbed filled with candy, among some other things.