Today's teachers face many challenges

Barbara Grinder

Good teachers have always been concerned with what goes on in a child's mind, but their role is even more important today because they spend more time with kids than do most other adults, says Yvonne Machuk.

"Children have always needed adults in their lives, but home, church and community have less influence now than they used to. Sometimes, teachers are the most stable adults in a child's life—the people they can count on the most," says Machuk.

Machuk, an assistant principal at Canmore High School and a former French teacher in Banff, still remembers her first French class, over 20 years ago. "I taught a group of kids from Grades 7 to 12, and in that time there was only one remarried parent and one widowed mother. That would never be the case today, even in a small rural school.

"Parents are in a terribly difficult position today. I've never yet met a parent who didn't care about their kids, but I know many who don't have the time or the parenting skills to cope. In so many families both parents have to work, and teenagers, particularly, wind up at home alone. It's not a big mystery why many get in trouble."

Schools have attempted to keep up with social changes by altering the curriculum, using different management strategies and making better use of our expanded knowledge of child psychology and physiology, Machuk explains. "So much of the time, though, we're dealing with situations where you have to say, first the good news, then the bad news."

The good news, Machuk says, is that we know so much more about why children behave the way they do. "There's a whole new body of learning that teachers have to acquire today. This information and understanding is a real plus, but too often the resources we're given are so limited, that it's just more frustrating."

Twenty years ago, no one knew anything about attention deficit disorder, she says. "Now our students are identified as having special needs, and we know ways to help these children reach their full capacity. Unfortunately, we don't always have the time or money to put this knowledge into effect."

Finding the time to accomplish everything a teacher wants is even harder than finding the money, Machuk says. "The time crunch for most teachers is so bad, we just get worn down. We see this ever-widening gap between what we want to do and what it's possible for us to do given the time we have. And it's hardest on the really good teachers. They become so overwhelmed, they're often the first ones to leave and look for work elsewhere."

Machuk says the paperwork involved in all these changes adds another dimension to the time crunch, for teachers, administrators and secretaries.

Teaching styles and requirements have changed too. "When I first started teaching, we had one basal reader for a whole Grade 5 class. Even if you had 35 students in your class, it was manageable. Today, many teachers still have 35 students, but the kids are reading from half a dozen different books, at different speeds. It's great for the students, because it meets their needs better, but it's almost impossible for the teacher."