Are Teachers Really that Insecure?

While researching the District of Columbia Public Schools' new IMPACT teacher evaluation system, I came accross the following quote from Charlotte Danielson, whose work, Framework for Teachers was cited by the developers of IMPACT:

Educational psychologist Lee Shulman (2004) illustrated the complexity of teaching by comparing the fields of teaching and medicine. He noted that teachers have classrooms of 25–35 students, whereas doctors treat only a single patient at a time. Even when working with a reading group of 6–8 students, teachers are overseeing the decoding skills, comprehension, word attack,performance, and engagement of those students while simultaneously keeping tabs on the learning of the other two dozen students in the room. "The only time a physician could possibly encounter a situation of comparable complexity," Shulman pointed out, "would be in the emergency room of a hospital during or after a natural disaster" (p. 258). He concluded that classroom teaching "is perhaps the most complex, most challenging, and most demanding, subtle, nuanced,and frightening activity that our species has ever invented" (p.504). http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/summer09/vol66/num09/A-Framework-for-Learning-to-Teach.aspx

This got me thinking, are teachers really that insecure? Must we be told that teaching is the hardest thing on the planet? I've taught in the lower grades (K-3rd) for twelve years, and I'm here to tell you that teaching little ones is alot more than wiping noses and zipping zippers. But I'd be exaggerating just a tad if I said it was the most complex, challenging, nuanced, demanding, and frightening activity ever invented by the human species.

A similar exaggeration came from one of my heros, Harry K. Wong. I love Harry and Rosemary Wong's classic book, The First Days of School: How to be an Effective Teacher, but always thought Harry's dedication was over the top:

Dedicated to my father and mother,
Who wanted me to be a brain surgeon.
I exceeded their expectations.
I became a scholar and a teacher.

-Harry K. Wong

In fairness, Harry is using hyperbole and that's fine. Nothing wrong with a bit of hyperbole, but if you listen to what other educators are saying, you can't tell if they're merely using hyperbole or if they really do have an unrealistic view of teaching. Exhibit A comes from Marion Brady, author of numerous articles and books on education, who wrote of teaching, "No other profession, not brain surgery, not rocket science, not politicking, is as difficult as is altering the images of reality in young minds." According to Brady, the "inherent complexity" of teaching is what attracts the best teachers to the field - not a love of children, not a desire to help others, not a passion for the subject matter. http://www.marionbrady.com/PrimerForReformers.pdf

And then there's the Superintendent of schools where I used to teach first grade. She recently told an assembly of several hundered teachers that "teaching really is rocket science." That teaching "really is rocket science" was the theme of her speech, which had to do with how critical every moment in the classroom is and how difficult the teacher's job is. But why would any teacher compare himself or herself to a rocket scientist?

Our work as teachers is important and hard and nobody is questioning that, so spare us the comparisons to brain surgery and rocket science. Or do we suffer from an inferiority complex? (My wife tells me that at her college,"bunny classes" was a common pejorative for education courses. Perhaps those who compare teaching to rocket science and brain surgery are raging against the idea that education courses are nothing more than "bunny classes?")

In 1999, the American Federation of Teachers published an article entitled, "Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Teachers of Reading Should Know and be Able to Do."
//http://www.aft.org/pdfs/teachers/rocketscience0304.pdf

That's embarrassing, frankly.