Martyr Syndrome

Movies always seem to portray teachers are martyrs. We come. We conquer. We leave. Take Erin Gruwell of Freedom Writers fame, for example. She worked incredibly hard, even at the expense of her marriage, for four years with the same group of students. She was able to move them “from apathy to action” (www.freedomwritersfoundation.org). And then, when her one group of students that she worked with for four years graduated, she left, too. She never worked in a public high school with another group of students. She never tested her curriculum to see if it could transcend the amazingly strong bond she had with that group of students. She went. She conquered. She left. And now, she’s famous and has a movie all about how amazing she is (ahem, was).

Then we have Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, Louanne Johnson, from Dangerous Minds (1995). Fictitious yes, but still following the teacher-as-martyr formula. Fresh out of the Marine Corps, Ms. Johnson has to conquer America’s battleground: the inner-city classroom. Gangbanger, parolees, teenage parents, galore! Johnson’s classroom is a walking stereotype of the inner-city classroom, but have no fear! She arrives. The kids could care less! But have no fear, Johnson reads every single book on teaching and classroom management ever written. But, alas! It still does not work. Until, she connects to her students through music, of course. And then, at the end of the year after many ups and downs, she leaves. What is the moral of the story? Can we only be great teachers for one year and then we need to leave?

What good are teachers who leave the profession after only a few years? Are we meant only to serve as martyrs? Now that my first class is graduating, I suppose it is time for me to leave the teaching profession, too. Time to make room for a new martyr.

This perception of teaching is absolutely ridiculous, and the mentality can be seen in the many charter schools that work their teachers to the bone and have incredibly high turn-over rates. They are not working to mold wonderful teachers for the future of tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. They are just working to create martyrs. They wring every last drop of energy from these people, and then they leave the teaching profession forever. The same can be seen with Teach for America. The majority of their Corps members leave the profession after their contracted two years.

The teacher is not a martyr. That is not our job, and it never should be. If the teacher is meant to be a martyr, we will fall into the same trap as the movie-teacher recipe: we will leave. Teachers who leave the profession due to burn out are of no use to their students, and continue to reinforce unreachable expectations placed on the profession.