Sunday, January 08, 2006
Friends I Barely Knew
So Underwood lost a science teacher on Friday. Let me assure my more paranoid readers that no, he was not a victim of some school related violence, nor was he misplaced, though I would not put it past our administration to do so. The teacher in question was one of three freshman physical science teachers, and his sudden departure has left the administration scrambling for a long term substitute most of Friday afternoon. And for me? Well, it left me wondering about his decision.
Because in some ways, this other teacher's story parallels my own. Aside from teaching the same subject, we both entered the profession through alternate programs to traditional certification and ended up having to teach subjects unrelated to our original areas of expertise. For him, a biology major, this was the physics aspect of physical science; for me, a history major, it was physics and chemistry and everything else vaguely science related. For both of us, this was our first major post-college job, and for both of us, it was a rather eye-opening experience, not only due to the students, but also the administration.
Consider the following example from our professional development on Friday. The vice-principal, who has previously been quoted as saying that "last year has to be better than this year," informed all the teachers that we had to send students home with textbooks. Apparently, parents have been complaining about the lack of school materials in their students' backpacks loudly enough for the administration to notice. So they ask us to give the kids books, which would be well and good had the administration actually distributed textbooks to all the students in the first place.
For my friend, the administration was always the most frustrating aspect of the school. Classroom management, while by no means easy, was not as great a challenge to him as dealing with inconsistent administrative support. But on Friday afternoon as I cleaned up my room and he cleaned out his, we got to talking and I gathered that there was more behind his decision to leave than the administration's leapfrog style of leadership (jumping from lilypad to lilypad to find the perfect policy rather than settle on one for very long). He told me he was going to be working on graduate school applications and asked me for advice, as I had recently finished the process. The suddenness of the application deadlines was one major reason for leaving.
There was another one however, far more insidious: "This job," he told me, "has taken over my life. When I leave school, I go home and I spend all my time doing work related to school. Even when I know there are things I would rather be doing, I spend hours grading papers or working on lesson plans or thinking about how to deal with the kid who cussed me out earlier in the day. I told myself going into this thing that I would not let this job take over my life, and it has. So although I feel bad for my students and for letting the other teachers down, I'm done."
Part of me hated him at that moment. After all, it was not as though he was the only teacher suffering from this particlar malady. And unlike him, the majority of those either realize their distaste for the position early on so that the students don't get overly attached or stick with the job in spite of its many frustrations and then leave at the end of the year. It seems like a bit of a betrayal to sign up, stay on nearly halfway through the year, and then abruptly, seemingly on a whim, choose to leave.
But another part of me understood. Because, he was not the only teacher suffering in his job. And there have been times, even this year, that I wished that I could leave rather than continue to suffer through the indignities heaped upon the public school educator. But somehow I never quite got that outraged. Or during the times that I felt that way, I bottled up my frustrations and splattered them here on the web. I tell myself now that this was the wiser approach, but sometimes I wonder if that rationalization is flawed and whether it would not be better just to quit. But then I stay anyway, even if it means spending five hours writing packets for kids interested in participating in science fairs or analyzing the district's benchmark tests, desperately searching for grades higher than 75%.
My friend took the opposite path. He would not let this job drag him down, and when it proved to be too much for him to handle, he left. Was it a betrayal of his students to leave or would staying have been a betrayal of his own interests? That question weighs heavily on me now. At the time, I could just help him clean out his classroom and wish him luck facing whatever the future brings.
"Thanks," he said as he walked out the door and left me to clean up my classsroom. "But I have a feeling that you're the one who's going to need good luck, Ben."
And like that he was gone, an emptied classroom the only testimony to a life in teaching strikingly like my own, suddenly cut short. Was his decision a betrayal of Underwood's students and teachers? Or would staying on have been a betrayal of his personal ideals and therefore just as serious? And what if both of these interpretations share validity...how should one balance the call for service with what is best for the individual? It's a question I shall need to ponder as I return to Underwood on Monday.
