Not a “man bites dog” media story for sure, but university professors who willingly choose to teach at a high school for a semester or a year, well, that does cause a few heads to turn. Previous posts I have published (see here for a math professor and here for an education professor) raise similar issues to what Edwin “Ted” Fenton, a history professor at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) learned by teaching for a semester at Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh (PA) over six decades ago.
I have now been at Allderdice for five months, long enough to see sharp differences between high school and university teaching situations. From the very beginning the sharpest contrast has been in the physical environment and pace. Allderdice crowds into one building 3,200 students while [my university] has about 1,400 spread over 80 acres. The only room available at Allderdice for quiet study is a chemistry storeroom. At [my university] I share an office the size of the men teachers’ room at Allderdice, with one colleague.
Moreover, nothing is leisurely at Allderdice. Clerical chores, opening exercises, and hurried conferences with students and colleagues crowd the hour between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. The five-minute break between classes is far too short to reinvigorate a teacher. Lunch half-hour is a race upstairs in the midst of a throng of students, a contest for a place at the head of the line, a few minutes respite in a crowded cafeteria where masses of students sit within eyesight, and
another dash to open the classroom before chaos erupts in the hallway.
Since January, I have been teaching six classes a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in order to be free to teach and observe at other schools on Tuesday and Thursday while my three Allderdice colleagues take my classes. By seventh Period on these crowded days, I teach poorly,
my energy dissipated, and my nerves worn thin. How my colleagues stand a similar pace year after year I do not understand.
My schedule-and the schedule of regular high school teachers-gives me far too little time to see students individually. Sixth period is usually crowded with appointments so l can never talk to students over coffee, a happy pursuit which probably occupies far too much of my time at [the university]. Like many of my colleagues at Allderdice, I am unable to give students the individual attention they deserve, except by writing lengthy comments on their essay examinations
and other papers. When will citizens and school boards give teachers time to teach properly ?
If it were not for the excitement of the AP program, the constant stimulation from five colleagues who are teaching AP history in three high schools, and the sharp analytical minds of the 160 students I see one to three times a week, there would be very little intellectual stimulation in my high school job. Except during hectic lunch periods, there is no time to chat with colleagues from other departments.
Historians at [my university] will be surprised to learn that I miss department meetings where we frequently become involved in long discussions I find a half-hour to write and do research only late at night…. I miss conversation with colleagues who are carrying on similar research. High school, therefore, seems much less the free market place in ideas I had come to know at [my university], and opportunities for creative growth and development are not as great, except as one grows as a teacher.
Nor are teachers in high school accorded the considerations as professional people which we know in universities. They are required to be clerks, truant officers, and policemen. Books are chosen for them, and courses of study are usually Planned by others, although, of course, every teacher has numerous opportunities to develop original methods of presentation if he wishes to do so.
Frequent interruptions disrupt one class after another. Fire drills, air raid alerts, messages from the office, telephone calls, students distributing bulletins, early dismissals-there seems no limit to the imaginations of people who disturb teachers. I can remember no occasion in the last five years when anyone has interrupted one of my classes at [the university]. Perhaps these conditions account largely for a significant difference in attitude which I find on the part of a larger percentage of my high school than of my college colleagues. Most of them admit to doing minimal work and to approaching teaching as a job rather than as a creative intellectual experience. I do not believe that pay differentials account for this attitude….
Far more important, it seems to me, is the fact that high school teachers are unable because of their heavy teaching loads and the burden of their other tasks to do an esthetically satisfying job, except at great personal sacrifice. Many become discouraged, particularly if they are of less than average capability. But despite many handicaps, my high school colleagues are far better at some jobs than college professors.
High school teachers pay far more attention to their students as developing human beings than we do in the universities. One teacher after another has been able to supply me with details about a student’s personal problems and family background which have been most helpful. The counselors, principal, and vice principal, at least at Allderdice, seem to know every child in the school personally and to help them over innumerable hurdles. In coilege, we are more likely to let a student sink or swim unless he is in really serious trouble. Finally, high school instructors teach current events with great skill, while we tend to ignore them in the classroom.
