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The revelations I have had about the school system lately demand response from me. I honestly don’t see how I can continue in this system if it’s as bad as it seems to me right now –unless I thought I could do something to change the system. But the school system, from what I’ve seen, has surpassed the point where a lover of truth and beauty can have any reasonable hope of doing more good than harm.What will my response be? I have no idea.
I’m still shell-shocked at the spectacle — the utter crash and burn — of something I have always lived for being crushed before my eyes. The destruction of my notion of learning that I have seen, to take an exaggerated allusion that I think nevertheless holds, is my Dresden. The rubble is still hot to the touch.
It was massive. Seeing it has had an impact on me.
I can decide at this point to be Billy Pilgrim or Kurt Vonnegut. I can either blink passively though this thing like Billy, or I can write an anti-war book even while I acknowledge that there will always be wars and that they’re as easy to stop as glaciers. Like Kurt.
That is if I don’t get shot like another American school teacher. Poor old Edgar Derby was shot in Dresden for stealing a teapot.
The only things left in American schools for a lover of truth and beauty to do are to 1) find some other outlet in our society for truth and beauty (doubtful, but maybe) 2) find some more powerful outlet from which to work to make changes to the system so that truth & beauty can survive somewhere 3) find a job strictly meant to pay the bills and pursue truth and beauty independently (selfish?)
But this thing is important, right? The whole human advancement of learning thing? So don’t I owe it to myself to at least teach in more than one school before I quit?
But I honestly don’t know if I have it in me.
19 responses so far ↓
1 ken // Oct 28, 2007 at 10:47 pm
If you are currently not homeless, then switching to a job that helps you pay the bills seems like an odd and unnecessary option.
Speaking from experience, I think it’s possible to be a catalyst for change in education by leaving the classroom. However, I miss having my own classroom, but I have to be honest and state that that feeling might be far more self-serving than altruistic.
But don’t become an administrator. Some have rabies. Seriously, they even keep some active cultures in petri dishes.
Anyhow, look for opportunities in a school that fall into educational gray matter: like, oh, say: Tech Coach, Instructional Specialist, or Lunch Aide.
She who controls the cafeteria controls the world.
I think that’s from some Orwell novel, or Heroes.
Look, if you’re going to refer to the institution as Dresden, then it sure seems like you’ve made a decision.
But while I know there are statistics to support the notion that the best leave the field, I also know that the strong survive.
2 Farfisa // Oct 28, 2007 at 11:42 pm
btdt, came back. I did quit teaching after I’d been shoved down a flight of stairs by a student, written up after I left the room during a observation to throw up in a hallway trashcan (I knew there were no subs), cried with a 6th grader who’d just found out she was pregnant…
But then I fell into technology and reincarnated myself and went back into the classroom 12 years ago.
I would hope that someone who obviously cares as much as you do, would be able to find a new home, in a new place where you are better appreciated.
3 Margaret // Oct 29, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I think our school systems are so lacking in quality educators, that it seems a shame to lose another.
Trying to effect change from within is a challenge in and of itself. Are you up to it? I quitting really going to change the system or just give the system more fuel to stay the current course?
Margaret
4 Taylor // Oct 29, 2007 at 5:46 pm
@ken: be referring to school as Dresden, I simply mean that I’ve experienced a trauma and must decide how to respond. One of the lovely and admirable things about Kurt Vonnegut is that he saw a dark vision of the world but never lost his sense that right is right, and spoke out for the right regardless of how few might be listening.
5 Taylor // Oct 29, 2007 at 5:53 pm
@margaret: If I decided to leave teaching, which I won’t do (at least not permanently) without at least trying out another district/state, it will be because I decided the system was unfixable. At that point, staying inside the system is the worst thing I could do because it would mean that I was causing harm.
@ken: also: re the “paying the bills” statement: I mean that my teaching job pays the bills, but it takes a tremendous psychic toll. A job that “simply” paid the bills, as I see it, would be one that left me feeling like I had simply sold my body or mind for a few hours a day, not my soul itself. In financial terms it would be a lateral move, but in terms of NOT being part of the educational problems, it would be a spiritual and psychological step up.
