By Erica J. Ringelspaugh

I don’t have a goal. Five months after my Professional Development Plan (PDP) was due to my supervisory team, I am still goal-less and totally frustrated. Because I am one of the lucky ones who graduated after August 2004, instead of racking up credits to renew my teaching license, DPI asks me to find a professional development goal that will concretely affect my ability to teach students. Then, I have to achieve the goal. Sounds simple.

I still don’t have a goal.

I really, really want to be a good teacher. But all my goals are specific and contextual, defined by the students directly in front of me. How do I get this class to settle down? How do I get this student to understand? How do I promote a healthy relationship between these students and this administration? I understand that these particular skills will transfer; I will apply them again to another student, another colleague, another class. But I refuse to study the entire body of classroom management research just to settle down 4th hour. I target my research to 4th hour’s particular needs and challenges; I ignore the research about classrooms with other issues.

It’s hard to be a good teacher. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of time.

Restless and distracted, I danced in front of my district instructional strategies coach during a break from a too-long in-service. “I don’t know what my goal is, Matt,” I whined, “I’m over there with my yellow tablet trying to plan my PDP, four months late,” I emphasized, “and I don’t know what my goal is,” I repeated.

“Erica,” he said sardonically, “we’re going to ignore the fact that you’re not paying attention to the in-service.” He looked at me. “I know what your goal is.”

“Really?” I stopped dancing, looked at him incredulous. “You do? Well, then, tell me!”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Probably everybody in this room knows what your goal is. It’s totally obvious: the way you teach, the questions you ask. Come talk to me sometime this week.”

When I stopped in Matt’s office, yellow tablet in hand, manila folder full of the examples and instructions I had been poring over, he pulled a student-oriented graphic organizer from a pile and sat down facing me.

“So, just talk to me about what you’re doing to improve student achievement in your classroom,” he said.

“It’s just that I don’t understand the instructions,” I blurted. “They’re really vague, and the examples don’t really help. You know me. I want to do everything right.” I saw him open his mouth to speak and I interrupted faster, “Yeah, I know that there’s no right and no wrong in this. I’ve been told that over and over again. But I need to do it well for me, and I don’t know how to do that.”

“Erica,” he spoke, very slowly, in the same tone of voice I use when my own students are panicking, “just tell me what you’re doing to improve student achievement in your classroom.”

I rambled, and he filled out the graphic organizer with what I said, organizing the jumbled information I pulled out of my head, in the same way that I do when my students are blocked. When I trailed off, he said, “See, the key is that you’re doing all these things to increase student achievement. Use that kind of language and you’ve got it made.”

“But ...," I started.

“Erica, you’re doing fine. Just write down what you’re already doing.”

The bell rang and I had to run off to corral my next class. I paused at the door. “Thanks, Matt.” I tossed the manila folder, the yellow tablet, and the graphic organizer filled with Matt’s handwriting and my thoughts into my bag to go home, where I promptly procrastinated again, using the busyness of teaching as my excuse.

Then, earlier this week, my freshmen began bugging me at the beginning of class when they should have been journaling. In the course of the conversation, one of them asked, “What would you do if someone failed?”

“I don’t let anyone fail,” I snapped. They looked at each other, surprise registering on their faces, and then got to business.

At the same moment, both my students and I realized the truth of that statement. I regard my students’ grades as a partnership between us. And I do my best not to let either of us fail.

I bug the heck out of my kids. I find them in the commons and at the supermarket. I pull out the effort rubric every day and ask them to grade themselves. I get their cell phone numbers from their friends and call, reminding them to do their homework. They probably find me really annoying. But they have very few excuses to not learn what I’m asking them to learn. “The game was on TV last night,” is not an acceptable excuse. “At least read during the commercials,” I fire back.

Because that’s the kind of dedication I expect from myself. It’s very easy to be a mediocre teacher, and very hard to be a good teacher. When I get tired, I slip into being that mediocre teacher. I stop reading as closely. I stop checking my students’ work while they’re actually working, asking them on-the-spot to apply the concepts we’ve discussed in class, bump up their language or skills. I stop structuring quite as carefully or connecting quite as completely. But being a good teacher means, to me, that I never stop trying to make my students the best students that they can be.

My goal has to be a goal that pushes me to be more than mediocre by providing avenues for my students to be good students, to apply the content we discuss into their own lives. My goal has to prod both me and my students to do our best.

But my goal doesn’t have to be something entirely new. It doesn’t have to be the unknown or written in a foreign language. Like Matt said, my goal is what I’m already doing. Maybe that’s why I was so conflicted and so frustrated. I viewed the goal-making experience not as something innate and natural and fluid but forced and over-defined. Sure, the PDP process isn’t perfect yet; it’s still in its early stages and we’re all trying to figure this out together, DPI and new teachers. But we’re working on it.

In the past year, I’ve made strides. This year, I’m better than last year; this year, I understand students better. I rely on strategies I’ve already formulated instead of reinventing the wheel; I’ve made my classroom procedures more efficient. With my newly defined short-term and long-term goals, my students and I, together, will keep getting better. Like the PDP process, we’re still a work in progress.

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Posted June 6, 2007