Is Teaching Worth It? Using Narrative Inquiry to Address the Value of Teaching

• In Event: Teacher Stories and Experiences: Insights From English Teachers Across Multiple U.S. States

Abstract

Job dissatisfaction from personal and professional stressors is causing teachers at different experience levels to reevaluate their commitment to the classroom. Veteran teachers are evaluating whether or not teaching is worth what is invested. From the stories of nine teachers with 2 – 42 years of experience in the classroom, financial concerns and family commitments, issues of student accountability, and educational reform worry them equally. For all nine participants, regardless of experience level, student apathy remains a source of discontent along with devoting their lives to a profession that is being devalued by multiple sources inside and outside the classroom.

The lives of people are a conglomeration of stories that are constantly being told, altered, and reflected on, which go on to influence future stories. “Stories lived and told educate the self and others” (Creswell, 2012, p. xxvi) providing researchers with qualitative data to study and explore the meaning of those experiences.

A semi-structured interview guide with open questions was designed and implemented (Patton, 2002). Eight basic questions were posed to participants with the sole intent of inquiring about their stories as language arts teachers. There were a total of three sets of questions: one for each stage of teaching (beginning, experienced, and veteran). Lengthy interviews, approximately 60-80 minutes each, resulted in nearly 80 pages of transcription. I analyzed the data using grounded theory, due to my broad inquiry into investigating teachers’ lives on general terms. From this analysis, I formed a theory from my participants’ stories that teachers believe society, students, and even teachers are not promoting teaching, answering the question that teaching is not worth what is required. There is a dire disintegration of morale in the profession that must be addressed.

Changes in educational policy and the current high stakes accountability culture is changing teacher roles while taking an intense toll on classroom teachers (Valli & Buese, 2007), as this study supports. Pressures from administration regarding student test scores are challenging teaching identities. If student scores are true indicators of teacher effectiveness, then if even one student fails, a teacher is failing in some aspect. If teachers are overloaded, stressed, and not seeing results in the classroom, their job satisfaction understandably decreases along with their perceptions of themselves as teachers (Klassen & Chiu, 2001).

As this study shows, practicing teachers are discouraging younger people from entering the teaching profession. Three of the women in this study told their own students who were college bound for teacher education not to enter teaching because of political changes and rising pressures of the job. The three veteran teachers who devoted their lives to instructing students said they would “think twice” if they were entering the profession in its current state. Furthermore, one beginning teacher and two experienced teachers were considering departing the profession, while one beginning teacher and one experienced teacher already had plans to leave. Only one participant of the nine viewed teaching more positively and had a solid intention of staying, and while recommending the profession to others.

Author

• Tiffany Sedberry, Purdue University