Wish me luck.
So Underwood lost a science teacher on Friday. Let me assure my more paranoid readers that no, he was not a victim of some school related violence, nor was he misplaced, though I would not put it past our administration to do so. The teacher in question was one of three freshman physical science teachers, and his sudden departure has left the administration scrambling for a long term substitute most of Friday afternoon. And for me? Well, it left me wondering about his decision.
Because in some ways, this other teacher's story parallels my own. Aside from teaching the same subject, we both entered the profession through alternate programs to traditional certification and ended up having to teach subjects unrelated to our original areas of expertise. For him, a biology major, this was the physics aspect of physical science; for me, a history major, it was physics and chemistry and everything else vaguely science related. For both of us, this was our first major post-college job, and for both of us, it was a rather eye-opening experience, not only due to the students, but also the administration.
Consider the following example from our professional development on Friday. The vice-principal, who has previously been quoted as saying that "last year has to be better than this year," informed all the teachers that we had to send students home with textbooks. Apparently, parents have been complaining about the lack of school materials in their students' backpacks loudly enough for the administration to notice. So they ask us to give the kids books, which would be well and good had the administration actually distributed textbooks to all the students in the first place.
For my friend, the administration was always the most frustrating aspect of the school. Classroom management, while by no means easy, was not as great a challenge to him as dealing with inconsistent administrative support. But on Friday afternoon as I cleaned up my room and he cleaned out his, we got to talking and I gathered that there was more behind his decision to leave than the administration's leapfrog style of leadership (jumping from lilypad to lilypad to find the perfect policy rather than settle on one for very long). He told me he was going to be working on graduate school applications and asked me for advice, as I had recently finished the process. The suddenness of the application deadlines was one major reason for leaving.
There was another one however, far more insidious: "This job," he told me, "has taken over my life. When I leave school, I go home and I spend all my time doing work related to school. Even when I know there are things I would rather be doing, I spend hours grading papers or working on lesson plans or thinking about how to deal with the kid who cussed me out earlier in the day. I told myself going into this thing that I would not let this job take over my life, and it has. So although I feel bad for my students and for letting the other teachers down, I'm done."
Part of me hated him at that moment. After all, it was not as though he was the only teacher suffering from this particlar malady. And unlike him, the majority of those either realize their distaste for the position early on so that the students don't get overly attached or stick with the job in spite of its many frustrations and then leave at the end of the year. It seems like a bit of a betrayal to sign up, stay on nearly halfway through the year, and then abruptly, seemingly on a whim, choose to leave.
But another part of me understood. Because, he was not the only teacher suffering in his job. And there have been times, even this year, that I wished that I could leave rather than continue to suffer through the indignities heaped upon the public school educator. But somehow I never quite got that outraged. Or during the times that I felt that way, I bottled up my frustrations and splattered them here on the web. I tell myself now that this was the wiser approach, but sometimes I wonder if that rationalization is flawed and whether it would not be better just to quit. But then I stay anyway, even if it means spending five hours writing packets for kids interested in participating in science fairs or analyzing the district's benchmark tests, desperately searching for grades higher than 75%.
My friend took the opposite path. He would not let this job drag him down, and when it proved to be too much for him to handle, he left. Was it a betrayal of his students to leave or would staying have been a betrayal of his own interests? That question weighs heavily on me now. At the time, I could just help him clean out his classroom and wish him luck facing whatever the future brings.
"Thanks," he said as he walked out the door and left me to clean up my classsroom. "But I have a feeling that you're the one who's going to need good luck, Ben."
And like that he was gone, an emptied classroom the only testimony to a life in teaching strikingly like my own, suddenly cut short. Was his decision a betrayal of Underwood's students and teachers? Or would staying on have been a betrayal of his personal ideals and therefore just as serious? And what if both of these interpretations share validity...how should one balance the call for service with what is best for the individual? It's a question I shall need to ponder as I return to Underwood on Monday.
Wish me luck.