6 Taylor // Oct 29, 2007 at 5:54 pm
So, I guess what I’m saying is that if I can’t find a way to be part of the solution, I REFUSE to be part of the problem.
7 ken // Oct 29, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Stay in the game, and guess what?, you’re part of the solution.
8 Damian // Oct 30, 2007 at 10:49 pm
@ken Until such time as you have the fight beaten out of you; then you really do become part of the problem. Not saying Taylor’s necessarily there; only she can know that for sure. But I think there’s a fine line between acting as a beacon among so much darkness and just spinning your wheels.
I strongly identify with the psychic toll Taylor describes - at times it seems insurmountable; at others, just part of the job. I’ve been more and more grouchy lately - resentful that the job requires me to give so much of my personal time that I should be spending with my wife and child. I recognize that resentment as potentially poisonous, and it’s a significant reason I’m moving on (not necessarily up, mind you, just on). How good a teacher can I be with all that baggage?
9 ken // Oct 30, 2007 at 11:22 pm
the question that I fear asking: would we all feel so gosh-darn stretched and tired if we didn’t find it so necessary to do all this stuff out here in the blogiverse?
honestly, before blogging, I was never this tired.
is our teaching suffering? more importantly, are our affect and attitude taking massive (albeit proverbial) gun-shot wounds to their respective hearts?
10 ken // Oct 30, 2007 at 11:24 pm
because those teachers in my bldg. that I KNOW know nothing of blogs and want to stay as far away from ‘people like me’ tend to arrive at school chipper, eager, and ready to go.
however, I do take solace in the notion that they tend to immediately scurry over to the copiers.
11 Taylor // Oct 31, 2007 at 7:37 am
@ken I disagree that simply staying in the game means I’m part of the solution. If the whole enterprise (not the starship Enterprise) is flawed or wrong, then staying in it is being part of the problem. Also, blogging is something I enjoy doing and I don’t feel that I *have* to be doing this at all. I do sometimes feel guilty that I blog too much, but it isn’t the reason for my burnout. If anything, talking to you guys is keeping me sane.
I couldn’t agree more with Damian about personal time! It is ridiculous that actually doing this job well requires 70 hour weeks. I know that there are lots of Americans who work that much, but they do so either because they make lots of money, or they get paid overtime, or they hope for financial gain out of it. Knowing that my standard of living will NEVER change no matter how hard I work is disheartening. Knowing the hours will never decrease is disheartening.
I don’t want to get old and look back on my life to find that I had nothing in my life but grading papers and lesson plans. It’s too much to ask.
12 Taylor // Oct 31, 2007 at 7:40 am
BTW — The fact that I’ve taught summer school for the last two summers could be contributing to this burnout.
Also — It also makes me mad that transferring to another state or district means I will lose years of experience. The system is geared to KEEP teachers in current positions. Is it normal in other professions for years of experience not to count when obtaining a new job?
13 ken // Oct 31, 2007 at 9:53 am
The nutshell: If you don’t like what you’re doing, then you shouldn’t do it. Everyone deserves to be happy. I surely don’t want to suggest otherwise.
My own experiences year after year tend to always follow a pattern:
1. Just before the start of each year, I make a solemn proclomation that none of the ‘bullsh-t’ will get to me. This usually evaporates within a month.
2. Around October, I tell my wife that I’d be just as happy folding shirts at a Gap and that way I wouldn’t have to deal with the petty bullsh-t or the endless stack of papers. Time card jobs always seem so appealing in the early Fall.
3. I slug it out to Thanksgiving and I spead time with my family. I am surrounded by nephews and nieces and they somehow, without saying anything related to my professional antipathy, make me feel energized and able to make it for another month.
4. Winter break is a blessing. I assign no homework and I have nothing to grade over the break. I think about Dick Clark a lot and the fact that Ryan Seacrest will be his replacment. America, fading fast.
5. January is a breeze. Everyone is wearing new clothes. It’s my birthday month (the 28th, plenty of time to corral me a gift) and the end of the first semester.
