What the other side may say: focus on students, not teachers

I just want to start out by saying that the following is not my position, but rather is a response to the following prompt provided by my Argumentative Writing teacher (I just don’t want you to think I am eternally confused and have completely changed my mind, especially if you compare this blog to prior entries).
"Figure out what the opposite claim would be to the paper you are working to write during class. For your blog readers, write a well‐supported, reasonable, and fair articulation of the OPPOSITE argument using the standard 5 paragraph essay format you used in high school or some variation of that format (4‐7 paragraphs, primary claim in the first paragraph, topic sentences articulating criteria/ reasons for support, etc..)"

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Currently, the education system finds it necessary to focus on the needs of the students. We are constantly performing research to determine how different teaching techniques affect students, what the importance of student-teacher connection is for the student, and how it would be best to integrate more information into the curriculum to prepare students for their future in our fast paced society. If we don’t focus on the current students, the future will be grim. Therefore, we shouldn’t dedicate any funds to the professional development of teachers beyond learning new material to present to students. These teachers will either take the incentive to reach out to their students, or they won’t, and no amount of “emotion training” will help in this arena. Therefore, education reform needs to continue focusing on student’s learning needs and let teachers learn about emotions from experience.


One of the first reasons to not divert funds to teacher “emotion training” is that by doing so, you are taking funds away from students. After all, the education system is constantly being compromised as it is. Schools are constantly closing, students are getting bused further from home, and children often don’t even have the resources they need such as books. The system needs to find ways to generate more funds, but until then, we need to focus all efforts on our students.

Also, teacher emotion work is not something that we can train. There are way too many experiences that our teachers may experience in the field for us to truly be able to understand or determine which ones we should teach about. In some districts, teachers discuss how their 7th graders already have infants. In other situations, some kids are dealing with the difficulties of raising their siblings while their parents are at work. These are home situations that the students may discuss with their teachers, but there is no way for us to address all the different emotional stresses these students could bring to the class. Also, we could try to simulate experiences like these, but as we all know, simulations and role playing are never as helpful as real practice.

Additionally, by spending time on teacher emotion work, we would keep more teachers from getting out into the field because they would be spending more time in the class. As standards are currently set, teachers often need bachelor’s degrees, and if their degree isn’t in education, they need to take courses and/or exams to become certified. Currently, there is no way for us to increase the pay of teachers. Therefore, our prized members of society who may have been likely to enter the educational arena will avoid it if they think they are going to have to spend an excessive amount of time learning about how to teach. People like a profession that is quick to get into and pays well. Since we can’t change the latter, we definitely don’t want to make the former even worse. By adding more “emotion training” to the curriculum, we would make the teacher preparation process too long. This is not to mention the fact that we need teachers! There is a dire shortage in many states for teachers, and if we add more time to the programs, that means we won’t be able to get more teachers in the field for even more time.

Finally, we can develop learning practices that truly help students, and teacher training isn’t that necessary for. We can teach students many skills by having them work in small groups more often. This would encourage participation, and active engagement in their learning, and wouldn’t require any additional training of teachers. Also, we could dedicate more money to student counseling programs, something that would reduce the need of teachers to learn how to address students’ emotional needs because if we had an adequate system, teachers could just refer their students to the counselor. After all, we don’t have doctors who do the billing, appointment scheduling, and diagnosing; doctors decide what is worth their time and expertise, and teachers need to do the same.

In conclusion, there is not enough of a demand to start focusing on the emotional needs of our teachers. Currently, there is not enough funds to even think about how we can spend more money on teacher training. Also, although we agree that teachers need to be emotionally stable, skills of emotion work are something that are learned in the field, not something that we should be teaching in a classroom. Also, we have a shortage of teacher, and adding “emotion training” programs aren’t going to solve that need. Finally, emotion work is the job of the counselor, instruction is the job of teacher. Teachers need to do what they are good at: teaching; not counseling.