To new and struggling teachers: Don't give up. America's kids need you.

USA Today

21 hours ago

If I could talk to my younger self, I'd tell him about the thousands of students who were going to need him by the time they reached high school ‒ and why I'm glad I stayed.
I began teaching in the midst of crisis ‒ a crack epidemic, gang violence, racial strife and police conduct that led to civil unrest. Now, at the close of my 34th year in the classroom, I find that my students, my colleagues and me in crisis again ‒ kids and their families in fear for their freedom as a president, unrestrained by Congress or the Supreme Court, wages war on immigration, much of it on the streets of our Los Angeles, against the Latino community.
Those who don't get abducted on the streets by masked immigration agents still face an uncertain future with the recent Supreme Court decision not to reject President Donald Trump's executive order revoking automatic birthright citizenship for all. Trump's order is not retroactive ‒ not for now ‒ but the cruelties we have seen on our streets make it difficult to believe that anything is off the table.
I keep asking myself ‒ as do so many educators and other Americans ‒ how things got to this point?
A dysfunctional nation, a dysfunctional education system
It is a complicated question with complicated answers, but for much of my teaching career, I have worried about the way our schools treat kids: Demanding compliance over excellence.
I am afraid that we have raised too many Americans willing to vote for and bend to authoritarian-leaning leaders. And now here we are, with a president virulently expanding his power, coercing and silencing opposition, and militarizing the streets of our city.
Much other dysfunction also persists in our education system, and it hurts our kids as much as ever. Politics, profiteering, narrow mindedness and laziness are a big part of the collective incompetence that many of us struggle against every day in classrooms across this country. We ought to keep demanding ‒ or pleading for ‒ systemic change and a greater investment of money and imagination in our schools, even at a time when the federal government seems intent on dismantling public education.
For years now, I have been critiquing and complaining, here at USA TODAY and elsewhere, about the systemic rot in our public schools. Whatever the small impact of my words, I know that I've accomplished far more through the work of teaching and through the help I've been able to give new and struggling teachers.
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For the sake of the next generation of kids, we cannot wait for systemic change. For the sake of those kids, we have to find ways to be the effective and inspiring teachers our kids need and deserve.
We have to keep pushing for change in the governance and priorities of our schools; change in the way that teachers are prepared, supported and compensated; and, in the meantime, rise as much as possible above everything that undermines us, that makes our job sometimes seem impossible, and that discourages so many young, idealistic, passionate educators.
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To frustrated new teachers, I was once like you
Many new teachers don't last five years, and in many places it is not uncommon for demoralized new teachers to quit midsemester or even midday.
I don't blame those frustrated young educators. I almost didn't make it past my first semester, and now I try to encourage as many struggling teachers as I can to believe in their students and themselves.
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Because when you see countless students grow up and some overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. When you hear their words of appreciation for your part in it. When you find yourself teaching multiple branches and generations of once distressed and now flourishing families. When you see students transform from selfishness or misery or self-destructiveness to become productive adults doing their small part to improve their community and the world and help others do the same ‒ then you know it was worth it.
The problem is that too many educators are defeated before they can even imagine such successes, and we don't do enough to affirm the small successes that they themselves might not even recognize.
If some tech innovator could create a time machine so I could go talk to my younger self as a discouraged new teacher, I would tell that frazzled young educator about the thousands of children who were going to need him by the time they reached high school ‒ and how glad I've been to be there for them, how sad that it won't last forever, and how much I hope to pass on what the students have taught me over the years.
An army of dedicated, patient and talented educators may be the only hope for this new generation. In that regard, there is no greater gift to the world than making the sacrifices, braving the indignities, and enduring the uncertainties and failures to become a really good teacher.
Which is why I've written "A Lasting Impact in the Classroom and Beyond: Wisdom and Advice for Brave Teachers." I did so on behalf of our kids, now and in the future, and for those courageous souls who want to help them all to find their brilliance, their voices, their idealism and their place in this crazy world.
Perhaps they can help to steer us away from the dystopian nightmare we seem to be careening toward.
Larry Strauss, a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992, is also the author of 'Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher.'
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