6. We get one day between semesters to: a)clean up, b)prepare, and c)vomit. There’s barely enough time for any of them.
7. February is the epitome of suction. I think about how my teaching a new semester is a 90 day rerun, an existential dilemma that would make even Sisyphus cry for his boulder. I wonder, ‘what can I say that will earn me one more official letter of reprimand in my file?’ Gap, here I come.
8. Around March, my coaching gig starts and I tend to treat the hours of 7:20am - 2:26pm as all filler and Fluffenutter; hours I must be present in order to coach.
9. Suddenly, it’s June and I’m at the end of year Union breakfast. I vote to raise our annual dues. There are no other options. There’s something sinister about the whole thing. But I really like scrambled eggs.
10. Ssssuuuummmmeeeerrrr!
Sorry for telling it from my side of things.
My internal self, year after year, wants out. I listen to the radio driving to work every day and think how great and easy and financially rewarding it would be to talk about poopies and girls and sports. Driving in is always emotional manipulation. I convince myself that my job is a good one. I can sell myself anything.
This is truth. I know I talk a ‘big game’ about liking education and ‘hey, stay in it’, but I’m not so removed to remember how I used to have constant stuggles about getting through every single day.
I don’t remember anyone telling me it would be easy.
14 Dawn // Oct 31, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I agree with Ken that it really only matters if you feel satisfied. Life is too short to be miserable, and I think that staying miserable under the guise of altruism is also selfish. On the other hand, if being an agent of change (assuming it’s possible) inspires and motivates you, then you are right where you belong! But I think it would be wrong to assume that happiness = selfishness. In reality, selfishness can take many forms, including pride - for instance, staying in a job that is obviously bad for your sanity and your relationships on the basis that you are doing something “good” for mankind (and therefore you feel good about yourself - selfish in a different kind of way). Personally, I think the most meaningful pursuits of truth and beauty have always been independent of money. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the wealth one possesses and the quality of imagination one enjoys. And while it would be nice to tie the two together, I sincerely believe that the financial strings binding the public education system are strangling the truth and beauty of learning . . . meaning that there is not necessarily any more truth and beauty in teaching than in any other career field.
15 Taylor // Nov 1, 2007 at 9:16 pm
All great comments, and I can’t disagree with any. I used to feel satisfied, but not any more. I have to think, though, that it’s the ridiculously oppressive school environment I’m in right now that’s making it worse. Only time will tell right now.
16 Damian // Nov 1, 2007 at 9:28 pm
@Taylor So it’s a crap work environment and unrewarding work - are you getting your resume and portfolio together or what?
There’ll be a high school English position opening up in New Jersey next September…
17 Taylor // Nov 1, 2007 at 9:38 pm
The one you’re leaving with such regret?
18 Damian // Nov 1, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I think we’re leaving for different reasons. Unless I’m reading you wrong, you’re fed up mostly with your work environment, and maybe/maybe not with teaching in general?
I confess, I’ve been whiny and dramatic lately - stressed out pretty badly. Taken objectively, my work environment is great - I really like the people in my department and my supervisor, and the kids are good, for the most part. I just don’t feel like the inherent demands of teaching jive with where I see my life going anymore (plus my professional interests have been moving more towards psychology for several years now).
No place is perfect, but I think that I could, without reservation, recommend my current employer to anyone seeking to work in our discipline. I complain about the stupid bureaucratic stuff that goes on at my school, but I also feel ashamed about doing so when I hear some of the real problems other teachers face. A lot of teachers would kill to have our “problems”.
But yes, I’m leaving (provided I find a new position - still gotta pay the bills if I don’t). Will you be making a similar leap? I’m not trying to put you on the spot, just trying to get a sense of how deep your dissatisfaction is running. You raised a good point about giving teaching another shot in another school; do you think you may try that?
19 Taylor // Nov 2, 2007 at 6:30 am
I will certainly try that. Teaching itself isn’t my problem. I love the kids. I’d say you have it about right.
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