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Why burnout? The varying experience of two teachers illustrates the importance of being able to connect with students
Biology teacher Bob DeNike catches up on grading during a quiet morning at Campbell Middle School. A 25-year veteran biology teacher, DeNike is ready for a change. He’ll be leaving Campbell for a private-school post in Kiev in the fall.
By Larry Slonaker
Mercury News
It’s an issue that has vexed parents and education policy-makers for years. But now that state and federal laws demand more qualified teachers, and turnover remains high, the question becomes increasingly urgent.
What causes one teacher to stay, and another to leave?
On a recent morning in his seventh-grade classroom at Campbell Middle School, Lin Moore recites the beginning of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” His students — using no visual reference, only the words from Moore’s lips — repeat the lines back.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth . . .
In a couple of weeks, the roads of veteran teachers Moore and Bob DeNike will diverge. Moore, 67, who calls teaching “the best job in the world,” plans to go on teaching language arts and social studies at Campbell, as he has for the past 20 years. DeNike, 47, a science teacher at the same school, says he “can’t take it anymore.” The 10-year veteran of the school is quitting — fleeing, really — to a job at a small private school in Ukraine.
In education, the origins of burnout can be as complicated as those of inspiration. Sometimes a teacher loves or hates the job right away. Other times, the feelings don’t develop until after many years.
Whatever path an educator may take, whatever destination he or she pursues, one thing usually remains constant: The journey begins and ends with the students. Success or failure often hinges on the teacher’s skill at connecting with them, and on an ability to recognize each victory in learning — no matter how small.
`Lips, please’
When they enter Moore’s room at the beginning of a period, students wipe their feet on a mat outside the door, then walk quietly to their seats. As Moore takes roll, everyone is engaged in a book or notebook.
When he finishes, he asks them to recite a poem — Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”
“Lips, please,” he says. This is their cue to enunciate. Then, without hesitation or self-consciousness, they recite the 14 lines, almost in one voice.
Despite his age, Moore cuts a robust figure, his arms and chest made thick by his daily visits to the gym. But he speaks softly and remains seated almost the entire lesson.
Besides being a teacher, he also is minister of a charismatic church in Fremont. His appearance — especially his white, pompadourish hair — makes him well-suited to the part.
All this makes for a presence that students obviously respond to. At one point in the lesson, Moore asks the students to pick a poem and read it aloud. He gets more volunteers than there is time to hear them. Any teacher would tally that as a success.
“He doesn’t have a bunch of rules,” said Principal Jerry Davis, “but from Day One, he sets the tone for the classroom, which is a quiet calm. And the kids follow that.”
One rule: Respect
Moore says he really has only one rule: Everyone in his classroom must be respectful — including him. Unlike most teachers, he won’t send miscreants to the office. He metes out consequences himself.
“I’m not a psychologist,” he says. “But I think if you take care of things personally, a kid will believe you care more.”
Moore’s classroom management skills are well-known at the school. DeNike called the 35-year teaching veteran “an icon.” But modern education theory would place him behind the curve. Moore’s classroom, Davis said, “is not typical of what you would see in our school.
“Most classes are more interactive. The students talk to each other, there’s more — movement.”
The education world’s term for this is “collaborative learning.” Moore occasionally tries it, but he’s skeptical. Sometimes, he says, “I see more socializing than learning.”
He recognizes that the job can be trying. He learned how trying it was for some at a “touchy-feely” seminar for teachers one year. “I was shocked. Some teachers said they sit in their cars in the parking lot every day for 10 or 15 minutes, crying, before they came in.”
Students often sense that. And the 13-year-old mind — quick as it can be in memorizing Shelley or Frost — can be just as quick to exploit one’s weakness, Moore says. “Once these guys see blood in the water, they’re all over you.”
Rampant disrespect
Many days, Bob DeNike feels as if he’s treading bloody water.
As students enter his room, he takes on almost a beleaguered look. They jabber away, sit on the desks, jostle one another. A girl bounces a soccer ball on the floor; a boy throws a paper wad. Most of them don’t take their seat until long after the bell rings.
DeNike calls the office to have one girl removed from the classroom. He does that three or four times a day.
Finally, after everyone is more or less in place, he starts to review the previous day’s lesson, on the rain forest. But after a couple of minutes, with no apparent signal, about a third of the students begin to stamp their feet.
It lasts for a few seconds — thumpthumpthumpthumpTHUMP — but that’s all it takes to throw everyone entirely off the subject.
“I already sent one person to the office,” DeNike says in a soft, measured tone. “I’ll send everyone if I have to.”
After the bell rings, he conducts a post-mortem on what he says was a typical class. Many of the students have no fear of the school’s discipline policy, knowing they won’t be made to repeat a grade, he says. He thinks that causes rampant disrespect — especially “verbal abuse — I can’t take that anymore.”
To demonstrate, he opens a few textbooks at random. Most are torn, with words scrawled on the inside cover. He displays one: "Help," it says, "DeNike’s a perv!" Other messages aren’t that tame.
Why the difference?
The worst part for DeNike is, after 18 years of teaching, he doesn’t know how to fix the problem. The administration is supportive, he says, but he hasn’t been given practical ideas to correct his students’ defiance. He can’t figure out why so many kids respect Lin Moore and not him.
But he clings to the reason he got into teaching in the first place. “I think I’m actually pretty good at what I do,” he said. “I think I’m good at taking a concept and explaining it to kids.”
His principal said DeNike “knows his subject matter very well.” Davis also characterizes him as “a very kind man.”
“But I don’t have another teacher who struggles with classroom management to the extent he does.” Davis knows of DeNike’s plans to leave. “He wants to try something different — I say, go for it.”
The few teachers who are naturally good at classroom management usually don’t know why themselves, said Fred Jones of Santa Cruz, an author and nationally known expert on the topic. But he adds it’s a skill rarely taught in college. “The message usually is, `You’ll pick it up once you’re out there’ ” in the classroom.
But it’s not that easy, he said. As a result, “The teacher feels inadequate,” the students pick up on that, and the situation begins to repeat itself.
There are those who will miss DeNike. “He always listens to whatever you say. He’ll never yell,” said student Dallin Blank, 13.
Like many seventh-graders, Dallin has both Moore and DeNike. “Mr. Moore sets down the rules very clear. Mr. DeNike is way more laid-back,” he said. He acknowledges that sometimes spurs students to “take advantage of him.”
`I’ll never return’
DeNike doesn’t want to be taken advantage of anymore. In early July he will move to Kiev, to teach the children of English-speaking business people and diplomats.
He says he has no family to uproot, no house to sell, and nothing to lose. “My vision is, I’ll never return.”
His salary will drop from about $70,000 to about $30,000. But $70,000, he said, “is not enough to do this job. Maybe $170,000 is not enough.”
Although Moore and DeNike make about the same salary, it’s clear the rewards they have collected are vastly different. Moore remembers one incident — a small moment that remains large in his memory.
“I was in a grocery store in Saratoga,” he said. “All of a sudden I heard these two butchers talking to me — reciting `The Road Not Taken.’ ”
It turned out they were former students, from years back. He smiles at the memory — two white-suited butchers reciting Robert Frost: “It’s really something — to know you’ve made that kind of impact.”
Contact Larry Slonaker at [email protected] or (408) 920-5809.
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