My students at Allderdice are more fun to teach than their counterparts at [university]. Of course, I have only very able history students at Allderdice while many of our mathematical wizards [in the university] have somewhat more limited verbal skills. Ability differences, however, are not the heart of the matter. The more significant difference is that most of my high school students are hungry for intellectual stimulation. They are anxious to examine historical issues in the light of evidence, and they respond eagerly when challenged with a knotty problem of historical interpretation. Moreover, they seem more willing to express personal opinions and to put their opinions to the test of evidence than many college students. The false sophistication which marks many college freshmen and sophomores seems entirely-and happily-absent.
I have also been impressed by the relative intellectual sophistication of high school students. The 60 I know best at Ailderdice are remarkably well read and constantly make reference to leisure reading during class discussions. They assimilate new ideas with great speed and often have remarkable insights into historical personalities. We are not tapping the potential abilities which lie dormant in many of our high school students. We cannot tap them fully, except in special instances where teachers have the privileges which we enjoy in the AP program, until society makes teaching a true profession offering opportunities to do an esthetically and intellectually satisfying job.
I shall be forever grateful to [my university], the Pittsburgh public schools, The Ford and Mellon Foundations, and my colleagues and the students at Allderdice for making this year possible. I shall never again teach as poorly as I did before this exciting experience in the public schools. I shall never again be as free with my criticisms of public school teachers and courses of study. Nor shall I ever again accept the argument that little can be done. Endless opportunities for improving course offerings and methods of teaching present themselves daily. I hope to continue to explore these opportunities with my new friends on high school faculties-that is if I survive until June 23!
Ted Fenton taught the first Advanced Placement history courses offered to Allderdice students in 1959-1960. He published this article in the Pennsylvania School Journal (May 1960). He taught for one semester. Within a few years, he and other academics passionate about improving high school social studies launched a movement then called the “New Social Studies” following on the heels of the New Math, New Biology, New Physics, etc.
What struck me about the article published in 1960 is Fenton’s comparisons of university and high school teaching loads, working conditions, and climate of learning that existed in both places then. More than a half-century later, what Fenton wrote describes accurately, in my opinion, what occurs in many high schools today.
Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice 
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
Thank you for re-blogging post on U.S. college professor teaching in high school in 1959-1960.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education and commented:
This is a must read.
Thank you for re-blogging post on college professor teaching in high school in 1959-1960.
Wow! Ted Fenton! Only we 60s pups really know what that means. I had no clue that this was not from someone who taught last spring. The frustration is that policy-makers and School Board members will never see this or dismiss it.
Thanks, Art. I worked with Ted through the late-60s on Problems in American History. I learned a lot.
I was thunderstruck to learn that the description of high school teaching in this article occurred in 1960. I was in high school myself at that time, a student who wanted to learn and to be inspired.
The description aptly describes my last high school teaching, 1990 -96 at a small and wonderful high school outside Corvallis, Oregon. The principal was marvelous. We had an A/B day schedule and 90 minute classes. This schedule was abandoned as the State-wide testing became “the latest thing”! When this happened I resigned. 180 students a day, in 45 minute segments, with 25 minutes for lunch is impossible for a teacher who knows better. Luckily my husband’s salary could support us both. I wrote my first book of poetry in the time after this insane teaching schedule. I had time to write, re-write, edit, attend writing groups (5) and to read for pleasure.
One of my colleagues is still teaching Spanish at this high school. Another student teacher works there, as well. It’s impossibly difficult but each of them cares very much for their students and for what their students are learning.
Thanks, Ann, for the comment and connecting the 1960 piece to your experiences. As you note, for many high school teachers the “impossible” grind–your phrase “insane teaching schedule”–is turned into the possible for reasons that often have to do with their students.