Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

Lately, I’ve been thinking about some of the great times I had teaching high school. I remember those rare times when classroom discussion took on a life of its own. A spark ignited, and the conversation became spontaneous, insightful, and real. When it happened, it was a joyful rush like discovering a $10 bill in a seldom worn pair of pants. 

It was classroom lightning.

My guess is most teachers have experienced a flash of it, and it’s part of what keeps them teaching instead of bailing for a job with less stress and better pay.

After I taught, I represented teachers for 27 years, so I haven’t been gone from public education long enough to romanticize it. The grind of teaching is real including lunch duty, unpaid hours, administrative bureaucracy, multiple extra duties, and people who believe if they attended third grade, they know how to teach it. 

Most of the time my best discussion prompts were met with classroom silence, and indifference. It was exhausting trying to pull thoughts from sophomores who hadn’t bothered to open the book.

But when the lightning struck, it fed my teaching soul. Now, I’m afraid classroom lightning in Iowa is even harder to find than it was 35 years ago when I taught. Teachers today compete with social media, cell phones, impossible classroom numbers, administrators second guessing, and meddling politicians who regard public schools as a political wedge instead of a precious resource needing protection.

It’s harder now than it was then.

It doesn’t matter which party captures all three branches of government, that party falls in love with their own ideas and their unchecked power. That’s what happened in 2017. Bill Dix, Senate Majority Leader at the time, said Republicans were “going to kick the door in.” They did. 

Public-school teachers were flattened by that door.

Republicans silenced teacher voices by gutting Iowa’s 44-year-old public sector bargaining law. They passed laws regulating what can be discussed in classrooms. They banned books they didn’t like from public school libraries. They overhauled Area Education Agencies, diverting some of their funding sources, and they rammed through taxpayer funding for private schools—a “standing appropriation” with no ceiling.

Veteran teachers started looking for the exits and future teachers ran away from the profession. Academic freedom became endangered, and administrators became hyper risk-averse.

Even when I was teaching, I had administrators who fell in love with canned teaching methods they discovered at the latest, greatest conference. We called them “flavors of the month.” To me, they all tasted like vanilla, and students deserved more flavors. Still, in my day, there was some classroom autonomy when you shut the door and tried something that might work. That’s scarce now.

By 1990 when I started representing teachers, classroom independence was crumbling. For example, some principals criticized teachers for not being on the exact unit their lesson plans specified, even when the teacher explained there was a need to re-teach a concept. It was absurd and disheartening.

As we begin a new school year, what can be done to bring back classroom lightning? Voters need to hold politicians more accountable. Please look at their records and ignore their rhetoric. Ask the tough questions, and if the answer doesn’t pass the smell test, run away from supporting them.

Parents can help too. Lotion and gift cards are nice, but if parents want to appreciate teachers, partner with them. Try to attend parent-teacher conferences, make sure your kids get enough sleep, enough to eat, and some time away from cell phones and video games. Try to have them read a little every day, or maybe read to them. It’s hard, but it will help. 

Administrators can help too. Avoid overreaction and second-guessing. Trust the teacher you hired. Listen to each other. Give them some grace. Stop treating parents like customers who are always right. They are sometimes, but not always. 

I recently bought a shirt that says, “Stop blaming teachers.” If we don’t, we’ll have classrooms full of kids, but missing qualified teachers.