School starts again next week for me, so I’ve been gearing up to re-enter my classroom.

And by “my classroom”, I mean the one that I was moved to with the unfixed hole in the ceiling and the hundreds, possibly thousands (not an exaggeration) of staples inexplicably and erratically teething into my walls. I spent over an hour today just standing on desks and chomping at them with the vicious bite of a staple remover — covering myself, in the process, with the fine dust of drywall and probably some asbestos. It’s not an ideal learning space, but it’ll have to do.

Spending a full 90 minutes grappling with staples seems fatuous when I consider the amount and magnitude of the rest of the work that I have to get done before Monday, but getting the classroom looking good is something that greatly benefits me, as I like my workspace to look nice. Being in a space that is orderly, colorful, and clean helps me feel collected and calm. When my classroom is cluttered or messy, I get a little bit antsy and a little bit on-edge.

My students like it too. Last year I had multiple compliments from my kids on how clean my room looked and how good it felt to be in there. Of course, part of that was simply that I had a working air conditioner, but a lot of it was that they appreciated that I kept things tidy and inviting. Sweeping my classroom at the end of every day is tedious, but it’s worth it to me because of how it makes me and the students feel. And when they’re happy, I’m happy. And vice versa.

Which is a funny concept, because it’s something that’s becoming increasingly sparse in educational discourse. Not the specific concept of the importance of the “feel” of a classroom space, but the idea that teacher needs and student needs are in alignment. The idea that something that’s good for teachers is good for students as well.

You can look at opinion articles about education and see the common refrain that people, usually teachers and teachers’ unions, are “putting adults’ needs ahead of students'” or not making decisions “for the students”. The controversial Michelle Rhee has named and centered an entire advocacy group (StudentsFirst) around this rhetoric. And it’s easy to understand why: it’s a gripping piece of argumentation. The idea that someone — anyone — is meeting their needs at the expense of the needs of children seems downright unjust and a little bit sinister.

Unfortunately, for everyone, it’s a piece of argumentation that is also deliberately and debilitatingly misleading.

The problem with it is that it sets the needs of students and teachers in opposition. What’s “good” for the adults is “bad” for the kids, and vice versa. There’s nothing fundamentally true about that at all — the needs of both groups are numerous, diverse, and, given both groups’ statuses in the same establishment, often overlapping — but the rhetoric of needs narrows the two groups to one-dimensional characters in oppositional conflict. It’s easy to judge, malign, and want to reform the entirety of an establishment when you view it through such a narrow lens, especially when that lens tells you that one side is children and the other side is the people who are selfishly hurting them.

That’s a pretty warped view to have. When teacher advocacy is dismissed as putting the needs of adults ahead of children, it automatically assumes that the teachers have no interest in the needs of students because it doesn’t allow for the idea that what is good for teachers can, concurrently, be good for students. It’s a backhanded way of telling the educators of America that they’re in this for themselves and only themselves.

Except for those “good” teachers. They’re the trump card. Just like the idea of hurting children is viscerally unjust, the idea of a talented educator who effects monumental success in their students is unquestionably celebrated. The “good” teachers are the ones whose names, habits, and test scores get dropped whenever someone wants to remind us that they’re not trying to impugn all teachers. They’re the rhetorical safety that allows people to cast aspersions on an entire profession without it seeming like they’re using us as a punching bag.

It’s compelling, but it’s pretty weak. In celebrating a small subset of a group based on a loose criteria of quality, you’re implicitly asserting that the others’ corresponding lack of quality is a product of their own ability. Which would be fine — if teachers existed in a vacuum. If we were given full agency, ability, support, and resources to do whatever we wanted with our classes, then, yes, such judgments of quality and condemnations of failure would have some merit. Currently, however, teachers are merely one part of a frighteningly large and staggeringly complicated system. Schools encompass laws, parents, cultural values, violence, communities, pedagogy, food, families, drugs, adolescence, politics, puberty, and, most significantly, the education of students all the way from learning phonetics to solving integrals and the development of kids from the time they’re waddling to the time they’re walking the stage.

To claim that teachers are solely responsible for the success of the institution implies that all other individuals with any agency in the educational process are doing their part and doing it well. “Bad” teachers can come to be classified as such for a number of reasons that lie outside of their control, but, when it comes to educational reform rhetoric, they’re the ones that take the fall. They’re the ones that are hurting the kids.

It gets worse. The one-two punch of asserting that teachers’ needs are contrary to those of students and then blaming them for systemic failure creates the idea that most educators, save the small handful of “good” ones, are selfishly and singlehandedly facilitating the underperformance of a national institution.

Heavy stuff.

What’s damning about that, aside from the obvious, is that it actually ends up devaluing the advocacy of the community that has the largest connection to, impact on, and interest in student success. When teachers stand up for themselves and it’s viewed not as the testimony of professionals who have legitimate insights into students’ needs but as the outcry of out-of-touch adults who are clamoring to hold onto things they don’t deserve, we’ve lost our agency. We’ve lost our voice.

And it scares me that when I lose the ability to advocate for myself, I lose the ability to do the same for my students.

Heavy stuff…