Why do you teach?

The art of motivating teachers in a high-stress, low-reward environment

By Paul Constance

“I offered them nothing in exchange for a 100 percent commitment.”

That is how Gladys Tejea, principal of the Escuela Albert Einstein elementary school, sums up the pitch she used to recruit teachers when she took the job five years ago. Given Escuela Einstein’s reputation as the local “garbage can” school, one has to wonder why any teacher accepted her offer at all.

Cristina Olivares: "We do it because we love it."

It was certainly not because of money. Most of Tejea’s potential recruits were already receiving an 18 percent salary bonus that Chile’s Ministry of Education provides for teachers who work in high-risk neighborhoods. Even with the bonus, salaries would range from around $380 per month for a starting teacher to $660 per month for a 30-year veteran—barely enough to cover the cost of living in a large city like Santiago.

Neither could Tejea offer convenience, quality of life and professional prestige. Most teachers endure long commutes to get to the school. Facilities at Escuela Einstein are Spartan at best. The surrounding neighborhood is dusty and often dangerous. Finally, working with students who every other school have rejected is usually not a shortcut to professional advancement.

Yet Tejea didn’t have trouble finding takers. She recruited 25 teachers and specialists, and five years later all but three of them are still on the job. This turnover rate is particularly remarkable given the demands that the school places on its staff. Virtually every child at Escuela Einstein has what would be considered “special needs” at another school. Alcohol and drug addictions among students and parents, physical and sexual abuse at home, severe learning disabilities, chronic absenteeism, criminal activities and grinding poverty are the norm. Just keeping a child in school requires frequent telephone calls and home visits by teachers and social workers, and at the end of the year many students don’t show substantial academic progress.

What motivates these teachers, according to Tejea, is “a strong social vocation,” and a conviction that they are helping to define a new and better approach to teaching high-risk children. Her assessment was confirmed by a group of eight teachers interviewed at Escuela Einstein in late 2001. “We do it because we love it,” math teacher Cristina Olivares said when asked why she chooses to stay at the school. Her colleagues nodded in agreement. Another teacher described the thrill of seeing a formerly jaded child blossom into a passionate student. “The flavor you get from teaching here, you couldn’t get it anywhere else,” said a special education teacher. “It’s certainly not about financial satisfaction,” added a history teacher, “it’s about other kinds of satisfaction.”

The teachers were candid about the frustrations inherent to working at Escuela Einstein. Nearly all of them hold second jobs at other schools to make ends meet, meaning that they rarely have as much time as they would like to work individually with students. They expressed dismay at the bleak prospects for additional education that even the best students face when they complete their eighth and final grade at the school.

But the teachers also expressed pride in their work and a palpable sense of camaraderie. “We are like a family,” said a veteran social studies teacher who is nearing retirement. “We look out for one another, and that makes it easier to get by.”

Tejea is acutely conscious of the pressure under which her teachers work, and she is constantly looking for activities that will bring them some relief and help them to grow as professionals. Through its participation in a government program for high-risk schools (see related article, First, help the neediest), Escuela Einstein receives funds that enable Tejea to set aside one afternoon per week for staff meetings and development activities. The teachers view these meetings as an oasis in their hectic week, a time to work out conflicts, review the progress of individual students, and learn about the latest pedagogical thinking. Tejea periodically invites education experts from the Ministry of Education and other institutions to present workshops on educational psychology, curriculum reform and related topics.

She also keeps close tabs on staff morale. “We have had to learn to manage our feelings, because at first the children’s situation would affect us so powerfully that we would take it home; and then suddenly we were struggling with stress or depression,” she said. Now, every three months or so, Tejea brings a psychologist to the school who holds group sessions on mental health and stress management for the staff.

“We also get our physical education teacher to help us,” said Tejea. “She forces us to play games with each other, and that always helps.”

Date posted: April 2002