A journey to graduate school after being a preschool teacher’s aid in New York City
By Rebecca Rivera UA’23 and Jim Stellar
One of the key points, right up front, is that the K-12 educational system is underfunded. It does not have the back-up that the teachers need from the administration. Therefore it is emotionally demanding of the teachers. They almost all say that “you are going into it for the kids” or stated another way “for the mission.” Having participated in this sytem, RR says that it is a good thing that many teachers are young and dedicated. They need that energy to cope. We think this issue with the balance between needs and funding calls out for us working together in what is called sympathetic intelligence, perhaps from a newly forming Center by this name to solve what is classically called a wicked problem.
As the book “Teaching with your Mouth Shut” points out, if you ask people to name the teachers that affected them the most in their lives, it is usually the ones with whom they connected as students, teachers who saw them as people, and not necessarily the ones with the most polished information transfer technique. Again, it is about the connection between people and that is the hall-mark of sympathetic intelligence.
To begin at the beginning, the public school system in NYC faces an array of challenges, with each school year’s teacher turnover rates trending upward. This trend in teacher turnover is exacerbated by the hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts to the NYCDOE and public libraries, resulting in low salaries, an even greater teaching shortage, and an increased burden on both educators and students. RR, having worked in a preschool setting, has experienced the effects of these systemic issues such as rising enrollment rates and class sizes paired with an absence of additional support. However, many teachers she has spoken to report that they stay “for the kids” or “for their teacher colleagues”, not because they are satisfied with administration or their pay rates. That point goes to the cognitive-emotional integration on which this blog focuses and that we think is what underlies sympathetic intelligence.
To address the issue of sympathetic intelligence, as represented in that emerging center mentioned above, sympathetic intelligence is the connection between two people or between one and many (e.g. a teacher and her students). It is a natural part of how we all learn to get along and it is particularly important in teaching. That is because teaching is in part the transfer of information from the teacher to the students, but it is also transmitting the inspiration for learning, the value judgment of when something is done right, and the general connection between the students and their teachers in the classroom.
That is probably why people stay in a stressed system – it has a good mission. To go back to the connections elementary school teachers make, research shows that teacher-student relationships is a recognized factor in teacher’s staying on the job. These relationships also influence student and teacher behavior and productivity. When teachers establish positive relationships with students, the student is less likely to display disruptive behavior, which in turn increases teacher occupational commitment. During RR’s experiences in the classroom, she found this to be true. As she says “When I was able to foster and build on my relationships with my preschoolers, I found that the days went by with less disruptions and I left feeling more committed to my choice of field.”
Research shows that positive student-teacher relationships are at the forefront of a successful teaching career. When developing such connections is encouraged by school leaders and districts, teachers become more likely to stay in the profession. This impact is the conclusion of a 2021 study by O’Shea where the model of these interactions is diagrammed as below.
In this model, the biggest interaction (accounts for the most variance in the survey) is from teacher-student relations to teacher job satisfaction. This result was also found in a 2023 study by Scott as part in an undergraduate thesis … which in itself thrills us,
In a much smaller way, the same thing is true for higher education as many professors feel they could have made more money in industry, but clearly they are better compensated compared to elementary school teachers. As RR has seen in her graduate education and a JS knows from being both a professor and an administrator, the words “ivory tower” seem nice but can be a problem if the students feel disconnected from their institution. It leads to less engagement intellectually and that can come with practical budget problems if the students do not come to the institution or stay in sufficient numbers. We see this today in the ultimate outcome when some institutions (mostly small colleges) close
While many professors at research universities also get a good deal of job satisfaction from their research, there is something highly humanly rewarding in having good teacher-student interactions. It goes to the job satisfaction of those professors who spend a proportion of their time with students in teaching, mentoring, etc. This is something that JS knows well having “retired” from senior administration to return to the classroom to teach and write with students, as in this blog. Just like the high school teachers, such activities promote personal satisfaction with the job of being a professor.
The question is how do we get the right kind of attention to the enterprise, sufficient resources to support the activity, and enough buy-in from the community to permit that. As professor Adele Diamond says in the opening of her TED talk on development and executive functioning, the key is to get the right people to be teachers, particularly K-12, and to enjoy it. Maybe the connections between people are the key.
