Madame, may I?

We're entering into the homestretch on the school year. We are 2 weeks into the final trimester, and there are only 4 more weeks of classes until it is over. The approach of the end of the school year has brought with it a crisis of faith for me in my teaching. What am I doing?

My biggest issue right now is classroom management. I have 2 classes of 82 students, and one class is generally reasonably good, but the other class is consistently out of control. Within 2 minutes of the beginning of class, they are causing problems. Nothing that I've tried seems to resolve the problem, be it docking points from les bandits (troublemakers, pronounced bahn-DEE) or sending them to the office. They keep doing it. Not yelling, not anything shuts them up.

Ultimately, the thing that troubles me the most is where the responsibility for student learning lies: with me or with my students? If the students don't study or pay attention during class, is that because it was my fault for not making the material engaging and understandable enough for them, or was it because they really don't care? Is it that they don't understand my French? (I know that's definitely an issue.) And if the average on a test is 6 out of 20, was it because of my failing as a teacher, or was it because my students didn't make an effort? If 5 people in a class got over 18 on that same test, does that change the answer to that question?

Last Wednesday, I gave a test to my students. We were a little rushed through the material, both because indiscipline slowed us down and because of missed classes for other reasons. After the last class before the test on Monday, I announced that we would have an optional 2-hour problem-solving and review session on Tuesday. We had barely had time to finish the material at the end of class on Monday, and we really didn't have time to go back over the other things we had done, so I wanted to give them the opportunity to practice.

On Tuesday afternoon, then, almost all of the 2 classes came, meaning well over 100 students. As if getting 82 students to pay attention wasn't difficult enough, having over 100 crammed into one classroom with students overflowing and peeking in through the windows was WAY too much. They talked constantly, but when I tried to spot the perpetrators, it was impossible to tell who was talking. There were too many people squished too closely together. Yells for silence only increased the volume. I sent a few students out of the classroom when I managed to catch them talking, but then they just stayed right outside of the door and kept talking. And when I sent them out, they protested and sometimes refused to leave until I had to stop the entire class for 5 minutes to get them out. It was incredibly frustrating. This was an entirely optional review session that they had NO obligation to attend, that I was doing voluntarily purely for their benefit. If they weren't going to pay attention, why did they come? I don't understand, but thinking about it still makes me so angry. I had to shout the entire time just to be heard, and I know there were a lot of students who really wanted to learn but were unable to hear anything. And we didn't manage to do half of the things I wanted to do because so much time was wasted. And the grades on the test? On average, terrible.

There are a lot of challenges for me here. This is my first year of teaching; I don't have a degree in education; I'm teaching in French; I'm teaching to classes of 82 students who hardly understand French; I never even really wanted to be a teacher in the first place. I don't have a commanding personality, and I don't like dealing with discipline issues. But if I let myself off the hook for those reasons, then I could get away with anything. I know that I could be doing better than this. The question is, how high do I set the bar, and how much should I beat myself up for not reaching it?

Most of my colleagues at school assume that I'll go back to America and continue as a teacher, and they're confused as to why I say I would never want to continue teaching after this. I recently read an interesting NYT article that made a lot of good points about the problem with teaching in America. We in America do not see teaching as a particularly prestigious profession, and hence we're not drawing the best people for the job, nor are we encouraging them to strive for excellence once they're tenured.

In top-achieving countries like Japan and Finland, most teachers come from the top third of their university graduating classes, whereas in America they mainly come from the bottom two-thirds. It's understandable; if you're an outstanding lawyer or doctor, you have huge opportunities for career advancement, recognition in your field, and commensurate pay increases. But if you're an outstanding teacher, what do you get? Where can you go? Nothing and nowhere special.

If these were all the questions that were going to trouble me to be in a profession with middling pay and of middling prestige, why would I even bother?