Classroom lightning is harder to find in Iowa

Lately, I’ve been thinking about some of the great times I had teaching high school. I remember those rare times when classroom discussion took on a life of its own. A spark ignited, and the conversation became spontaneous, insightful, and real.

It was classroom lightning.

My guess is most teachers have experienced a flash of it, and it’s part of what keeps them teaching.

After I taught, and represented teachers for 27 years, so I won’t romanticize it. The grind of teaching is real including lunch duty, unpaid hours, administrative bureaucracy, extra duties, and people who believe if they attended third grade, they know how to teach it.

Most of the time my best discussion prompts were met with silence, and indifference from sophomores who hadn’t bothered to open the book.

But when the lightning struck, it fed my teaching soul. Now, I’m afraid classroom lightning in Iowa is even harder to find than it was 35 years ago. Teachers today compete with social media, impossible classroom numbers, administrators second guessing, and meddling politicians who regard public schools as a political wedge instead of a precious resource needing protection.

It doesn’t matter which party captures all three branches of government, that party falls in love with its own ideas and its unchecked power. That’s what happened in 2017. Bill Dix, Senate Republican majority leader at the time said, “We’re going to kick the door in.” Public-school teachers were hit with shrapnel.

They silence teacher voices by gutting Iowa’s 44-year-old public sector bargaining law. They passed laws regulating what can be discussed in classrooms. They banned books they didn’t like from public school curriculums. They damaged Area Education Agencies, and they rammed through public funding of private schools.

Veteran teachers started looking for the exits and future teachers ran away from the profession. Administrators became hyper risk adverse.

When I was teaching, I had administrators who fell in love with canned teaching methods they discovered at the latest, greatest conference. We called them “flavors of the month.” To me, they all tasted like vanilla, and students deserved more flavors. Still, in my day, there was some classroom autonomy when you shut the door and tried something that might work.

As we begin a new school year, what can be done to bring back classroom lightning? Voters need to hold politicians more accountable. If parents want to appreciate teachers, partner with them.

Try to attend parent teacher conferences, make sure your kids get enough sleep, enough to eat, and some time away from cellphones and video games. Try to have them read a little every day.

Administrators can help too. Avoid overreaction and second guessing constantly. Trust the teacher you hired.

I recently bought a shirt that says, “Stop blaming teachers.” If we don’t, we’ll have full classrooms, empty of qualified teachers.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to public schools for 38 years. He taught for 11 years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association Regional Director for 27 years until he retired. BruceLear2419@gmail.com