26- Response to "A Conversation With a 'Bad' Teacher"

After reading the book, Confessions of a Bad Teacher by John Owens, Hana Maruyama decided to do an interview with Owens. She titled the interview, "A Conversation With a 'Bad' Teacher". John Owens was a journalist for about 30 years and then he decided to get a graduate degree and become a teacher. He became a writing teacher at a high school in the South Bronx of New York. His teaching experience was not a very good one. Owens says that the school he taught at was basically just run by data. Everything students did were to be recorded, right down to their attitudes about things. This data would then be used to prove that the students were passing. Some of the data was even falsified. John Owens did all that he knew to do to be a good teacher and it still was not good enough for the school's administration. He refused to go to a writing conference in order to establish some kind of consistency for his students (something that their lives were lacking) and then accrued the  wrath of the principal. From that moment on she did not like him and spent her days trying to prove that he was a failure as a teacher. He says that society tends to dislike teachers or label it as a "soft" profession, but it was the hardest job he ever had. He gained a new found respect for teachers and what they go through on a daily basis.  He wanted to take a stand and make things better, both for teachers and students. That is why he wrote his book. He gets letters from teachers all the time saying that this is basically their life, and these are their experiences. He hopes that people will read his book and help take a stand to improve our education system.

This was probably one of my favorite articles that we have read for class this semester. This is not the first time I have heard of negative teaching experiences, but it is the first time I was able to hear it directly from a teacher. I think that it is good for teachers to know that there is someone out there that knows what they are going through and trying to make it better. Not all teachers have this kind of negative experience, though. I would like to thank John Owens for taking a stand in order to help improve the American education system and the lives of teachers and students alike.