Across the country, people have been making attempts to scale back areas of their lives, trimming the excess and going back to basics. This can happen with diet, exposure to social media, or health aids. Many feel that if we take a step back from some things and really look at them, we can see that more of some things is not necessary for a great life.

I’ve been contemplating this in regards to my profession lately. As many of you know, I’m very passionate about teaching. I love what I do in helping our students get better at not only reading and writing, but also someday becoming productive adults.

And I’m very worried about education. I see teachers leaving the profession after a short time. I see established teachers leaving to find work in another career. These are good people and good teachers, and students across the state and the country are losing out on quality education from these former teachers. A study that came out in 2015 showed that about 17% of people who had become teachers in the previous decade had completely left the profession, but that number is trending upward.

How do we keep these strong teachers in front of our students? Upon much thinking and talking with teachers in a number of districts, I think I’ve come up with a plan. Let’s be like those people who are making their own lives better through subtraction and go back to basics in education.

What does that mean? Well, since I started teaching 22 years ago, the number of initiatives that have come and gone (and sometimes come again) has been astounding. Every few years, “new research” comes out that shows a “new and better” way to teach or the government comes up with new requirements. The fact that it changes so often should be a sign that schools should slow down before jumping on the latest bandwagon that rolls through town. It’s likely that some of your jobs follow the same pattern. The government or the home office decides to change everything around every few years, resulting in less time for you to do the important work.

Yet schools all over the United States (and many of your jobs) race to try all these newfangled or redone ideas, hoping to find a magical solution to all problems. But what if we…gasp… just taught? That’s right, the solution to many of our problems might be the old adage that less is more.

Let teachers teach. Don’t come up with new plans every few years that require an infinite amount of meetings and trainings and everything in between. Let teachers teach. We received training in college, and the absolute best training is actually doing the job, adjusting as our students change. Let teachers help each other teach. Allow true mentoring from both fellow teachers and administrators to guide new teachers and to help veteran teachers continue to refine and expand their artform.

Let’s strip away most of these initiatives and have fewer meetings. Let’s provide teachers time to get together and come up with individual plans for students who are struggling. Let’s give teachers the chance to become great without the government telling them that the current fad is the only way to teach. Granted, some initiatives, like moving ahead with technology, are worth everybody exploring, but that’s more about utilizing tools available.

This new generation of teachers is much more comfortable leaving when the workload becomes too much. They will eventually depart the profession when they have to spend half their time trying to figure out how to jump through the various hoops put up by the government and schools. We already have a teacher shortage and, unless things change, it’s only going to get worse.

Let teachers teach. We got into the profession because we wanted to help kids, not sit in meetings and sift through data and fill out paperwork. There’s always going to be some level of that, but the amount has grown exponentially in the last ten years.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to be accountable for my job. But in reading, for the second time, Tom Rademacher’s outstanding book, It Won’t Be Easy, I ran across this line: “Standards, learning targets, and (darn) near all assessments come ultimately from a lack of trust in teachers.” That’s where all these extras are coming from. Trust us! Come watch us! See what the kids are doing!

It’s always been about more than reading and writing in my room. I want kids to learn organization, responsibility, and respect. There are no standards for those things, but aren’t those items more important than figuring out the theme of a poem? I also want kids to think critically and appreciate the good things in life. That’s where figuring out more about “Casey at the Bat,” my favorite poem, comes in.

In my classroom, you’ll likely leave remembering The Outsiders, Star Wars references, weird ties, and strange voices when I’m reading. You still might not know every spot you should put a comma. But sometimes it’s about the things that make an impact on your life. The student who discovers that she enjoys a certain kind of book after years of hating reading. The former star who gets a tattoo that says “Stay Gold” because Ponyboy was that influential.

Give teachers credit for knowing what they’re doing and help those who need guidance. You might keep more of them in front of students. They might not hit every standard, but they’ll do the important job of guiding our young people into the future.

Word of the Week: This week’s word is stepford, which means robotic and lacking in originality, as in, “The teacher found a new career because she didn’t want to become stepford by following all the state requirements.”  Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!