Ode to our teachers who saved lives at Sandy Hook
- By Andrew Lam
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, December 19, 2012
Long ago in my native homeland, Vietnam, I used to bow. As a grade school student, with arms folded in front, and eyes staring at my sandaled feet, I would mumble, "Thua thay!" -Greetings Teacher! - whenever I'd run into a teacher in the corridor or enter a classroom.
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[By Zhou Tao/Shanghai Daily] |
Such was the Old World tradition that honored and paid respect to the teaching profession. That habit quickly disappeared, however, when I joined 7th grade in America. My way was entirely out of sync with the collective American culture.
American kids were rowdy, wore colorful clothes and some even swore at their teachers. And teaching was not mere instruction in America, I found, it was part babysitting, part dealing with the unruliness that was one of the results of a society that increasingly emphasizes self esteem and individualism over actual achievement.
Teaching may still be a noble profession but it's a difficult and underpaid job, often with work overloads and a shrinking budget that results in classroom overcrowding.
With the tragedy of Sandy Hook, however, with 20 grade school students massacred by a madman and the two teachers who died protecting them in Newtown, Connecticut, the image of the teacher in America has gone from routine drudge to that of hero. Indeed, if Time magazine were to pick its Person or Persons of the Year, it is hard to imagine Victoria Soto and Dawn Hochsprung could possibly fail to make the cut.
Soto, Sandy Hook's first grade teacher, hid her students and shielded others from the bullets of Adam Lanza, the assailant who committed one of the worse mass killings in the US history. And Hochsprung, the school principal and mother of five, reportedly launched herself at Lanza, trying to overpower him. Both Soto and Hochsprung died protecting their charges.
But long before the Sandy Hook tragedy many Americans already know that a good teacher can, if not save, change and inspire lives for the better.
Plenty of good teachers
If testimonies from successful and famous Americans are any indication, good teachers are still plenty. Many luminaries from humble beginnings continue to cite teachers as the main reason of their successes.
Tom Hanks, for instance, thanked his high school drama teacher when winning his Academy Award for his role in "Philadelphia" (1993).
Oprah is famously quoted touting her elementary school teacher, Mrs Mary Duncan Wharton. "I know I wouldn't be where I am today without my fourth grade teacher, Mrs Duncan," she noted. "She so believed in me, and for the first time, made me embrace the idea of learning. I learned to love learning because of Mrs Duncan."
And James Baldwin owes much of his formative years to his white school teacher who recognized his talents and took him to plays and brought him books. "She was really a very sweet and generous woman and went to a great deal of trouble to be of help to us, particularly during one awful winter," he recalled in "Notes of a Native Son" (1955).
My first teacher in America was Mr Kaesleau, a man whose compassion and kindness comforted my otherwise painful life in exile, one of poverty, sadness and despair. He taught 7th grade English and spent his lunchtime tutoring me when the language was still unfamiliar to my Vietnamese ear, difficult on my Vietnamese tongue. He gave me my first book to read. He drove me home when I missed my bus. He changed my life.
But while influential teachers continue to instruct and inspire many youngsters in this country, the profession itself has taken a hit. Disaffected teachers cite the lack of parents' involvement as a primary cause of faltering of education and overcrowding as a major cause of stress. And even if respect is still associated with the profession, the economy is far from showing its appreciation. Many bright young people who would have gone into teaching have told me they were deterred by financial insecurity.
"The only way we are going to make gains in education is if the quality of teachers goes up - and in our capitalist society, that quite simply means paying teachers more," writes Matt Amaral, a high school English teacher.
"I would consider teaching seriously but if I ever want to own a house in the Bay Area, I might as well forget that profession," a graduate from Berkeley once told me. In Silicon Valley, in order to keep talented teachers, there are now housing units being built for many who couldn't afford a home, as the average salary for a beginning elementary school teacher is around US$40,000 in a county where the median income is around US$85,000.
Student-teacher relationships seem to suffer in a world where social media like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, not to mention sites like RateMyTeacher.com, where students can grade their teachers. So many students now blog and tweet about their teachers, and teachers, fearful of defamation, vigilantly troll the Internet. The children's hour has extended to 24-7 online, and this too adds to the stress of being a teacher.
Lost regard for teaching
"Teaching is not a lost art," the historian Jacques Barzun once observed, "but the regard for it is a lost tradition." But perhaps that regard is no longer lost at this extraordinary juncture in American life, after the tragedy of Sandy Hook. The deaths of the innocents and the heroic sacrifice of the two women have ushered our nation to a turning point.
Along with the collective need to reevaluate the country's lax gun control laws, there's the renewed awe and elevation of the role of the teacher.
If there was unspeakable carnage at Sandy Hook, there, too, was unimaginable sacrifice. What's more noble, after all, than to give up one's life so that others may live?
The teachers who died protecting their charges speak volumes about the tender human relationships that have always been at the core of the teaching vocation. And so, almost four decades since I gave up that old tradition, to Victoria Soto and Dawn Hochsprung - to all dedicated teachers - I bow.
Andrew Lam is New America editor and the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His "Birds of Paradise Lost," is due out in 2013. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
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