New Athenian Academy

No, I’m not talking about race or political affiliation or religious convictions or even money… I’m referring to the great divide between elementary and secondary teachers.  Make no mistake, not all teachers are alike, especially when you start looking across grade levels taught.

*Disclaimer: This post is completely my opinion.  Please don’t take this as the honest to goodness truth, but just my own viewpoint of the education world.

Elementary teachers are:

• Motherly/fatherly — makes sense considering they teach 5-10 year olds.  Those kids generally need the teacher to act like a parent complete with expectations, unconditionally love, and discipline.
• Loving — they offer compassion, picking kids up when they fall (both literally and figuratively),
• Gentle — they’re that soft hand guiding the student through life
• Calming — life is great and “you” can get over this obstacle
• Team players — “Let’s all get together to work on this great reading themed bulletin board.”
• Optimists — “we can do this” the world is an amazing place, enjoy it!

Secondary teachers are:

• Difficult — they don’t take no crap and have high, almost unattainable, standards
• Pushy — they’re not the gentle hand guiding, but a hard shove to the next step
• Sarcastic — they aren’t the nicest outwardly, but underneath do love those students
• Aloof — “you’re 16, grow up a bit”; “I am not going to hover over you all the time”
• Not good team players — they tend to specialize in their fields and often have a hard time working together
• Pessimists — or as I call it, realism
• “Parents” — they are parents, but not parents; guiding students, but letting them fail if that’s what they need

Looking at this list, it seems to say that secondary teachers are bad and elementary teachers are good.  Not at all.  They each have their place.  Juniors should be encouraged, but not coddled.  They need more pressure.  I love many of the elementary teachers for the work they do in young students’ lives.  But I also love the firm, yet loving stance of many secondary teachers I know.

I do know that it’s very difficult for elementary and secondary teachers to work together.  The mindsets are so different that they often completely miss each other.  It can be done, but the effort is long and hard.  My experience in a PK-12 school taught me a lot about the differences between two groups.  Routinely, I would hear an elementary teacher tell me “Oh I could never teach high schoolers, they’re scary.”  To which I would always replay, “Oh I could never teacher 2nd graders, they’re scary.”

All I know is… I am a classic secondary teacher.  And proud of it!

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Education Process by Tobe