Teaching is a young person’s job. At least now it is. With all the ills of society being blamed on teachers, the brave, confident people who go to college now to become teachers seem to walk into their first classrooms not just certain they are prepared, but somewhat disdainful of experienced teachers. We’re the ones to blame for the mess, after all. We’re the ones whose students haven’t succeed, whose test scores are an embarrassment.

These new teachers have set in classes with professors who perpetrate this idea, often encouraging the students to look at research and experts while dismissing the teacher across the hall as a valuable source of information and hints. Research and experts are valuable, and modern education owes a great deal to people who have studied and innovated. But more often than young teachers seem to realize, listening to experience is an essential part of growth–even if it’s just to consider and question, but not adopt their viewpoints and ideas.

These oh-so-young teachers can be invigorating and challenging to the status quo, and help keep their schools fresh and vital–no question about that. But I’m finding some young teachers who are as resistant to suggestion and help as the at-risk, reluctant students I pull along on my journey everyday. Because this isn’t my first rodeo, because I remember a time before teachers were “accountable,” my experience and knowledge is not even politely listened to by some young teachers.

I’m trying to remember if I treated experienced teachers this way when I entered the profession. I may have, I’ll admit. I’d taught at college, I had two Master’s degrees. There’s a chance I didn’t listen and was….well,….a bit dismissive of them, at least of some of the teachers who were obviously burnt out and just doing time.  And I will concede with no hesitation that the profession now does not resemble the profession I started in two decades ago.

But even as I search my memory, I can’t believe that I–or any of other teachers who I started teaching with–would have said to an older colleague, “Well, if you’re doing so well, why are your test scores so low? That just isn’t effective.” And yes, I’ve heard  new teachers, with only a few months experience, say almost those exact words said to or about hard-working, thoughtful, experienced teachers.

Hard to believe that teachers would become obsolete after just a few years, but apparently that’s the view in the Ivory Tower–a view they are very quick to share with their disciples.